‘I have heirs. Two of them.’ This was getting too close to the knuckle. Suddenly he didn’t want to confront this, not yet and not now with Ralph slumped in the chair opposite looking tired and depressed and with his own head aching and apparently incapable of rational thought.
‘Two heirs presumptive, not an heir apparent,’ Ralph said. He took a deep swallow of the spirit then slammed down the glass, suddenly angry. ‘I don’t want your bloody title and you have years to get an heir in.’ Had there been an emphasis on the I? ‘Marry Sophie Wilmott, why don’t you? Raise a brood of sons, trail about in ermine and a coronet. The sooner the better. I am sick of living in the shadow of your bloody dukedom, of it being all my father ever thinks about.’
He was on his feet and out of the door before Cal could stand. There was the sound of voices in the hall, then the front door closing.
Jared came in without troubling to knock. ‘What in Hades was that about? And what has happened to you now?’ He clenched his fist and tapped it against the side of his own chin.
‘My dear cousin landed me a particularly fine right hook for interesting myself in the lady he has been courting. Or not courting. He doesn’t seem too sure which it is. However, he passed up a perfect opportunity to beat my brains out and make it look like an accident and has informed me that I should marry and sire an heir because he is, and I quote, sick of living in the shadow of my bloody dukedom.’
‘How come you let him flatten you?’ Jared took another glass and a finger of brandy, took the seat Ralph had used and rolled the glass between his long, swordsman’s fingers while he looked over the rim at Cal, dark gaze assessing.
‘He took me by surprise. And yes, that should not have happened and yes, I will take more care with him in future. But it at least proved that he isn’t thinking of leaping on any opportunity to finish me off. He thought he had stunned me. He could have thumped my skull onto any sharp surface in this room and made it look like the chance result of a fair fight over a lady, a tragic accident. He wasn’t to know I had a knife drawn on him that he could not see.’
‘Or he is slower on the uptake than either of us and can’t grasp an opportunity when it’s under his nose,’ Jared mused. ‘Tell me about the lady.’
‘Bugger off,’ Cal said amiably. Jared grinned and they sat savouring their drinks in silence. There was something about the way that his friend lounged there that made him uneasy, but he couldn’t put a finger on it until the other man turned sideways, propped his elbow casually on the edge of the desk and crossed his legs at the ankles with a sigh of contentment.
‘What was the matter with him?’ Cal wondered aloud. Jared cocked one brow in question. ‘My cousin. Yes, he was in a state over Soph – over the woman. Yes, he had thumped me and then found himself being, apparently, forgiven. Before I left England he was the big brother, the dominant one. Now he ends up on the visitor’s side of the desk with a glass of my best brandy, having an amiable conversation, and yet he was as uneasy as a thieving servant hauled in here and trying to lie his way out of trouble. Look at you – sitting in the same place, doing the same thing, and you are as relaxed as an old pair of kid gloves.’ Although Jared usually was relaxed, up to the point when he became a lethal predator.
‘He is worried about something,’ Jared mused. ‘Something beyond a rivalry over a woman. The only question is whether he is worried for himself, or for his father, or for the pair of them.’ When Cal simply grunted the other man lounged to his feet, finished the brandy in one swallow and stood there looking down at him.
‘Now what? I’ve seen butchers eyeing a side of beef with less intent.’
‘Come upstairs, let me check your head and your shoulder. I’d feel happier if you had two functioning arms and one of them your sword arm. An absence of concussion might be a good idea as well.’
‘In a while.’ Jared was right. He had neglected that shoulder and he had almost let himself be knocked out when he needed all the brain and all the muscle he could muster. It was not like him to ignore his fitness, or to let himself be distracted. Life was too dangerous for either. But first he needed to work out why his focus was so off. It wasn’t hard to find the answer, not when he was honest with himself. Sophie Wilmott.
‘Mr Thorne!’ Bother the man. Lady Pettigrew’s masquerade ball was a noisy, and to be frank, sweaty, crush. People shrieked to be heard above the babble of conversation, the musicians struggled even to be noticed and the windows were flung wide onto the humid summer air, giving the costumed, crowded, revellers as much relief as hot wet towels applied to their perspiring faces. It was, of course, a huge success, a magnificent squeeze destined to be written up at length in the Society columns of tomorrow’s Morning Post.