“He’s old, and a great deal weaker than me, Duchess. I’m quite handy at barrel walking,” Cambridge Sinclair said. “So I will read first.”
The man had a smug look on his face that had Gabe scowling. Monty looked at Iris again.
He was unsettled, and that wasn’t a good thing for a man like him. He needed to be alert and focused. She was listening intently to something Mr. James, who had joined her, was saying to her. Her smile was only small, but the man responded with a wide one of his own.
Interest, Monty thought. He could see it in the man, and he hated the stab of what was likely jealousy he experienced.
“For pity’s sake, Monty, stop scowling. Plunge doesn’t do that,” Mary hissed as she passed him.
He wanted to curse or mutter. Instead, he smiled. “My dear Mrs. Mary Deville, there is no need to take on so. No need to feel such distress. I am sure the duchess will allow you to read!”
Mary shot him a look that should set all his lavender-scented handkerchiefs on fire.
“Watch your back,” she muttered.
He bowed.
“Right. Now someone will need to steady the barrel for me, but once I’m on, I will be fine. I have wonderful balance, you know. Quite superb,” Cambridge Sinclair said.
“All it would take to send him tumbling is a little nudge,” his youngest brother, Warwickshire Sinclair, said. “Not much at all, and we could all enjoy him tumbling headfirst to the ground.”
“Are we women also allowed to roll whilst reading?” Dimity inquired.
“Absolutely not,” her overprotective husband roared. A chorus of agreement from the other husbands followed this.
“Oh, pooh to that,” Dimity said. “You’ll assist me, won’t you, Plunge?”
Monty looked at her and the faces of the Devilles around him. He wasn’t popular and never had been. He was accepted and nothing more. Monty had wanted it that way. But lately the Devilles were including him, and he knew that would play a part in how some others saw him. The Devilles were popular, after all.
He didn’t want that. He wanted to slip away at the end of the season and everyone to be happy they were finally rid of him. Monty included.
“Why, my dear lady, but of course. As I, too, will be rolling and reading.” He tittered. “La, my alliteration is quite something, don’t you think?”
“Yes, yes.” The duchess waved his words away. “Now get up there, Sinclair.”
“Which one?” several voices called.
“That one.” She jabbed her cane at Cambridge.
He leapt nimbly onto the barrel that Nathan and Michael Deville were holding still for him.
“Book,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Here. Hand it to him, Plunge, while I sit. My elderly bones, you know, they ache.”
“What? Did you just admit to a weakness?” Zach asked the woman. “Someone get me a tisane. I feel faint.”
Her cane swept in an arc toward his knees but luckily missed.
Monty held out the book for Cambridge.
“Your hair is much better styled that way, Plunge,” the man said, looking down at him. “Less… ah less—”
“Animal excrement–like?” someone called.
“Exactly,” Cambridge said. “The shoes are better too.”
“My valet was ill, and my footman has no style,” Monty said.
