Fiona was about to turn tail and head to her rooms—Ed could answer any questions his siblings had—when William picked up a pool cue and tossed it in her direction. By some holy miracle, she caught it with her uninjured hand.
“Here, take this,” he said. “Edward is out, and I have no one to play with.”
“Ye cannae play with yer sister?” She couldn’t keep the arch tone from her voice.
He screwed his face up, as if the thought were sour. “Girls don’t play billiards,” he said, as though Fiona was daft not to know it. “That’s why we have the piano in here. Wilde moved it so that we could be together while we played.”
Edward’s consideration for his sister’s feelings tugged at her insides two ways—it was touching, that the Wildeforde siblings chose to spend their time together. As an only child, Fiona spent her evenings alone. But moving the piano presupposed that as a female, his sister couldn’t play billiards. When really, it was hitting a ball with a stick. The game was just physics and geometry. How hard could it be?
“I have nae played in a while,” she said. “Remind me of the objective?”
“Hit that ball”—he pointed to a white ball at one end of the table—“with this cue stick, so that it hits both the red and other white ball.”
Fiona quickly assessed the situation. She’d have to hit the ball at twenty degrees. She bent over the table, pulled the cue stick backward across her bandaged thumb, took a deep breath, and—
“What on earth?”
Her cue stick hit the white ball at the wrong angle, sending it off to the side, well away from her target. William snorted and his sister dissolved into giggles.
Fiona turned to face Edward. His lips were pressed tight against each other, his gaze disapproving. The duke was back. How disappointing.
“That was hardly sporting, Your Grace,” she said. “I very nearly had that.”
“You have an injured wrist. You shouldn’t be aggravating it.”
She was about to protest his high-handedness when William stepped in. “I think Finley can make his own decisions. He’s a grown man, after all.”
Edward gave her alook. But rather than correcting his brother, he addressed her. “I see you’ve met the family.”
It cut a little, the displeasure in his tone, as though by meeting his siblings she’d delivered some kind of insult or threat. Perhaps she was to stay quiet and hidden. A secret, just like she used to be.
Ha. Good luck with that.
She settled her hip against the billiards table, presenting an appearance of comfort that she didn’t quite feel. “Aye, we’re becoming quite well acquainted. Does that concern ye, Your Grace? Are ye worried about the scandalous stories we might exchange?”
Edward’s lips thinned further.
“There are no scandalous stories,” William huffed as he lined up his ball and took a shot. “Wilde is dreadfully dull. He’s not deserving of his moniker.”
Charlotte-Rose gave her brother a scowl. “William, that’s not fair. Ned’s not dull. He’s simply interesting in a perfectly respectable way.”
William snorted.
“If you’re done talking about me as though I’m not in the room…”
He was getting annoyed. Good. “I don’t ken that yer brother isthatrespectable,” she said, delighting in the way Edward’s eyes widened as though he thought she’d reveal their affair. “Did he tell ye about the time he broke into Mrs. Duggan’s bakery in Abingdale?”
Discordant notes sounded as Charlotte’s hand dropped to the piano in surprise. William sent a ball careening into the wrong corner of the table.
“Fi…nn.” Edward’s voice carried a thread of warning.
“Or the time he opened the gates to Farmer Murdoch’s paddock so the sheep would get loose an’ block the road to London?” At the time, he’d suggested it as a lark. Now Fi didn’t know if it was perhaps his way of prolonging their affair. He had, after all, ended it the moment he returned to the capital.
“Finley, that’s enough.”
Charlotte didn’t agree. “Finley, you are a treasure,” she said. “Tell me why we haven’t met before.”
“You’re not often in Abingdale, my lady.”
