The duke frowned. “No,” he said.
After a beat, it was clear that he intended to say nothing else.
Aaron looked even more furious. He frowned ferociously. The duke mimicked the expression.
“This is how you are going to behave, then?” Aaron asked in a tone of voice that Phoebe called hisAdmiral’s Tone.
“You asked a question; I answered,” the duke replied.
There was another silence.
God above, this was ridiculous.
“Do the two of you plan to solve things by seeing who can frown harder?” she interjected, hoping that this would, at least, lighten the mood enough to get things moving.
It did not help. They just both started frowning in her direction.
Aaron’s frown didn’t affect her. But the duke’s …
Strangely, it made her throat go dry.
“This isn’t a laughing matter, Clio,” Aaron said sternly. “We have already delayed long enough. In a matter of hours, the entire city will be talking about the … indiscretion that the two of you showed yesterday.”
The duke’s brows rose at the wordindiscretion.
“So, next time,” he said, low warning in his tone, “you would prefer that I leave your sister trapped in a dangerous conveyance on the cusp of collapsing? I don’t have a sister myself, but if I did, I likely would have preferred to keep her alive, but maybe you’re a different kind of man.”
“There isn’t going tobea next time,” Aaron snapped.
Hector raised his eyebrows. “But yesterday, you anticipated that therewouldbe an accident? Strange that you didn’t warn her.”
“No,” Aaron said, “but?—“
“Then,” the duke interjected with no small amount of bravery; nobody interrupted Aaron except Clio and Phoebe, “ye cannot say for certain that it will not happen again.”
Clio couldn’t help it; she snorted quietly into her hand. Both men paused in their argument to glare at her again. She tried to look as innocent as possible.
“What I am saying,” Aaron gritted out between clenched teeth, “is that there will not be anotherscandal.”
The duke looked positively disgusted. “There shouldn’t be any kind of scandalnow,” he said. “What kind of society are you people running in this city, where a man saving a woman from dying is somehow scandalous? Where I come from, you might thank a man for saving your kinswoman from being killed.”
Clio swallowed, trying to summon some moisture to her dry throat. She wished that everyone could stop talking about how near she’d come to disaster. She was trying not to think about it, lest she never manage to enter another carriage in her life.
“Where you come from is immaterial.” Aaron’s eyes were flashing dangerously. Clio tried to think of the last time she’d seen a man—one who wasn’t a member of their family already—defy her brother. She couldn’t come up with any examples. “Here, embracing a woman in the street is scandalous, no matter what preceded it. You will do the honorable thing and marry my sister to save her from ruin.”
He said this with the self-assured air of a man who felt confident he’d just gotten in the final word, like he expected both Clio and the duke to hear his proclamation and submit at once to his clearly superior logic.
They did not.
Clio rolled her eyes.
And the duke let out a sharp bark of laughter.
“Your arse, I am,” he scoffed, which was asomewhatoffensive rejection of Clio’s hand in marriage, but she had to give him points for flair. “If you want to make someone marry her, talk to the coachman who set the balance on the carriage so awry that it was destined to tip over sooner rather than later. I will not be involved in whatever nonsense you aristocrats get up to. I am only here for a few weeks; as soon as my business is concluded, I will return to the north, where I will happily forget that any of you ever existed.”
“No,” Aaron countered, and suddenly Clio found that she had put up with this nonsense for far too long, “you will?—”
“Enough!” Clio surged to her feet. “I have had justenoughof the two of you talking about me like I’m not even here! Honestly, how can you even listen to yourselves act as though I am no more than–than apropin this argument of yours?”
