The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)(17)

He had almost pointed her out to Oliver as a wit; when they sat down to dine, she was seated just down the table from his brother. She engaged Oliver in no conversation. She didn’t even raise her eyes from her dinner plate, except to glance occasionally at the level of watered wine in her glass. She did murmur something to Oliver once—but as he responded by passing her the saltcellar, Robert suspected it was entirely innocuous.

This woman had threatened to prove him responsible for the handbills? Unbelievable.

Oliver directed a few inquiries at her over the course of the meal. In response, she mumbled something unintelligible in the direction of her meat. Gradually, his brother gave up his attempts at conversation.

All trace of the woman he had seen had vanished, leaving behind a shadow with perfect posture and no conversation. She was right. Everyone would wonder if he flirted with her. He wouldn’t even know how to manage it. One couldn’t flirt with a lump.

Still, after the gentlemen rejoined the ladies, he did his duty—pausing to talk to everyone present, learning their names, asking after their health. He would have done it no matter what—no point being a duke if you couldn’t use your station to make people smile—but this time he had an added incentive. He made his circuitous way about the room, winding inevitably to her. She was seated on a chair at the side of the room, gazing out at the other speakers. If she looked at any particular person overlong, he couldn’t detect it.

“Miss Pursling. How good to see you again.”

She looked up, but not at him. Instead, she looked just beyond his shoulder. “Your Grace,” she said.

Her voice was quiet, but it was still as he remembered it, a low, husky velvet. At least he hadn’t imagined that.

“May I sit next to you for a spell?”

She still didn’t look at him. She glanced down at the carpet and then, with a twitch of her hand, indicated a chair to her side. Robert lowered himself into it and waited for her to speak.

After a full minute ticked by in silence, Robert realized she wasn’t going to say anything.

He leaned back in the chair. “I see how it’s going to be. Leave all the work of moving the conversation along to Robert—he’s a duke, so he must be good at it.”

“Oh, no.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “I wouldn’t assume you had any particular talent in that direction.”

It was the first hint that she’d given that there was anything to her but an excess of shyness. He’d begun to actually doubt his own memory. Surely this woman hadn’t come to his house and attempted blackmail. Had she?

“Tell me,” he persisted, “how does one get Minnie from Wilhelmina? Minnie makes me think of miniature—and nothing about you seems diminutive.”

She examined her gloves closely. “It comes from the third syllable, Your Grace.”

Back to being a cipher once more. Had he imagined the conversation? Maybe he was going mad.

“What’s wrong with the first syllable?” he tried. “Or the second?”

She glanced up. For the first time all evening, she looked in his eyes. He would have sworn there would have to be some kind of spark in her—some indication of the intelligence that had blazed at their last meeting. But if eyes were windows to the soul, hers had been bricked up to avoid taxation. He could see nothing in them at all.

“Surely,” she said pleasantly, “you can ascertain the problems for yourself. Willy wouldn’t do. It’s too masculine.”

“There is that,” he murmured.

“As for the second syllable…” She looked over his shoulder again, avoiding his gaze. Her eyes were a mask, but her mouth twitched once more. “Just think of it, Your Grace. What am I to say? ‘My name is Wilhelmina Pursling, but you can call me Hell.’”

He laughed, almost in sheer amazement. She still looked like a lump, shyly twiddling her fingers, refusing to meet his eyes. But there was that voice. Her voice made him think of woodsmoke on an autumn evening, of silks laid out atop lush bedding. Of her hair, rid of those confining pins and spread over a pillow, the honey-colored ends spilling over her br**sts.

He swallowed and cleared his throat. “This isn’t what I expected when you said you’d go to war with me.”

“Let me guess.” She fingered her glove carefully, and he noticed that she was worrying at a tiny hole in the tip. “You thought I would simper if you smiled at me. You supposed that when I said I would prove what you were doing to everyone, that I planned to engage in a bumbling, graceless investigation into your surface activities.”

“I—no. Of course not.” But Robert felt his cheeks heat. Because that was precisely what he had thought.

She bit her lip, the picture of shyness. But her words were the opposite of shy. “Now,” she whispered, “you’re surprised to find that I overmatch you.”

“I am?” he echoed, looking at her. “You do?”

Her eyes were fixed over his shoulder, no hint in her posture of what she said so quietly.

“Of course I overmatch you,” she said. She spoke as if the matter were beyond question. “You’re a well-educated duke—one of the most powerful men in England. Your staff likely numbers in the hundreds across your many estates. If needed, you could draw on resources in the tens of thousands of pounds.”