“The duke is an old and dear friend of your father’s and newly widowed,” Lady Capheaton explained to her daughter. “Recently out of mourning, he has come to join our party with a particular desire to meet you.”
“You honor me too much, Your Grace,” Carline replied breathily, fluttering her lashes over modestly downcast eyes.
What the hell is the vixen playing at? Does she think to make me jealous? Ludovic discarded the notion as meritless, as he’d already expressed his intent to wed her. He stepped forward to put an end to the game and was met with the duke’s supercilious stare. Until that moment, Ludovic had watched the interaction between the duke and the Capheatons with a sense of detached amusement, but the haughty stare sent his hackles rising as if they were a pair of gamecocks being set-to for a match.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” Beauclerc lifted a penciled brow.
“DeVere,” he answered.
“The Viscount?” asked the duke.
“His heir,” Ludovic volunteered more defensively than he would have liked. He made a second effort to mark his claim. “The Lady Caroline and I have just returned from a most delightful little promenade.”
The penciled lines became ludicrous squiggles. “Have you, indeed?”
Casting Ludovic a reproachful look, Caroline blurted, “Lord DeVere refers to the Ruins of Palmyra. From a distance, one would surely believe it real. It is so life-like, it stirs the blood. Have you seen it, Your Grace?”
“I don’t believe I have,” the duke answered. “But since it is a while yet before the illuminations, perhaps you could show it to me?” He offered her his velvet-clad arm.
Caroline’s gaze flicked from Ludovic to the duke and back again. Her lips formed the slightest moue as if she weighed upon the scales of her mind the relative merits of a mere viscount-to-be against the certainty of a ducal cornet. DeVere realized she had found his side of the scale wanting when, with no more than an apologetic shrug, Caroline placed her dainty, white-begloved fingers upon the sleeve of the Duke of Beauclerc. Without even a final glance back at her erstwhile lover, Caroline and her duke departed.
Ludovic was incredulous. Although his first inclination was to wipe the duke’s smug expression from his bloated face, preferably with his fist, he realized the true rage he should have felt never surfaced. Certainly his pride was injured, but he would have expected to feel far more upon being so properly jilted. Right curious, that.
Chuckling at his dispassionate conclusion, Ludovic took up Beauclerc’s abandoned drink with an inward smile as another consoling thought came to mind. The burning question of Caroline’s capacity for fidelity no longer plagued him, but he would soon ensure that it plagued the good duke instead.
***
“Damme,” said Ned a few hours later in Ludovic’s crested carriage. “I’m stunned. Ludovic Lord DeVere, legendary lover, cast aside like some old shoe?”
“Lady Caroline and that old fop? I never would have believed it,” Annalee agreed.”It’s truly beyond comprehension. You were, by all appearances, the perfect couple.”
“Your naiveté astonishes me,” Ludovic said.
“I must say I regret to see your cynicism prove itself yet again,” Ned replied.
“Cynicism?” Ludovic laughed. “I am nothing if not a realist, dear Ned. In all fairness, do you honestly think that in Caroline’s stead, you would not also have grabbed for the golden goose? Damned if I wouldn’t have!” He smiled, a broad flash of even, white teeth. “But don’t fear I shall spend any tears over it, ol’ chum, especially when she consoled me in advance with such a magnificent parting gift.”
“What do you mean?” Annalee asked.
DeVere’s lips twitched. “Dear, sweet, innocent Annalee, I leave it to your devoted husband to illuminate you.”
Ned scowled. Annalee blushed. “So it’s truly over between you?” she asked.
“Truly, it never was,” DeVere said. “I never even made the formal proposal and would not have pursued her in the first place were it not for my damned Pater. Though he didn’t take to the shackles himself ‘til he’d turned the half century mark. If there’s aught that I can’t abide, it’s hypocrisy. The bloody devil rebuking sin is what that is!”
“Surely one can’t blame a man for wanting to ensure the continuation of his line,” Annalee remarked.
“It’s a damnable obsession,” DeVere said. “He’s bloody well fixated on his death, though he’s already managed to linger at its door far longer than is considered civil.”
“You really ought not to speak of your own father in such a way,” Annalee reproached.
“You might feel differently if ever you met the poxy, old bas—”
“He’s justifiably distraught, my dear,” Ned interjected with a gentle hand over his wife’s. “A gentleman needs to blow off steam in such circumstances as these. Why don’t I take you home?”
She arched a brow. “So you and DeVere can go back out and get thoroughly foxed?”
“Well, yes,” Ned confessed. “That’s generally how it’s done.”