“La! I am broken,” he cried desperately. “My body is bruised and battered; I shall never recover.” Clutching his chest, he staggered to the footman who held his jacket. “Help me!”
Iris noted Mary Deville walked to his side. She then helped him into his jacket and patted his hand.
“Champagne!” he wailed.
“Clearly we were mistaken. Plunge has not changed a jot,” the young woman beside her, who had thought there was a possibility that he may be handsome, said.
“Such a shame. I was hopeful for a moment there,” another said.
Now back in his jacket, Mary Deville was straightening Theo’s necktie.
“So, it seems the Devilles are superior to the Sinclairs and Ravens,” Dimity crowed to the Duchess of Raven.
“I am not impressed,” the duchess said. She then stomped to where her husband was bent at the waist, sucking in large lungfuls of air with the other men in his family.
“Imagine how upset we are,” her eldest brother snarled.
The Deville group was looking happier but no less exhausted.
“I think we women should now take part.”
These words came from Dimity. Her husband’s head shot up, and he leveled her with a look that should have warned her off pursuing what she’d just said.
“Oh, now that could be fun,” Beth said.
“Excellent, I have made a tidy sum and am most happy to make more,” the Duchess of Yardly said.
“You bet against us, Duchess. I am wounded,” Cambridge Sinclair said.
“She knows weakness when she sees it,” Zach answered.
“Women! Competing like men! Why the very thought of it is ridiculous,” a man who’d been watching said.
By the flush of color in Dimity’s cheeks, he was about to regret those words.
Iris had woken up this morning suspecting her day would be one spent in the garden or walking to the park, and yet here she was at a birthday celebration for a crotchety old duchess, with Henry playing happily. She also now owned a dog. Except for her encounter with her former brother-in-law, who she hoped was now nursing a nasty dog bite that turned septic, she had to say she’d been enjoying herself.
“And you are a splendid boy.” She bent to pat Oscar, who was still at her side.
“Women do not do such things!” the man who made the initial comment continued.
“Molden, do you know so little about women?” the Duke of Raven said. “You never forbid them from doing something, or they wish to do it with even more determination than they previously had.”
“Some of us have women who understand their place, Raven—”
A shriek came from several women. Most of Raven or Deville origins.
“I suggest you step back, Lady Challoner. This could get nasty.” She hadn’t noticed Theo’s approach. But he was now at her side, and his words were spoken so only she could hear.
“I want to be just like them one day,” Iris said in the same tone.
“You are like them,” he replied. “Beautiful and strong.” He rested a hand on Oscar’s head.
She turned her head, and their gazes locked. Iris felt that surge of need she’d experienced that day at her house when he’d kissed her.
“Thank you for your words, even if they are not true.”
His eyes skimmed over her face slowly and down her neck, and then he stilled.
