Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)(47)

Bad enough on its own. But matters grew worse.

Even if the duke hadn’t thrown the punch, it was clear the man had not stood idly by. There was a challenge. A duel, in this day and age. Pistols or swords, Ware had offered, and Ned had little experience with either weapon. Not that it mattered, because Ned couldn’t fight a man well in his sixties, and a peer of the realm.

The hostess’s attempts to calm the man had been to no avail; the point, Ware had apparently announced to the titillated hordes, was not to satisfy honor but to slay the bastard who’d touched his daughter.

“Oh, Blakely. Thank heavens.”

Gareth halted at the gasping words. They were the first anyone had dared speak to him all evening. Even through the stress and strain and tears that threatened to choke the speaker, he recognized her voice.

He turned to greet his sister.

Laura skidded to a halt in front of him. For one horrendously awkward moment, he thought she might actually throw herself into his arms. In public. With everyone watching. The flowers in her hair dangled on broken stems and her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy.

Unfortunately, she checked her impulse toward affection. Gareth drew himself up, straight and tall. It was just as well. He wouldn’t have wanted to comfort her in front of all these people, anyway.

“Where—” He didn’t even have time to start.

“Come with me. You have to come with me.” She was hoarse. Little pockets of interested silence formed around the two of them. Everyone managed to look not quite in their direction, heads cocked and ears open.

The spectacle clearly had not yet finished. Gareth had no desire to play out this scene for public consumption, knowing it would be repeated ad nauseam in every last London drawing room for the next weeks. He’d go to the devil before he heard his sister’s name on everyone’s lips.

As Laura turned to lead him away, Gareth realized his options were extremely limited. He was already on the devil’s doorstep.

Gareth followed his sister. The crowds parted for them, and the murmurs grew to a roar. They walked sedately, not touching. Not that it would have mattered if they’d linked arms and skipped the length of the hall, because all eyes were on them nonetheless. Once they entered a hallway, Gareth felt relief from the pressure of that attention almost immediately. No suffocating crowds. No watching eyes.

He need only deal with whatever madness Ned had managed to create. Laura paused before a door, squared her shoulders and opened it.

Inside, all the parties had congregated. This, then, was the room where the incident had taken place. A long table stretched end to end. The chairs were strewn about the room in a chaotic whirl, arranged for a madman’s tea party. Lady Kathleen huddled in one corner, her mother fluttering over her like a protective warbler. Ned’s own mother sat in the corner, watching Ned with dark, sad eyes. And there in the middle, straddling an upholstered chair, sat Ned. He slumped miserably, his arms folded against the back of his seat.

Next to him, the Duke of Ware towered. The man’s bald pate shone in the orange gaslight. He, too, was gesturing. And talking at—definitely at rather than to—Ned. At Gareth’s entrance, he curtailed his tirade.

“Blakely.” The older duke had clearly been waiting for this moment.

Gareth returned his nod. “Ware.”

Gareth walked closer. Ware stepped carefully around Ned to make room for them both. The careful dance reminded Gareth of two predators circling the same carcass, each uncertain whether to share the kill or fight for solitary rights.

“Your boy here—” Ware jerked his head in angry indication “—can’t explain himself worth a damn.”

“That’s hardly news to me. Nonetheless,” Gareth said, “I can’t allow you to kill him. His death would be a terrible inconvenience for me.”

Ware snorted. “If this is a sample of his behavior, his death couldn’t be so inconvenient as his life.”

Ned didn’t even wince at that blow. Undoubtedly he’d been showered with compliments in a similar vein ever since this scene had collapsed in on him.

And collapse it had. A man with half Gareth’s intelligence could easily make sense of everything that had taken place. Ned believed that Gareth was supposed to marry Lady Kathleen. And Gareth had been supposed to arrive half an hour earlier.

If it hadn’t been for Madame Esmerelda and her tea, Gareth, rather than Ned, might have been caught in this scrape.

“Ah,” Gareth said.

Ned buried his forehead deep into his arms.

The damned thing was Gareth couldn’t even work up a proper temper. He should have been angry. He should have been fuming at Ned’s machinations.

What he felt instead was a terrible sympathy for the boy folded into that chair. What Ned had done was wrong. But Gareth understood what drove that impulse. It had been pride, a desire to be right at all costs, and that damned, trusting loyalty.

It was the same impulse that had driven Ned to offer Lady Kathleen the elephant, that had pushed the boy to his feet, clapping and shouting, after Gareth finished that terrible song. Ned had somehow convinced himself this was the right thing to do.

“Blakely.” Ned’s voice was obscured by so much superfine sleeve. “It wasn’t supposed to be me here. It was supposed to be you.”

“What?” Ware purpled, and grabbed the back of Ned’s coat. “You compromised my daughter, and you didn’t even want her for yourself?” He hissed the words. “If you ever tell her that, I’ll—”