“Do for what?” Ives asked, coming toward them from the door.
Lance shrugged. He returned to his divan, slouched low and stretched out his legs.
Gareth glared at him. “Do forwhat?”
Lance yawned. “It would be better if I escorted a lady to the DeVere ball next week, so I make it clear how indifferent I am to the stories about me. I thought one of your guests might do, since I am not in the mood to suffer the company of the women I normally would use. But as I said, the girl is too young. Rumors would start, and I might find myself under obligations I did not intend.”
“Allow me to repeat, once again. You are not going to any balls,” Ives said. “You are in deep mourning.”
“And if you do go anyway, you are not escorting any of those women up there,” Gareth said firmly. “None of them will do. They are not for you.”
“A fine friend you are, Fitzallen,” Whitmere said. “Denying those nice ladies a ball. They will not thank you for it.”
Lance seemed to lose interest. He closed his eyes.
Ives gestured to Gareth. “Let him sleep. We will go to the garden and set the times for our meetings.”
“There is the other one, of course.” Lance’s voice, not loud at all, arrested Gareth’s attention.
“You mean Mrs. Rockport?” he asked.
“No, the other sister. Eliza—Edith—”
“Eva. Miss Russell to you.”
“Lovely name. She is pretty, too, in her own way. Poised. Nice eyes.” He sat up. “I say, Whitmere, why don’t you escort the girl, and I’ll escort her sister.”
“That sounds splendid. Only you must allow me my time with the elder one. She looks to be a sassy wench, and I’ll be wanting companionship this Season.”
An insinuating inflection ofcompanionshiphad Gareth thinking murder. He walked over to where Whitmere sat and hovered over him. “If those ladies are not for my brother, they are certainly not for you. The path to their company is through me, and I forbid it. I have not thrashed an earl in several years, but am prepared to do it, so do not doubt my resolve on this matter.” He looked over his shoulder. “Ives, who was the last earl I thrashed? His name escapes my memory.”
Ives scratched his head and pondered dramatically. “Let me see. Not the viscount or the baron, but the last earl... Ah, I have it. It was the Earl of Whitmere, wasn’t it? Early one summer morning alongside the Serpentine.”
Whitmere rearranged his limbs on the chair, sucked in his cheeks, and looked anywhere except up at Gareth.
“Don’t let him threaten you, Whitmere,” Lance said. “He only did that because you tried to take liberties with his mistress. These ladies are only friends of a friend. He’ll never go through with it.”
Whitmere looked at Lance dolefully.
“As for you,” Gareth said to Lance. “If you are determined to set tongues wagging by attending the ball, you may dance one time with each lady, but only if you are shaved and sober.”
Lance laughed heartily. “You sound like a tutor. Doesn’t he sound like a tutor, Whitmere?”
“Or a vicar. Are you going to take this? By Zeus, I’ve half a mind to— Half a—” Both sides of his mind chose to seek solace in the brandy instead.
“I’m not going to fight him over country women I barely know and that he has chosen to protect, on some inexplicable impulse. You and I will find better things to do than go to that ball, anyway.”
Whitmere blinked. “How did it go from my escorting a rare gem and her fetching older sister to the ball, to my now not attending at all?”
Lance began to ponder aloud the better things to do. Ives caught Gareth’s eye, turned, and walked to the doors to the terrace. Gareth followed, pretending he did not hear Lance speculating on a prank that involved another duke’s carriage and a large amount of horse dung.
***
“What was that about?” Ives asked once they were in the garden. “While you did not sound too much like a tutor, you became very pointed very quickly.”
Gareth had no idea what that had been about. He only knew that hearing Lance and Whitmere discuss Eva made him see red. Even now it was all he could do not to punch something.
“I did not like the implications of all thatshe will dotalk. You know those two when they get together and Lance is in one of his moods. I have some responsibility for the ladies, after all.”
