The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)

But Miss Pursling was no longer there. She was already halfway across the room. She hadn’t apologized to him or made her excuses. She had simply left, dashing after her friend. The door closed on her moments later.

He’d been amazed that her posture, the expression on her face, had remained so smooth throughout their conversation. But she had been hiding from him, too. She’d gestured him to the chair that would allow him to talk with her while she could still keep one eye on her friend. He had thought she had looked away from him to feign shyness. Instead, she’d been watching Stevens.

Everything I do contains a double threat. That had been no braggadocio, there. She’d been fending off his attempts at conversation with half her attention, lecturing him on strategy, and pretending to be a shy lump for anyone who was watching. And while she’d done that, she’d also been tracking her friend’s escalating drama from across the room.

My God. His head hurt just thinking about all the threads she must have been keeping straight in her mind.

“Your Grace.”

Robert turned from his reverie to see a man beside him. It was George Stevens, standing with a grim look on his face and a disapproving set to his jaw. He’d wiped most of the punch off, but his cravat was still stained pink, and his forehead had a sheen to it that sent Robert’s own skin itching in sticky sympathy.

“Captain Stevens,” Robert said.

“If I might intrude a moment?”

Robert glanced once again at the door through which Miss Pursling had vanished. “Of course.”

Stevens gave him a stiff bow, and then just as stiffly took the seat that Miss Pursling had so recently vacated. “It is admirable,” he said, “in every way admirable, for a man in your position to condescend to speak to everyone deserving at a gathering such as this.” He rubbed his hands together. “But…ah, how do I say this?” He lowered his voice. “Not all women are equally deserving. And Miss Pursling is not what she seems.”

“Oh?” Robert was still too taken aback to do more than take this in. “In what way does the reality of Miss Pursling differ from her appearance?”

Stevens seemed to relax at that. “I have reason to believe she is not who she claims to be.”

“Reason? What reason?”

The other man blinked, as if unused to having such questions asked. “Well. I, uh, I talked to someone who was intimately familiar with her great-aunt. That woman had no knowledge of Miss Pursling’s existence.”

“Was intimately familiar, you say?” Robert kept his tone mild. “How long ago did this individual know her great-aunt?”

Stevens was beginning to squirm like a schoolboy caught out in a lie. “Technically, she knew her before she moved to Leicester. That is to say—”

“Techinically?” Robert raised an eyebrow. “Forgive me if I do not know the families in the area as well as you do. But did not Miss Pursling’s great-aunt move to the area fifty years ago?”

“Yes.” Stevens hunkered down in his seat. “But she knew the whole family, da—ah, dash it.” Stevens stopped, took a deep breath. “She would have known if the young Miss Elvira Pursling had married—the woman who is purported to be Miss Wilhelmina’s mother. People talk, Your Grace, particularly about happy events. But there is no such record. I have reason to believe that Miss Pursling may not be legitimate.”

It might be true. If so, it would explain her insistence that she didn’t want anyone looking into her past. A little different, indeed.

If there were any truth to Stevens’s claim at all, Robert could settle this for good. One little threat, when she’d already put blackmail in play…

But no. He was a gentleman and one of the most powerful men in the country. Powerful men who used their prerogatives to hurt women—they were scum.

Robert let his expression freeze to ice. He didn’t glower. He simply watched the other man, unblinking, until the captain of the militia dropped his gaze and winced.

“Stevens,” Robert said, not bothering with the honorific, “is there perhaps something you have heard about me that made you think I would want to hear such aspersions?”

“But, Your Grace. Miss Pursling is an unknown to you. I only wished—”

“You thought I would be amenable to baseless gossip simply because it was not aimed at someone I knew?”

Stevens’s jaw worked. “I only meant—”

“I’m done with your speculation. If I hear you’ve indulged it any further, I’ll see that Leicester receives another captain of the militia.”

Stevens turned white. “You couldn’t.”

But the man no doubt knew all too well that Robert could. Not directly, no, but he only needed to drop a word in the right ear… Robert wouldn’t use that influence without good reason, and given what he expected to find here, he needed to conserve that power as best as he could. Still, threats were free.

The man bowed his head. “Forgive me, Your Grace. The woman is nothing. I erred. I never thought you would take an interest in one so much beneath you.”