The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)(16)
His brother glanced over at that—a swift look out of the corner of his eye, one that had rather too much pity in it. Robert waved him away.
“Don’t,” he muttered brusquely. “She’s coming here.”
Clermont, she had written. I will be taking rooms in Leicester’s Three Crowns Hotel for a space of time. As I believe you are in the vicinity, we shall dine together on the nineteenth of November.
“She didn’t say why, and I can’t think what would draw her.” Robert carefully avoided looking at his brother. “If family is a matter of choice, she chose everyone other than me a long time ago. Why she’d bother with me now, when she’s never noticed me in the past…”
“Maybe,” Oliver said, “maybe she wants…”
“She doesn’t want,” Robert snapped. “She never does.”
Oliver and Robert had known each other more than half their lives. They’d attended Eton together, followed by Cambridge. During that time, Oliver had been showered with constant letters from his family. He couldn’t have helped but notice that Robert received almost no correspondence from his parents.
Oliver’s eyes moved up and to the right, as if he were choosing his next words carefully. “So what are you going to do?”
“I already wrote back and told her I’d be gone on that date—that I’d promised to accompany Sebastian up.”
“Ah,” Oliver said blankly.
“And then I wrote to Sebastian and begged him to come,” Robert admitted. “Whatever she wants can’t be of much importance. Besides, the three of us haven’t been in one spot together for almost a year. If the Brothers Sinister in all our villainy isn’t enough to drive her away…”
Oliver smiled. “They only called us that at Eton because we’re all left-handed. I’m practically respectable these days. You’re a duke. And Sebastian is…” He frowned. “Well thought of, among intelligent people. Some of them.”
Robert laughed. “A valiant attempt, but it won’t wash. My mother thinks that your existence is a personal insult. She is certain that Sebastian is an apostate—and ever since he flirted with her last year, a lecher.”
Oliver sputtered. “He what?”
“I asked him to save me at a gathering. He did.” Robert shook his head. “His way.”
Oliver winced.
“He didn’t mean anything by it,” Robert said. “But it all comes down to the same thing. If she insists on seeing me despite the change in date and the presence of two people she hates, the situation is dire.”
At one time, Robert might have lost himself in a daydream, one in which his mother fled to his side in tears, desperate for his help. He’d save her through a combination of wit and good sense. And she would tearfully apologize for having avoided him.
In his youth, when he’d imagined her heartfelt regrets, he’d always told her not to cry.
“Don’t worry,” he’d imagined himself saying. “We have years left ahead of us.”
He hadn’t run out of time, but hopes could be dashed only so many times before one gave up out of weariness. It had been more than a decade since he let himself dream of a world in which his mother gave a single solitary damn about him, and he wasn’t about to start up again now. As unlikely as it seemed, she probably had business in Leicester—business that would take her away before he arrived. They’d both be happier if they didn’t try.
“And what will you do,” Oliver said, “if the situation is dire?”
Robert shook his head. “I’ll do what I’ve always done. Whatever I must, Oliver. Whatever I must.”
THE QUESTION OF WHAT TO DO ABOUT MISS PURSLING naturally waited until Robert saw her again. That happened three days later, at the Charingford residence where Robert and Oliver had been invited for dinner.
He’d thought about her in those intervening days, of course. Something about her caught his fancy. Her quick wit, her intrepid style—they appealed to him. He woke one night from a dream in which she was gratifyingly brazen.
But nighttime fantasies rarely translated into reality. He doubted that she intended to bring him pleasure of any sort. In reality, he suspected that he was about to be subjected to a barrage of amateur sleuthing. Bad disguises, ham-handed questions, attempts to go through his rubbish in search of clues… Miss Pursling was undoubtedly the sort of hotheaded young lady who would throw herself into the chase with abandon.
So he wasn’t surprised to see her at the dinner. She’d already made herself comfortable when he arrived, but it was only a matter of time until she sought him out. He watched her out of the corner of his eye before they sat down to the meal, waiting for her to listen in on his conversation.
Instead, she ignored him.
She ignored him so well that just before they were called in for the meal, he found himself angling to overhear her discussion with three other young ladies. He was sure that she’d be asking about him.
She wasn’t.
She scarcely spoke at all. And when she did, her voice was so quiet that he had to strain to overhear her words.
He remembered a sensual lilt to her speech, a martial light that had brightened her features, rendering her pretty. Now, there was no hint of that.
She wore a high-necked gown of stiff brown, adorned only with a plain, military braid along her cuffs and neckline. Her spectacles must have been hidden away in the plain bag she wore at her wrist. She kept her distance from him, and she didn’t say anything clever. She scarcely said anything at all.