“Do you know what myself and my two cousins all have in common?” he asked after taking another draught of his drink.
“What’s that?” Hector asked, curious despite himself.
Xander smiled expansively. “We all love our wives beyond reason.”
It was obviouslytrue—well, Hector hadn’t met this Hugh character, but it was clear enough about the other two—but it still felt remarkable to hear a gentleman admit it so openly. The Lightholders were the aristocrats to end all aristocrats, and yet here Xander, their patriarch, was so easily throwing out centuries of tradition around aristocratic marriages.
And yes, that was interesting, but Hector failed to see what, exactly, that had to do with him.
“And many happy returns to you, then,” he said, for lack of anything better to offer.
Maybe being the head of a large family imbued one with special powers, because the look that Xander gave him felt nearly paternal, for all that Lightholder couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Hector.
“My point,” he said levelly, “is that Clio is very much one of us. I referenced the gentleman, but the ladies of the family are very much the same. They are all quite happy in their marriages—in love, even—even in the cases where such a thing seemed entirely impossible.”
Oh. So, it wasthiskind of talk. Hector was initially so relieved to understand what was happening that it took him a moment to start to feel annoyed.
“Listen,” he said, trying very hard not to sound excessively rude, because Xander might be dead wrong, but he clearly meant well. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do here. But Clio is different.”
“Oh?” Xander’s word was light, but it was a clear provocation.
Hector didn’t know what in the hell was wrong with him that he gave in to that provocation, but maybe this was just another partof whatever spell his wife had woven over him the night before, because he answered.
“Clio is …” He took another sip of his drink to buy himself time, enjoying the way it burned down his throat. “She loves her family a great deal. She didn’t want to come back to England, but she did, because her brother worried about her.”
Something in him prickled at the thought of how much love Clio had to give. Of these people who surrounded her, who gave it back in return. And then there he was, in their orbit.
“But she didn’twantto.” He made himself continue. “She wants to see the world. She wants to be independent.”
Xander wielded his silence like a weapon, and Hector had once been able to do the same. He didn’t know what was wrong with him now that he couldn’t.
“She knows her worth,” he said, the words thick in his throat. “It wasn’t as though she didn’t have offers of marriage before. Hell, the day I met her, she’d had one man throw himself at her so desperately that he went fairly mad when she rejected him.”
Hector had never thought that he’d feel any kind of sympathy for Lord Gwanton, and he still definitely hated the bastard, but if there were ever a reason to go a bit off your head, being rejected by Clio was that reason.
“Besides,” he added. “She’s well connected, wealthy, and God knows she’s beautiful. Even the idiots—the ones who failed to notice that she’s also sharp as a tack and as determined as they come … Even the fools couldn’t fail to notice her worth.”
“But?” Xander prodded, his expression unreadable.
“But she wouldn’t accept them,” Hector went on. He didn’t know why he felt so desperate that Xander should understand. “She knew what she wanted. So, she didn’t marry.”
Xander spread his hands. “And yet, now she has.”
Hector shook his head, not in rejection of this clear truth, but in the implication that underlaid it.
“Because of the scandal,” he said, as though Xander didn’t already know. “Because some fool made a fuss over her and I standing together in the street, and the bloodytoncan’t stop their tongues from wagging. And now?—"
He cut himself off.
And now she’s trapped.
He couldn’t say it.
Xander looked thoughtful.
“Well,” he said reasonably, “that’s not exactly right, is it?”
“Of course it is!”
