Lord Sebastian's Secret (The Duke's Sons #3)(25)
“Which brother was that?” asked Sebastian.
“Robert.”
Robert was certainly easy to meet in town. He was invited everywhere.
“He’s said to be a leader of fashion,” the visitor told Georgina, as if she didn’t know this very well from her own stay in the metropolis. “I couldn’t really see it myself. Rather puffed up with his own consequence, though.” He offered Georgina a conspiratorial glance. It was not returned.
This was going too far. Sebastian was a tolerant sort, and he sympathized with a man who admired Georgina. How could you not? But he didn’t allow anyone to belittle his brothers in his hearing. He fixed Charles Kenton with a gaze his family jokingly called “the duke’s doom.” It was a look they’d all learned from observing their father in situations that required him to depress odious pretensions, wither malicious gossips, or ward off irritating toadies. Sebastian deployed the half-lowered eyelids, slightly raised brows, implacable set of lips, and stretching silence. As always, the expression did its job. Kenton coughed. “That is,” he began, and stopped. He took a step backward.
Sebastian stood fast. The three of them formed a noiseless pool within a ring of chatter.
“Er, think my sister wants me,” muttered Charles Kenton finally. He hurried across the room to join the young ladies.
“Your father’s freezing stare,” Georgina said.
Of course she’d made the connection. She was clever as they came. It would have been her most striking quality, if not for more…physical charms. Sebastian nearly reached for her as he matched her smile. “I’m not the best at it,” he said. He and his brothers had staged staring contests. “Robert is. If he’d been here to hear that fellow…” Sebastian shook his head. “Nathaniel can beat him out if he really tries, but mostly he doesn’t. Randolph tends to add flourishes, and he’s more likely to be looking for the story behind the affront.” However, Sebastian had seen him annihilate a fellow who’d been unkind to a little girl in prime style.
“What about James and Alan?” Georgina asked.
“I expect they remember it. Of course, I’ve hardly seen James since he joined the navy.” Unable to resist, he took her hand. “Georgina, I’m…”
She gazed up at him with what looked like longing, but to Sebastian’s intense frustration, Fergus appeared in the archway right then and nodded to Georgina’s mother.
“Shall we go in to dinner?” the latter said, and led the way to the dining room. As she took no one’s arm, the rest of the group merely followed her en masse. There was no further opportunity for talk.
Sebastian found himself seated between Sarah and Eliza Kenton at the table, while his wishful rival visibly gloated at being placed between Georgina and Emma on the other side.
With a blithe disregard for protocol, their hostess had seated the baron’s son and his wife on her right and left. Clearly, she intended to continue their conversation and etiquette be damned. She had put the baroness and Lady Robert on either side of her husband, and then dropped the baron by Lady Kenton and Sir Robert by the baroness. The men looked disgruntled but resigned at this eccentric placement, slightly brightened by the presence of a young lady in the next chair.
As the baron engaged Sarah in conversation, Sebastian turned to Eliza and smiled. The girl—barely out of the schoolroom, he estimated—flushed crimson and looked down at her plate. Shy, Sebastian thought, and not accustomed to society. Suppressing a sigh, and a forlorn wish that Georgina was beside him, he set himself to draw Eliza out.
It was heavy going at first. Questions designed to discover Eliza’s interests were met by monosyllables or mere head shakes. He managed to learn that Eliza and her sister were to make a joint come-out next season, but she made no effort to pick up on his conversational gambits. Clearly, he scared her, Sebastian thought. He knew only one answer to that.
He’d noticed that it was difficult to be frightened of someone who confessed to some foolishness. He turned the subject to London. “The first time I was in town, I was thrown from my horse right in the middle of Rotten Row,” he told her. “Just when all the most fashionable people were out riding.” He didn’t mention that he’d been only ten years old at the time.
His dinner partner gave him a sidelong glance. “You were not.”
“I assure you I was.” And the fall had been quite humiliating for an aspiring cavalryman. He’d gotten no sympathy from his parents. They’d warned him not to take a mount like Blaze into the throng of the park. “The town beaus had to pull up pretty sharp to keep from trampling me into the dust.”
Eliza finally met his eyes. “I’ve started having wretched dreams about London,” she confided. “I’m at a ball in a ragged old gown. Or I trip and fall on my face in front of the queen at my presentation. And everyone laughs and points at me.”
“They dashed well pointed at me,” he replied.
She giggled.
“And then they forgot all about it in a few days,” he assured her. “Another bit of gossip always comes along.” Sebastian happened to glance across the table. He encountered Georgina’s laughing eyes, and his heart skipped a beat at the warmth he saw there. It was like suddenly stepping from shade into brilliant sunshine. At her side, Charles Kenton glowered at him.