Page 26
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” Mathias said, nodding politely at the men sitting with Kilbourne, Cliff Preston and Collin Chambers, both younger sons of peers. Also, notorious wastrels.
They returned his nod, boredom etched across their placid features.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Mathias said with a dip of his chin. “I have an engagement.”
“Come now, no need to be reticent.” Kilbourne took a hefty swig of whisky. “By all reports, you carried Nicolette from Hyde Park, and the next day visited her home.”
He dared to call her Nicolette after his abominable behavior?
Nicolette with her strength of character? Her gumption and daring? Her loyalty and wit?
Kilbourne’s jaded companions perked up at that tidbit.
Lady Darumple had been busy, hadn’t the chinwag?
One day, Mathias was going to start an unfathomable rumor within hearing of the woman, a tale so preposterous, only an idiot would believe it. And then he’d sit back and see how swiftly it spread amongst the upper ten thousand.
Perhaps he’d hint Lady Darumple was really a man.
That ought to sort the sensible from the gossipmongers.
“Carried her, eh?” Preston said, suggestively before removing his handkerchief from his coat pocket and honking into the cloth with the gusto of a mating gander. “That had to be a tempting armful.”
“She’s a pretty little partridge, I’ll grant you,” Chambers agreed, lifting his glass. “But as ill-disposed as an angry scorpion.”
Running his square forefinger around the rim of the glass, Kilbourne slouched back in his chair. “And I saw you at the theater together myself last week.”
Would he not let the matter go?
A trace of petulance—or was it envy?—tinged his voice as he stared into his drink. “And it’s been said you’ve been seen in each other’s company several more times, as well. I’m surprised you have the time given your various business enterprises.”
He uttered the word with repugnance, as if he chewed rabbit droppings.
Mathias merely skewed a brow, fully accustomed to London Society looking down their aristocratic noses at anyone who actually worked for a living. What bothered him more was why Kilbourne, the rotter, believed he had the right to monitor who Nicolette chose to socialize with.
That assuredly begged an explanation.
“I’d say to anyone’s mind, such regular encounters most definitely meet the parameters of courtship,” Kilbourne declared, a peeved scowl knitting his eyebrows.
Was he jealous?
Mathias appraised Kilbourne carefully, noting the petulant slant to his weak mouth and the envious glint in his red-rimmed eyes.
Quite possibly.
Ah, that explained much.
The bugger didn’t want Nicolette, but he didn’t want anyone else to have her either. Despicable cockscum.
Mathias finished donning his other glove before answering in a frosty tone, “If you think I’m discussing Miss Twistleton with you, Kilbourne, you’re mistaken.”
“I suppose her mother and brother are pressing her to marry. It has been over two years,” Kilbourne mused, emptying his glass, and plunking it onto the table with a loud bang. “Didn’t think she’d ever get over me,” he said with a smug sideways grin.
What an arrogant bastard.
Kilbourne wasn’t fit to wipe Nicolette’s feet on.
Mathias’s blood surged, but he scratched the side of his nose rather than satisfy his baser instincts and plant Kilbourne the facer he deserved.
