He nodded. “Yes.”
She pursed her lips. “That is all you have to say? Yes?”
He turned partially toward her. “Is there something more you think I should say, Mrs. Montgomery?”
She threw up her hands. “Rhys is supposed to be one of your best friends—”
“He is my best friend,” he interrupted softly.
She ignored him and continued on as if he hadn’t spoken. “—and yet you address his situation as though you are commenting on the weather or the state of the roads. But then what else is there to expect? You do not seem to have emotions, so why would you show them?”
The emotion she claimed he didn’t feel rose up inside of him, but he did as he always did, always had, and shoved it down deeper, where it would not control his words or actions. “You think that me moaning about his troubles, gnashing my teeth and wailing in his parlor, will help my friend? I think you’re too intelligent a person to truly believe that. You only say it to get a rise out of me, as is your sport.”
They stared at each other a moment, too long a moment, and finally she folded her arms, huffed out a breath and broke the eye contact. “Of course it isn’t my sport. That implies I think of you, and I assure you that I do not.”
“Of course not,” he said. “Nor do I think of you.”
Her gaze darted to his, and he thought he sensed a hint of disappointment hidden in the deep brown depths. But it couldn’t have really been there. Abigail hated him, though he wasn’t entirely sure of why that was. She glanced away again, and for a moment they stood silently.
“So what is?” he asked.
She huffed out a breath. “What is what?”
“You said getting a rise out of me isn’t your sport, despite your being very good at it. So what is your game?”
She arched a brow. “Just because you are always playing a game doesn’t mean everyone else is, Your Grace.”
He chuckled, and her lips pressed tighter. “Of course I don’t think everyone else is. I think you are. You and I may not be the best of friends”—she snorted—“but we’ve been forced into each other’s paths off and on for nearly a year now, so I’ve been compelled to make a study of you.”
“I don’t like that idea,” she said.
He shrugged. “And yet here we are.”
“And you think I’m playing games?”
He turned to face her a little more directly and held her gaze. “I think you like games. I think you’re clever enough to get bored when you aren’t playing one, even if it’s only in your head. And I think…no, I know, you like to win.”
Her gaze narrowed further. “If you think so little of me, then I wonder why you came over here. Was it only to insult me?”
“Why would what I said be an insult?” he asked. “I like to win, too.”
“And you are allowed that desire. It is valued in a man. Women are not sometimes given such ability.”
He wrinkled his brow and stared down at her. “That is true and, I think, ridiculous. You have the same blood as I do, the same heart as I do.”
“And yet mine is supposed to pump with emotion while yours can pound with ambition.” She tilted her head. “If you allow me ambition, am I to believe you actually experience emotion, Your Grace?”
He smiled despite the barb. Because of the barb, perhaps. “I will own it. Despite all outward appearances.”
Her expression softened a moment and then she darted her gaze away, staring back out at the crowd. “I suppose I have been known to make a friendly wager now and again.”
He drew back at the admission. “Have you now? Fascinating. I would not have taken you for a gambler. And what kinds of things do you wager on?”
She pursed her lips and then shrugged. “Do you see Lady Blain, Sir Richard’s wife?” When Nathan scanned the small group helplessly, she glanced up at him. “The older lady in yellow. With the ridiculous feather in her hair.”
He found the subject of her query easily now. An older woman with gray hair that still had streaks of black through it, adorned with the biggest peacock feather he’d ever seen. It flopped forward and back, occasionally flitting into her eyes so she had to whack it back with her hand to see. She clung to the arm of an even more ancient gentleman, who Nathan assumed was Sir Richard.
“Yes, what about her?”
“If I were to make a wager tonight, it would be during what course Lady Blain will doze off.”
He blinked. “You would wager that the woman would fall asleep…at supper. At a table full of…what, fifteen guests?”
She smiled brightly up at him in response, and suddenly his heart beat a bit faster. He knew the expression wasn’t exactly true, she felt no warmth toward him, but it hit him in the gut regardless.
“I would wager which course it would happen during,” she corrected him. “Are you saying you do not think it would happen at all?”
“I don’t see how it could,” he muttered.
She folded her arms. “Very well. A pound.”
“What?”
She pivoted toward him. “I bet you a pound that she falls asleep after the soup but before the cheese.”
“A pound,” he repeated, feeling both confused and amused.
She tilted her head. “Too rich for your blood, Your Grace?”
“You are serious.”
She gave a small, thin smile. “As the grave.”
He extended a hand to her. “Very well, Mrs. Montgomery, I will take that wager. One pound to the winner.”
She stared at his hand a moment and then reluctantly took it. He jolted at the electric awareness that shot up his arm when he touched her. It was not something that happened often. In fact, he wasn’t certain he had ever touched this woman. Normally she stayed at a fair distance from him.
But now, even through both their gloves, even in this benign way, the fact that she stirred an unexpected and unwanted desire in him was patently clear.
She tugged her hand away and shoved it behind her back. “I look forward to collecting my winnings, Your Grace. Excuse me.”
She walked away without waiting for his response and glided off into the crowd toward Owen and Celeste. He watched her go, attracted and dissatisfied all at once, just as he often was when he interacted with her. But he had no time to contemplate it, nor anything else, because the bell was rung and the crowd began to file out toward the dining room and the supper where his fortune would be won…or lost on the sleepy whim of one Lady Blain.
Chapter 2
Abigail was seated at Pippa’s right hand at one end of the table, and at the other Gilmore was on the right of Rhys. They could not have been farther apart, a situation she often requested when they were forced into the same space. She ought to have been pleased by it. And yet she found herself stealing gazes down the table at him as the party ate and chatted around her.
Gilmore was often a serious person. When she’d asked him about feeling emotions, she had expected him to brush off the very idea. He certainly didn’t show them often. He was everything a good duke should be, after all, and Society did not much value anything but deep consideration and mild reaction, even to the worst situation.