George cleared his throat. “I was trying to when I inadvertently insulted her.”
“What did you say?”
“I said something was wrong with Thornwick because he wanted to marry her.”
“Fuck, George.”
That wasn’t what George wanted to hear.
Jack stared into the middle distance. “You’re lucky Lady Phoebe doesn’t carry a dirk. You’d be dead.”
A dirk? His Phoebe? The Duke of Dunmore must be thinking of his own savage Highlander woman.
Jack was silent for a long time before he spoke again.
“I’m not sure I can help you. Because I’ve never done what you’re about to do.”
“What am I about to do?”
“Win a woman’s heart.”
What? But Jack MacNaughton had been London’s greatest lothario for the last five years. His conquests were unmatched, even by the notorious Earl Drake. Thomas Drake had always satisfied himself with whores, but Jack had only gone after married women and there was nary an unscrupulous, attractive matron of thetonwhom he hadn’t bedded. George now remembered Jack had even bedded Horatia before her husband had died.
“Not a woman who mattered,” Jack amended.
“Yes,” George muttered. “She won’t see me or talk to me now. She won’t read my letter. She’s off to a house party in two days at his estate. They’re sure to set the wedding date soon.”
“Edmund is invited to that house party. I tried to warn him off since Thornwick is such a prick. But the poor man is always at loose ends. You’ll have to recruit him and go there together.”
“I can’t go.”
“Were you invited?”
“I’m sure I’ve been disinvited by now.”
“You have to go. House party. Perfect opportunity for Thornwick to get to know his future bride better. To compromise her.”
George’s fists tightened. Thornwick in Phoebe’s bed. Or Phoebe in Thornwick’s.
“Don’t have an apoplectic fit, George. Take a deep breath. You’ll go so you can prevent it. You and Edmund. Wait. Isn’t your sister friends with Lady Phoebe? Is she going?”
“Yes.”
“Talk to your sister. Get her on your side.”
“I don’t know if my sister will talk to me. She’s very angry about what I said, too. And we do rather clash.”
“I thought siblings were supposed to have each other’s backs. I don’t know myself, but surely that’s the point of brothers and sisters. Blood being thicker,et cetera.”
Blood might be thick, but he and Alice had never agreed on anything except their friendship with Phoebe. Would Alice help him now? She resented him, flouted his rules, laughed at his habits. Sometimes he felt the spats between them were as bitter as those that had governed his parents’ marriage. And she seemed all in favor of Thornwick.
But Jack seemed certain he had landed on the right course. “Talk to Alice. There’s your answer, George.”
George went home and waited for Alice to return. And waited. At midnight, George succumbed to exhaustion, physical and emotional. He fell into his bed and embraced oblivion, not even checking the oil reservoir in the lamp that burned through the night.
The next morning Wynn came to George when he was in his study, wretchedly trying to compose another letter to Phoebe, one that he might persuade Alice to deliver for him.
“My lord, you asked me to notify you when Miss Danforth returned. She has just come in and gone to her bedchamber.”
