Selina wasn’t asking him about his actions, but was deliberately acting on her own. She opened empty drawers, feeling into them. She felt floorboards, and sometimes the candlelight caught her gaze and he saw her looking at the door to the hallway and to the dressing room attached to the main chamber.
Exits and entrances. She was clever to naturally understand the importance of those things.
“Lady Winford is…” She paused and then laughed. “Have you ever met her?”
He darted his gaze up. “I haven’t,” he admitted. “Not exactly my circles, not anymore.”
Her eyes flitted over his face. “Not anymore? Were you once of my brother’s world? The Upper Ten Thousand, as they love to be called? I suppose that makes the rest of us the Lower Million.”
He smiled but didn’t argue the point. “I, er, had some attachment to this world once, yes. My grandfather is the Earl of Brillshire. My father is his third son.”
Her eyes went a bit wide and she tilted her head. “You almost sound embarrassed by that fact.”
“My grandfather is embarrassed by me. I suppose I return the favor when I can,” he said, and then wished he could take those words back. Although many people in the ton knew of his relationship to the earl and that allowed him access to their problems for his work, he didn’t speak of the man often.
Nor to him.
Selina turned her back on him and moved to a writing table. She opened each drawer carefully, then shut them before she said, “I don’t know why he should be.”
“He doesn’t like that I didn’t follow the path he laid out for me,” Derrick said, trying not to let the pain he’d once felt at that rejection pass through his blood. “He wanted me to be someoneimportant. He wanted to pay my way into the service as an officer. When I refused that…well, our relationship soured.”
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “You had an honorable military career, escaped with your life, but only barely, and now you help people with their problems. How could all those wonderful things be considered unimportant?”
“You ought to know,” he said. “You grew up the same way I did.”
She froze and slowly turned. He could see her struggle on her face in that moment, the mask gone to reveal a real flash of pain. And of battle. Like she was waging war with herself about what she would say next.
He leaned closer as he waited, holding his breath.
“No, I didn’t,” she said at last. “I may be the daughter of a duke as a point of order, but as a truth, I was just a bastard. I didn’t grow up in this world. I didn’t have any link to it. My life couldn’t be more removed from it until…”
Derrick moved a step closer, drawn in by this little tidbit about the woman who was taking up all the air in the room at present. All the air in his lungs, at least. “Until?”
She pursed her lips. “It’s a boring story. I’m sorry I started it. The fact is that I’m not of this world, and my brother, for some reason, is not embarrassed of me. He is currently parading all his bastard siblings out, helping us all make a future for ourselves.”
“You sound bitter about it,” Derrick said softly.
She shrugged. “I shouldn’t be. He means well. He wants…he wants to be something more than our father was. And he is that. Robert is far and away a better man. I’m lucky, I know. But I’m not of this world. And I never will be.”
She took a short breath, like she was gathering herself, then smiled at him. There was the mask again. Flirtatious, outrageous, wicked to the core, but in the very best way.
“But Ihavemet Lady Winford,” she continued, and stepped up to him, now just a few inches away. He could reach out a hand and touch her without even fully extending his arm. But he wouldn’t, even if his palm itched to do so.
“And you think your interior knowledge of the lady will help me?” he asked.
She giggled. “Oh no. All I can tell you is that she is a raving bitch. One of the worst people I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. Picture the nastiest, most petty person of power you’ve ever met. Not evil, mind you. Not criminal. Just…mean. Mean to those she wields power over, mean to those she ought to protect.Thatis Lady Winford.”
He arched a brow. “That sounds personal.”
“Everything is personal, Derrick,” she said with a little shrug. “When it’s happening to people. So when I’m walking around this room I’m trying to put myself in her wicked, nasty, tiny little mind. Trying to ask myself where I’d hide the Breston necklace if I were Lady Winford.”
He stared at her a moment, eyes widening at what she’d just said. His hackles and his suspicions rising with every passing second. “How do you know that what the Fox is after is the Breston necklace?”
She arched a brow at him as if that was a foolish question. “I don’t,” she said. “But what else would it possibly be? Lady Winford inherited the piece recently. Everyone knows it is of great value—she makes certain we all know that. Exactly the sort of thing this Faceless Fox man seems to take regularly…under everyone’s nose. I assumed.”
“Clever,” he said softly.
“Thank you,” she said, and he picked up the pink of her blush even in the dimness of the room. “I try.”
