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“I tell you,” Montfort was saying, “I saw you challenge Knighton last night and I heard him accept the challenge with my own ears! And why the dickens are you speaking in that awful accent, Templemore?”

“Because I’m not Templemore. I keep telling you. I’m his…”

“Brother,” Sebastian finished for him as he entered the drawing room. “Good morning, Montfort. What brings you here?”

Montfort had five of his gossiping cronies with him, and as soon as Griff came in behind Sebastian, he cried to them, “Aha! You see? There’s Templemore and Knighton now! I told you they fought a duel!”

Griff, bless his soul, didn’t miss a beat. He looked at Sebastian with a perfect expression of bewilderment. “What’s he talking about? You know anything about a duel?”

Sebastian shrugged. “No idea. I can’t imagine what possessed him to think it.”

Montfort scowled blackly. Casting his smirking friends a quelling glance, he growled, “Then why are the two of you coming in here shortly after dawn—”

“With my wife and my sister-in-law?” Griff finished for him. “Really, Montfort, do you think I’d allow my womenfolk at a duel? We’ve been at my house ever since we left Lady Brumley’s. Lord Templemore proposed to my wife’s sister last night, and we’ve been celebrating the engagement.”

Sliding his arm possessively about Juliet’s waist, Sebastian took up the tale, clearly eager to get the man out of his house so he could talk to his brother. “Then I invited them over here for some breakfast. I’d invite you to stay, too, old fellow, but this is…well, family. You understand.”

As Montfort began to turn an alarming shade of purple, his friends exchanged weary looks. One of them clapped his hand on the duke’s shoulder. “Come on, man, let’s go home—can’t you see you were mistaken?”

“I was not mistaken!” Montfort protested. “I know what I heard, damn it!”

“First it was all that back and forth nonsense about Lady Juliet eloping,” one of his friends grumbled as he began hauling Montfort toward the door, “then some wild tale about her being kidnapped by Templemore, and then this duel you invented and dragged us all out of bed to see—”

“It’s the truth! The truth, I tell you!” Montfort shouted as two of his friends grabbed each of his arms and carried him out. He was still shouting it as they dragged him out the front door.

As soon as he was gone, Rosalind grinned. “That was very entertaining. I don’t think anybody will listen to him much anymore.”

Juliet couldn’t stop laughing. “No, indeed,” she gasped out. “Sebastian, my love, you’re the most inventive man I’ve ever met.”

“Which doesn’t bode well for his character,” Griff put in.

“Here now, Knighton, you started the lie in the first place,” Sebastian protested.

Morgan spoke up from where he stood near the settee. “Would somebody like to tell me what’s going on?”

For the first time since she’d entered, Juliet had the chance to survey Morgan Pryce, the man who’d unwittingly set all the painful—and not so painful—events of the past two years in motion. It was astonishing how much he resembled Sebastian—same black eyes, same square chin, same seductive lips. If his hair hadn’t been several inches longer and his clothing not quite so rakish, she would’ve sworn he was his brother.

Until she looked more closely. Then she would have noticed the hint of worldliness in his face, and the faint but unmistakable cynicism to his smile. Sebastian had been lots of things in all the time she’d known him. Cynical wasn’t one of them. Morgan looked as if the world had chewed him up and spit him out one too many times.

Then he caught her staring, and gave an elaborate bow. “Mademoiselle. May I assume that you’re the lovely jeune fille who was harmed by my foolish brother?”

He had the strangest accent, not a foreign one exactly, but English tempered with other influences. Yet his French was perfect, at least to her untrained ears.

“Your assumption is almost correct,” Sebastian retorted, a slight edge to his voice. “Morgan, this is Lady Juliet, my fiancée. Juliet, this is my rapscallion of a brother.”

Coming forward, Morgan took her hand and pressed a kiss to it continental-style, his eyes twinkling up at her. “Enchanté, mademoiselle.”

She couldn’t help laughing, and Sebastian’s arm tightened about her waist. “That’s enough, you rascal,” Sebastian growled. “After all you’ve put us through, you don’t even deserve to speak to her.”

“Moi?” Morgan protested. “Mon frere, I’m not the one who kidnapped her or carried her into a den of smugglers. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking to save you, blast it all!” Sebastian said sourly. “Speaking of which, you shouldn’t have let Montfort and his friends see you just yet. The Navy Board will hear of it, and they’ll have your head before I can stop them. Unless you agree to turn over that Pirate Lord fellow to them.”

Morgan shrugged. “They’ll have to find somebody else for that. The Pirate Lord saved me from a boring existence on an island off the coast of Africa where Crouch’s seamen marooned me. Thanks to the Pirate Lord, who found me there, I was able to travel to the Cape Verdes and on to England. Besides, I understand he’s decided to retire from piracy on that very island.” Sebastian opened his mouth, and Morgan said in a steely tone, “And no, I won’t tell you where it is. I owe the man. I won’t repay him with betrayal.”

Juliet had to stifle her smile. He sounded very much like his brother.

“But the Navy Board—” Sebastian began.