“Cheers,” he greeted.
Hector watched with amusement as Jonathan warred between his long-ingrained manners and his clear distress at this upset of social order.
“Good evening, Mr.—” He let it hang.
Ramsay did not supply. “Mister!” he guffawed. “Oh, sir, you are too marvelous. Call me Ramsay; where I come from, there are far too many Bechams to go about using our family name. You would never know who you were going to get.”
“Right,” Jonathan said, apparently pained. “Ramsay. Good evening. I am Jonathan, His Grace’s butler. Do please let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your stay more?—”
He was interrupted by Ramsay laughing.
“You understand that it’s completely mad that you’re a duke, don’t ye?” he said to Hector. He brandished the paper in his hands. “But I got this missive, and it says that your scoundrel brother is trying to take it? I wasn’t about to leave you alone to handlethat.”
He said this as though it was obvious, and Hector felt a rush of fraternal warmth toward Ramsay, a feeling he’d never felt toward his own brother. But what was it that they said? The blood of the covenant was thicker than the water of the womb? Ramsay had always been more kin than Matthew.
“You are welcome,” Hector said, knowing that this brother—his true brother—understood all the emotion that belied these words.
“Grand,” Ramsay agreed briskly. He entered the room, poured himself a large dram of the expensive liquor that Hector had liberated from Matthew’s rooms, and gave it an appreciative swig. “So. What are we doing?”
Hector grimaced. “For now, we are trying to plan a house party.”
Ramsay coughed on his drink. “Good God,why?” he sputtered.
Hector hesitated on how to explain this. Ramsay might knowhim, but he didn’t know the often mad machinations of Society life.
This was, alas, the moment that Jonathan decided he was over his shock at Ramsay’s appearance.
“I think you will find, Mr. Becham,” he said with a glimmer of mischief in his eye, “that this whole thing is, in essence, about a woman.”
CHAPTER 11
Before she absconded to the countryside—as Clio chose to term it—Letitia visited to say farewell to her friend and benefactress.
Clio had thrown her arms around her friend’s shoulder, not caring if any of the staff was scandalized by such a show of familiarity. Let them gawk. Belgium was not England, and Clio did not plan to let friendship be held to rigid English standards.
Letitia, for her part, squeezed back just as energetically.
“I forgot about this part when I helped you secure your post,” Clio muttered into her friend’s shoulder, not yet letting go. “I should have made certain that you were governess to children who never, ever left London.”
“We shall return to Town at some point,” Letitia assured her, parroting the explanation she’d been given by her new employers about their habits and homes.
“Some point is not soon enough,” Clio protested. “I shall visit you in the country anon.”
Letty put her hands on Clio’s shoulders and looked at her from that distance. She had a look on her face that Clio had always privately thought of as herLetty knows bestlook. Irritatingly, it usually preceded some sage information.
“You would have to be living in England in order to come visit me,” she said mildly.
Clio grimaced. She’d confided in Letty over tea the day prior, all that had transpired with the duke … or, nearly all. She’d left out the bit about the kissing.
But she hadn’t been circumspect about her own uncertainty regarding the decision that lay ahead of her.
“I know,” she said quietly. “I … hope I will be able to come visit.”
It wasn’t an answer. It wasn’t a decision. But itwastrue.
Letitia squeezed Clio’s shoulders affectionately.
“This is not a goodbye,” she said, eyes going damp. “It is anau revoir.”
