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The vixen actually pinched him.

“My name is not Aubrie.”

A chuckle throttled up his throat.

He swept his gaze across the table.

Georgine Thackerly, another of Aubriella’s good friends, watched him, three neat lines furrowing her forehead. Her astute gaze traveled back and forth between him and Aubriella before, with a small indefinable smile, she inclined her head to listen to something Robyn Fitzlloyd said.

Jack shifted his attention back to Aubriella.

That had been the case more and more this past year or so.

Whenever she was near, he couldn’t seem to pull his focus away. Maybe it was because he felt sorry for her. She’d wanted to become a physician or a surgeon, but women were forbidden in the profession.

She was practically invisible to her parents, and with diamond-of-the-first-water sisters who always drew the lion’s share of attention, she’d resigned herself to spinsterhood and studying her science specimens.

What a colossal waste of womanhood and wit.

Head tilted, Aubriella listened to Mitchel Danforth ramble on. At least she pretended to listen. From the faraway look in her eyes, her thoughts were elsewhere.

Jack couldn’t fault her for her inattentiveness.

Danforth, the long-winded sot, could blather on for ages without saying a dashed thing remotely intelligent or interesting. Add his boasting and self-important prattling to the one-sided conversation, and even the staunchest adherer to decorum’s mind would’ve wandered.

Why had the Penfords invited that rotter to Emmet’s birthday celebration?

Jack glanced up and down both sides of the table.

Likely to even out the males and females.

Heaven forbid that there be one man or one woman too many.

The stars might fall from the sky, or the tides cease to turn.

In all, fourteen people sat at the table.

The Penfords, their eldest daughter Lenora and her husband, Stephen Langford, accounted for seven. The Danforths, Georgine Thackerly, and Jack made eleven. Friends of Jack’s and Emmet’s, Shelby Tellinger and his cousins Robyn and Matilda Fitzlloyd, completed the guests.

How often had these same people, sans Mitchel Danforth, gathered over the years?

Too many to count, and in truth, they were more like family than Jack’s kin, except for his younger brother, who couldn’t attend tonight because Duncan was away on business.

Aubriella lifted her attention from the fish Danforth had unceremoniously plopped upon her plate moments before and caught Jack staring at her. Instead of averting his gaze, he winked, and her hazel-green eyes widened the merest bit before she presented her profile again.

Sighing inwardly at the polite coolness she generally directed toward him, Jack leveled Danforth a contemplative glance.

The man was an ignorant buffoon.

Though acceptable for a gentleman to serve the ladies nearest him, said gentleman might inquire whether the lady desired fish. Anyone who knew Aubriella at all knew she didn’t eat fish.

It gave her hives.

So did strawberries.

Having known her since she was a curious, tousle-haired nine-year-old with eyes too large for her thin face, Jack knew those and a hundred other inconsequential details about her.

Danforth’s fawning attention raised Jack’s hackles.