Page 41 of The Lady Knows Best

“Not a thing, Your Grace,” he replied to her with an uncertain smile. “I can’t think who would so deliberately and woefully mislead you.”

“Miss Isabella Killigrew. Lord Stalbridge’s niece.”

Understanding began to dawn. “Oh. Well, I only repeated to her what your sister”—he shot a quick glance at Daphne, who had resumed her study of her untouched plate—“told me about the, er, what was it again?”

“Venus’s-flytrap,” Daphne supplied automatically, and then clamped her mouth shut as firmly as the plant’s leaves.

“Yes, that,” said Miles. “Then we had a look around at a few other interesting-looking things. I, um, I might have manufactured some scientific-sounding details about them. Also, I, uh . . .” A peculiar warmth spread up the back of his neck, toward his ears. Good God, was he blushing? Well, the embarrassment was no more than he deserved. “I told her something about the bees in warmer climates being helped along in their work by fairies.”

Lady Ashborough peered disapprovingly over her spectacles, an expression that nearly rendered him an awkward schoolboy again.

“Tiny, winged creatures called hummingbirds, actually,” Raynham said, as he leaned back in his chair and twisted the stem of his goblet between the fingers of one hand. “You weren’t far off.”

Even in what ought to have been a relaxed posture, Raynham maintained a reserve, a stiffness, that seemed to owe as much to his days as an army officer as to his present rank. Either way, it seemed incongruous with a gesture of... well, Miles wasn’t sure what to call it. Friendliness? Not quite, but at least the man hadn’t left him to twist beneath Lady Ashborough’s cold stare.

“How sweet,” declared Bellis. “Doesn’t it remind you, Daph, of how Gabriel used to pretend to drink tea with us? When Cami first brought him to Dublin?”

Daphne replied with another quelling look, but that was nothing to the exchange of glances between Lord and Lady Ashborough, a curious mixture of nostalgia and alarm.

These flashes of family history were too brief and too opaque to him to illuminate much. But they still offered some insight into family dynamics, which—for a man without siblings and with no memory of his parents—were something of a mystery. So, Daphne and Bell must have been about the age Isabella Killigrew was now when Ashborough, a gambler so notorious people still whispered about him more than a decade later, had wooed and married their eldest sister, a woman far beneath his touch, at least the way most of society measured such things. There was a story there, almost certainly. And he suspected it had at least some bearing on how the family thought about Miles’s courtship of Daphne.

Whatever Ashborough had meant to convey with that look at his wife, Lady Ashborough interpreted it as a sign to put an end to the meal. Rising, she said, “Come, ladies. Let us leave the gentlemen to their port.”

The men stood, too, and bowed the ladies out. Miles would have been glad of a backward glance from Daphne, but whether she sent him one or not was entirely obscured by the phalanx of Burke sisters who surrounded her and escorted her from the room.

With an elegant wave of one hand, Ashborough dismissed the footmen. Stepping to a sideboard, he retrieved four small footed glasses and two decanters, one of port and one of some amber-colored liquor, which he placed in front of Burke with a knowing smile. “I presume you’d prefer whiskey?”

Burke looked up at his host with those black eyes of his. Another set of glances, another exchange of meanings Miles hadn’t a prayer of understanding.

Then Burke’s sharp, handsome features eased into a smile for the first time that evening. “This had better not be some Scots-brewed swill you’re trying to pass off as the true water of life, Ashborough.”

“Would I dare?” asked the marquess as he returned to his seat, a mischievous glint in his own brown eyes.

From farther down the table came a chink as Raynham unstoppered the decanter of port. “I think we all know the answer is yes.”

The three men laughed.

They were all at least ten years older than Miles, which was to say, somewhere around forty. Men of power and privilege, in the prime of their lives. All devoted husbands and fathers. And yet remarkably different too, linked by marriage to sisters who themselves seemed to have little in common.

Miles, who until recently had believed himself generally well liked, had always felt at home in the world of men—the clubs, the cricket pitch, the conversations about horseflesh and women. But his usual qualifications might make him ineligible to join this particular fraternity. And he was no longer entirely certain who got a membership vote. He thought of Daphne’s downcast eyes.

Perhaps it would be wiser simply to withdraw his application now.

“Nervous, Deveraux?” Raynham poured a glass of port and handed it to him.

“Should I be?”

“From all appearances,” drawled Ashborough, “you’re thinking of marrying into the Burke clan. So, speaking from years of experience, I’d say definitely.”

“I knew I should’ve killed you the first time I laid eyes on you.” Burke was still eyeing his drink with deep skepticism, though the remark was made without heat.

Ashborough leaned down the table to accept a glass from Raynham. “I daresay Camellia might be inclined to agree, some days. But I do my best to prove to her that I’m worth the trouble.” There was something lazy and suggestive in the words.

“Christ, Ash.” Burke, who had at last dared a sip, sputtered into his glass and sent him a glare as he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Except for the colors of their eyes, he and Lady Ashborough might have been twins, with the same angular features and blue-black hair that as of yet showed no sign of turning. They appeared to be closer in age than even Daphne and Bellis. “I’m going to pretend that’s a reference to all the paper and ink you shower my sister with, and leave it at that.”

Raynham made a low noise that might, or might not, have been a chuckle. “Gentlemen, with full awareness that more than a decade of animosity toward one another cannot be easily set aside, may I suggest you focus your energy and attention elsewhere this evening?”

And with that, three pairs of eyes came to rest on Miles.