Barty gave a start, followed by a rather mechanical smile.“Oh, it’s your grace.Taking the air?”
“Just for a moment.”
“Me too,” Barty said and lapsed back into silence.
“Anything I can do?”Jack said casually.
Barty shook his head and clearly tried to pull himself together.“No.No, but I thank you.Just played a little too deep and lost.It happens.”The careless smile might have worked on a face like Durward’s, but on Barty it looked slightly sick.
“Isn’t Lord Carily a friend who’d be willing to wait for his dues?”It was a guess, though a reasonable one.Barty had been playing cards with Carily for a large part of the evening, at first in a group, and then just the two of them.There had been a fixed look on Carily’s face that Jack did not like and it had crossed his mind that Carily was punishing the brother for the sister’s dismissal.
Barty’s eyes flickered.“I’ll come up with something,” he said with a false brightness.
“Of course you will,” Jack said.He gazed up at the sky.“I was fortunate enough to win on my brief flurry at the tables, so I’m in the happy position of being able to oblige a friend in temporary embarrassment.”
There was a pause.
“Very good of your grace to put it like that,” Barty said.“But in truth, you don’t know me from Adam, and even if we were longstanding friends, I would not take advantage.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.But the offer stands.Strictly between ourselves.”He lowered his gaze from the stars to find Barty regarding him with some curiosity.
“You’re an odd sort of a duke, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know.I don’t believe I have met any others.”
Barty gave a snort of laughter and Jack smiled amiably back before rising and sauntering back into the drawing room with his teacup.
The company had thinned somewhat, with some guests having already retired and others preparing to do so.A few men and one of the dowagers were still playing whist.There was no sign of Carily.Or Tabitha.
When he had finished his tea, he bade the company goodnight.
“Past his bedtime,” someone murmured.
Perhaps Jack imagined the difference in tone, more of a friendly ribbing now than contempt.
He went towards his bedchamber by a somewhat circuitous route that involved a tour of the lower floor before turning the wrong way at the top of the stairs.A watcher might have imagined he was lost.He wasn’t.He was worried.
Not that he had any real reason to be.It was not even jealousy, for he had no claim on Tabitha and she certainly gave every impression of taking care of herself.But there had been something in Carily’s manner that was both obsessive and spiteful.He hadn’t necessarily cheated in his games with Tabitha’s brother, but he had certainly gone out of his way to beat him.
The bedroom passages were all lit and he occasionally passed other guests.They wished each other polite good nights.But he had no idea where Tabitha’s or Lily’s chambers were, and he could hardly ask a servant without starting the kind of rumours he wanted to avoid.Nor could he wander the corridors all night on the off-chance she might need him.
And then, rounding a corner into what must have been the east wing of the house, he saw her.
She stood in a doorway, with light pouring out from the room beyond, and from the wall sconce behind her.She was very close to a man, her hands braced against his chest.Lord Carily held her with one arm around her waist, and one hand cupping her face.
For an instant, despite the light, Jack’s world went dark.Hopelessness and jealousy seemed to halt his life, and yet he kept moving forward like an automaton because he didn’t know what else to do.So many emotions battered him in that moment that he felt sick.
And then he saw the truth.
The pose that seemed so frozen in time for him, had in fact just occurred.She was straining away from Carily, her face blazing with anger.Her hands on his chest gave an almighty shove.He staggered back, apparently amused, drawing her with him, but she wrenched herself free and swung around.
She caught sight of Jack and stopped in her tracks.So did Carily, who had taken an urgent step after her.Her mouth was thin and set with fury, her turbulent eyes both appalled to see Jack and pleading with him.
And all this had happened in an instant of near silence.
Jack walked steadily forward until he stood beside Tabitha and halted.He could feel the trembling of her body in the air between them.
Carily smirked at him, clearly waiting for him to walk on, to pretend he had seen nothing.He even bowed in an insolent, half-hearted kind of a way that was somehow contemptuous of both Jack and Tabitha.
