Before he could finish, Wanton stepped forward with righteous purpose and, in one fluid motion, yanked Monsieur M’s towel clean off.
Gasps erupted across the frigidarium like cannon fire.
Monsieur M stood bare as the day he was born— unashamed, glowing, and lightly misted.
Wanton extended one arm like a museum docent unveiling a masterwork. “Is this the backside of an envious man?”
She paused dramatically.
The collective gaze dropped.
Even the Duke looked.
Wanton nodded toward the exhibit in question—firm, round, sculpted like cherubs had spent an afternoon buffing it with olive oil.
She turned, slowly, like a heroine in the final act of a gothic play where the true villain was vanity and velvet. Her arm rose with grave flair.
“It was you, Trumbuttle.”
Gasps rippled across the frigidarium. Towels were clutched. A sherbet dish fell with a delicate plink.
Milton swayed. Monsieur M whispered something in French that might have been Mon Dieu or My glutes are innocent.
The valet turned an alarming shade of rhubarb.
“Absurd!” he barked. “I am loyal to His Grace!”
The Duke frowned. “Why would my valet steal the sculpture?”
Wanton stepped forward, eyes gleaming with the thrill of justice and deeply personal vengeance. “Elementary, my dear Duke.”
She grabbed Trumbuttle by the shoulder and spun him around like a suspicious canapé at a scandalous supper.
Then—with the determination of a woman of science presenting her thesis before the Royal Academy (if they weren’t a patriarchy of powdered fossils who thought female brains would melt under scrutiny)—she lifted the tails of his robe without mercy or warning.
Flat.
Tragically, profoundly, irredeemably flat.
Like two underinflated crumpets abandoned at the back of a pantry.
A hush swept the room like a moral reckoning in a ballroom.
Milton Avery clutched his quill. “A crime against curvature,” he whispered. “Geometry weeps.”
“Trumbuttle was the one envious,” Wanton declared, voice rising. “He saw the attention. The double entendres. The triple takes His Grace receives—while he is, tragically… flat.”
“I am not flat!” Trumbuttle cried, outraged. “I am… gluteally underexpressed!”
With a decidedly unheroic shriek, he yanked a revolver from his coat.
Screams rang out.
Towels flew.
Cassian Drake somersaulted behind a marble column and disappeared entirely.
The Duke stepped forward. “Wanton, get behind me!”
