Wicked Surrender (Regency Sinners)(18)
At the same time, he wondered what the Monroes’ connection was to Bella. Admittedly, the inn was a popular one, and Mr. Rogers had claimed last night its guest bedchambers were filled almost to capacity. But surely it was more than a coincidence that Bella should be acquainted with two of those guests. Well enough to be sitting down to breakfast with them, at least.
“It is a convoluted connection, to be sure,” Bella answered the other woman lightly. “But as the only two members of our family now left alive, it is one that Dante and I have decided to make more of.”
Was Dante the only one to pick up on what sounded like a double entendre? Unless he was the one imagining that double entendre. He and Bella had not exactly gone to sleep last night as the lovers they had just become.
“My Aunt Agatha, the dowager duchess, has recently died,” he informed the other couple evenly. “In fact, we are on our way to Huntley Park now to take care of the funeral arrangements.”
“I thought your principal estate was in Huntingdonshire?” The tall Scot frowned.
“It is.” Dante offered nothing further as he met the other man’s gaze, knowing that if he and Bella had traveled from London, then they were currently going in the opposite direction to Huntingdonshire.
“We were in Devon visiting friends when we received the news of the dowager’s death.” Bella smoothly stepped in to offer an explanation.
Lady Monroe glanced up at her husband. “Jamie and I have just spent a week in Hampshire with my family and are now on our way back to Scotland for the summer.”
Bella released Dante’s arm to resume her seat at the breakfast table. “Do come and sit down and stop making the room untidy, Dante,” she instructed lightly before continuing her conversation with the other woman. “Scotland is a place I have never visited. Is it as beautiful as people say it is?”
Dante hesitated only slightly before stepping forward to pull out the chair at the table beside Bella’s and sitting down. He nodded acceptance of the cup of tea the young maid offered to pour for him as the two women continued their conversation about Scotland.
All the time, Dante was aware of Monroe’s gaze fixed upon him as the other man now sat silently beside his wife.
Dante knew very little about the red-haired Scot, but Monroe’s presence at the inn, along with Scotland’s historical ties with France, raised more than a few questions in Dante’s mind.
Mr. Rogers would possibly be able to answer any questions about the Monroes. Whatever their reason for being here at this particular time, Dante felt that the Monroes were in need of further investigation, which would necessitate he acquire the assistance of one of Rogers’s grooms to relay a message back to Nik in London.
If it should transpire the other couple had arrived here after Bella and Dante, then the other couple could have followed the two of them here in order to meet up with Bella. It would be a way of giving or receiving information.
Meeting up with the other couple might also be the reason Bella had left their bedchamber so stealthily this morning.
Yet more questions for Bella to answer once they reached Dante’s hunting lodge in Hampshire.
No doubt, after last night, she would have a few questions of her own she wished to ask him.
“You were exceedingly rude to the Sir James and Lady Monroe,” Bella informed him impatiently a short time later, the two of them seated in his carriage, having now resumed their journey.
Dante raised his brows. “I barely spoke to them.”
“My point exactly.”
He gave an unconcerned shrug. “I did not care for the way Monroe looked at me.”
“The way he looked at you?” Bella repeated with a frown.
H nodded abruptly. “As if he knew damn well the two of us had shared a bedchamber last night.”
A blush appeared on her cheeks. “Which we had.”
“That is for us to know and for others to keep their opinions to themselves. Even silent ones.”
Bella eyed him pityingly. “Anyone with half a brain would have been able to see through my ramblings of the two of us being related.”
“Then why bother?”
“Someone had to.”
“Why?” He shrugged. “I owe the Monroes no explanation as to my movements or the reason for them.”
“Are you deliberately trying to irritate me?”
His lips twitched. “I was not aware I needed to try in order to do that.”
“No. Well. You do not.” She smoothed the skirt of her traveling gown, a deep russet affair that perfectly suited her olive complexion and black hair. “But you might have at least attempted to act as if I was not talking nonsense.”
“What the Monroes think of me, of us, is of absolutely no importance to me,” he dismissed in a bored voice.
Bella’s cheeks became flushed. “Some of us do not have the luxury of a dukedom to protect us from our sins.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed. “And what sins have you committed?”
Bella did not care for the way Dante was now looking at her. Nor did she like his aloofness this morning. Wearing a black superfine—in deference to the dowager’s death, perhaps—a dark gray waistcoat and pantaloons, and his linen snowy white, he looked every inch the aristocratic Duke of Huntley rather than the dominating lover who had demanded her responses last night.