“By that rationale, are you not doing the same with our marriage?” Ellie shot back.
“But I won’t be subjecting you to an eternally unhappy life, Evelina,” he said staidly. “After our arrangement is dissolved, you’re free to live how you please.”
Ellie was not sure she wanted that. Some inconvenient emotions reared their heads every time she looked at Dorian. She was sure she had not fallen in love with him, but a fierce attraction simmered in her belly for him. How could it not?
The man was a handsome devil with a voice that took her knees out from under her. She respected him, admired him even for dragging himself up when he had every reason to stay put. His irreverence for propriety humored her, as did his dry wit.
“Somehow, I don’t think I’ll—”
A knock on the door stopped her, and from the irritated look that flashed across Dorian’s visage, he’d wanted to hear what she’d say. The butler stepped in with a lone letter on a silver platter.
“I am sorry to interrupt,” he bowed his head, then turned to Ellie. “But this has arrived for you, Your Grace.”
“Forme—?” She took the letter and flipped it to glimpse the address. Her face immediately fell. “It is Carrington.”
Opening it, she read aloud, “Dear Duchess of Wolfthorne. I do hope you will pardon me when I say that I was beyond shocked when I saw you emerge from the vestibule in the church and marry Beaumont. I would ask how he met you, or where he met you, but that is behind us now.
“I want to formally invite you to my ball at my estate in Canterbury. Call it my way of extending the olive branch. Please tell your husband that there is no pretense or trick here.
“It is simply a formality that I am bound to extend. I have no doubt you will look your best, Your Grace. Do me a favor and rub off the rough edges of your new husband. Yours respectfully, Carrington.”
She dropped the letter. “Does he never use his full name?”
“That’s because his name is Pip,” Dorian commented. “It sounds weak. Sterling does not like weak.”
Nudging the letter, she asked, “Are we to attend?”
“As I recall, the choice of the sixth ball is yours,” Dorian said.
She angled her head. “But I know you want to attend, because there is something he has that can lead you to your uncle.”
“There is,” Dorian admitted.
“So, that shall be the first invitation we accept,” she nodded resolutely. “And if we must, we shall go again. And again.”
“Carrington is a very suspicious, crafty, distrustful bastard,” Dorian added. “If we are to get something from him, we’ll have to be just as crafty and distrustful, if not more.”
“We?” she asked.
He rubbed his jaw, then his eyes sharpened. “You. This will be on you, Ellie. If I suddenly go missing in his house, he will know something is wrong. For you, not so much.
“You will have to be my sleuth. Pull from every novel you have read and use those prodigious smarts of yours to find any records ofEdgar Beaumont, or as he preferred to be known as,The Viper.”
“The Viper,” Ellie shuddered. “That certainly speaks volumes.”
“It does,” Dorian nodded. “And none of it is good.”
Reaching for her cooling tea, she murmured, “Tell me about his house. What do I need to know?”
Carrington’s home was a spatial château plucked straight from the French countryside. Built in the early eighteenth century and laced with a baroque cornice, the structure had three stories with two pointed towers serving as bookends of the perfectly symmetrical façade.
Made of cheerful gingerbread-looking stone, it stood nestled among mighty oak trees and low verdant hills. Ellie even spotted sheep in the pastures leading to the domicile before night fell.
“Is Carrington the pastoral sort?” she asked.
“No,” Dorian said. “Those sheep are for his table. He eats lamb with more blood than char.”
Ellie wrinkled her nose. “Is that healthy?”
