Though run off his feet, he’d enjoyed himself.
But in the present situation he found himself in, it wasn’t joy he’d brought, but consternation.
The scowl creasing Bretagne’s forehead said as much.
The bewildered smile perched on Miss Bretagne’s mouth said as much, too.
As for Miss Birdwell… She was watching him as one would an exotic animal that had escaped from the Tower of London.
“Lord Rhys,” said Lady Percival in her soft Spanish accent, her striking green eyes encouraging, “what an unexpected delight. I’m afraid we’re having a rather sedate night in, but won’t you join us?”
Rhys found his feet moving, even as his mouth was having trouble. “I, erm, thought I would come and ask?—”
Ask what?
He was saved from having to follow that sentence to its inevitable crashing conclusion, when Bretagne said, exasperation shimmering about him, “There have been no further developments about the ring.” He added, “As I explained, I will contact you when that changes.”
Miss Birdwell’s head tipped, topaz-blue eyes subtly narrowed. “Ring?”
“I was helping Osborne recover a piece of his father’s lost property,” Bretagne said to the room.
Rhys couldn’t help noticing Bretagne hadn’t asked him to sit down.
Miss Birdwell’s eyebrows reached for the ceiling. “Is that so, now?”
Bretagne’s scowl returned. “Are you acquainted with one another?”
It was Miss Bretagne who answered. “Lord Rhys brought Christmas cheer to Hope House last week.”
“Nobly motivated, I’m sure.” If, at first, Bretagne had looked merely disinclined to make this easy on Rhys, he now looked plainly suspicious.
Rhys cleared his throat, deciding it best to return the subject to the safest topic. “I have a promising direction in regards to the ring.”
Bretagne’s air of expectancy increased, his near-black eyes asking, Then why in the blazes have you barged into my house?
Rhys supposed Bretagne’s eyes had every right to ask that question—his mouth, too. He and Bretagne weren’t actually friends, only friends of friends of friends, which didn’t give Rhys the by-your-leave to pop by unannounced on any old evening.
With obvious reluctance, Bretagne folded his newspaper, set it aside, and unfurled his long, lean form. “Lord Rhys,” he said, “have a cigar with me in the garden.”
And so it transpired a few minutes later that Rhys was outside walking the grounds and smoking a cigar with Lord Percival Bretagne when his sole intention had been to see Miss Birdwell.
Lies, half-truths, and obscured intentions could get one into a right mess.
“So,” said Bretagne on an exhalation of earthy cigar smoke, “if you aren’t here about your father’s ring, then why are you here?”
The directness of the question caught Rhys on the back foot. “Well, I—” It occurred to him that he was terribly unskilled at subterfuge.
He’d only ever been skilled at one thing, it seemed—being a rake.
Bretagne scrutinized him askance. “Are you attempting to court my daughter?”
Now, it was Rhys’s brow’s turn to lift with surprise.
Bretagne didn’t wait for a response. “I’ll say this once. Lucy is not for you.”
Rhys couldn’t even be offended. He knew his reputation. “I’m not here for that reason.”
Bretagne caught his gaze and spent the next three seconds searching it. Finally, he nodded, apparently mollified by what he found there. “Then can you get on with explaining yourself?”
