Tristan looked at him, then sighed. “You really are hopeless,” he muttered into his drink.
Dorian barely heard him. His attention had already wandered again, lingering somewhere far beyond town, toward Ashford Hall and the woman who had somehow become the first thought attached to the idea of returning home.
Mrs. Ashcombe lingered only a few minutes longer before finally rising from the table, offering him a smile that carried just enough suggestion to make her intentions unmistakable.
“You have become very difficult to read, Your Grace,” she noted as she adjusted her gloves.
“So I have been told,” Dorian replied.
Her gaze lingered on him for a moment. “Perhaps town life will lift your spirits before you disappear back to domestic respectability.”
Tristan lifted his glass. “We keep hoping.”
Dorian ignored him.
After saying farewell, Mrs. Ashcombe disappeared back into the crowd, quickly reclaimed by the livelier energy of the room.
Around them, conversation swelled again beneath candlelight and smoke, glasses clinking as laughter moved between the tables in waves. Tristan watched the woman disappear, then turned back to Dorian.
“Well?” he prompted.
Dorian did not look at him. “No.”
“I have not even spoken yet.”
“You are about to.”
“I absolutely am. You barely looked at her.”
“I spoke to her.”
“Youenduredher. You used to flirt before a woman finished sitting down.”
Dorian gave him a flat look. “I am married. Husbands should not act in that way.”
“It was more than that, though,” Tristan argued. “You looked bored.”
“I was not bored.”
“You stared out the window twice during the conversation.”
“Three times,” Dorian corrected absently.
Tristan fell quiet, then grinned. “Oh my God. You admitted it.”
“Admitted what?”
“You were counting. You knew exactly how many times you stopped listening to an attractive woman flirt with you.”
Dorian exhaled slowly, already regretting every moment of the evening. “You are exhausting.”
“Perhaps,” Tristan said, leaning forward. “But you… You are fascinating.”
Dorian scanned the room, clearly hoping a distraction would somehow end the conversation. It did not.
Tristan followed his gaze briefly before speaking again.
“When exactly,” he asked, “did the Duke of Ashford stop looking at every woman in the room except his own wife?”
