“Tell me, Remmy,” Kit said, lining up another shot, “what is this business I hear aboutThe Rake Review?”
“Oh, nothing much.” Remmy buffed his nails on his jacket. “Only I’m the June rake.”
Timothy’s eyes shone a little too brightly. “You’re not!”
“I am.”
Kit sank another ball and straightened, his mouth pursed. “It’s true then. I thought you were concentrating on the theatre.”
“It’s for the theatre. Infamy will fill the seats faster than anything else.”
“Will it?” Kit grumbled, lining up another shot. He missed, shrugged.
Remmy eyed the table, the constellation of possibilities there. “I know what I’m doing.”
“How’d you do it?” Timothy asked. “How’d you catch her attention?”
Remmy lined up his shot.
“Do not answer that,” Kit said.
Remmy pulled his stick back and struck the cue ball. “Damn. Anothermiss.”
“I think the whole thing is a miss, brother.” Kit wandered to the window and propped his hip up on the sill. “I do not know what you hope to achieve by acting so reprehensibly.”
Remmythunkedthe end of his stick on the floor between his boots. “Attention, notoriety. I care only about the Folly’s success, and I’ll cultivate it using every trick I’ve got.”
“Yes!” Timothy sank another ball.
Still looking out the window, Kit said, “That appearance you made yesterday… Father almost exploded. Mother is humiliated. She sent Meg and Peg and their husbands home with baskets of food and apologized for your bad behavior.”
“So that’s where they’ve gone.”
“Then there was the scene with Tessa.”
“She swooned. I helped her.”
Kit raised a brow, his only hint of emotion. “You cannot…playwith the rector’s daughter as you used to. I’d hoped the time apart would quiet your feelings for her, but I suspect that has not happened.”
“What feelings?” Remmy scraped the end of his stick back and forth on the polished floor.
“Those.”
“Bah.” A distracted sort of sound because he was thinking of Tessa spread beneath him. Her lips warm and brandy spiced. No doubt she’d alreadyforgotten. The cue stick creaked, and Remmy loosened his grip on it, unsure when it had gotten so damn tight.
“Who’s that?” Kit tapped the window. “In the garden with Tessa?”
Timothy sank another ball and did a little jig as Remmy joined Kit at the window.
He saw her immediately, her vibrant hair a riot of color against the green of the garden below. She walked almost shoulder to shoulder with a blond-haired man Remmy did not recognize. They seemed to be chatting amiably, and when shestumbled on a rock or stick or some other invisible hazard, the man reached out to steady her. Her fingers—gloveless, wrapped around his arm.
Remmy worked his jaw side to side until he could say, “Who is that?” Each word as sharp as it was quiet.
“I’ve no idea,” Kit said. “But I’m glad to see Miss King making friends. Something else I’ve heard…”
“What?”
“Lady Chattaway is engaged to marry Lord Brawly. She will soon no longer need a companion. And Tessa will need a new position.”
