“Hello, Giles.” She beamed at his cousin before she kissed his cheek, and once the kissing was done offered Gal a frosty approximation of a smile that didn’t touch her eyes.
Clearly she was still riled about the way he had handled their impromptu meeting in Covent Garden and still of the opinion that he had disapproved of the state of her beloved orphanage. He would probably need to apologize for that. Even though she hadn’t given him a secondto clarify before she had stomped up the steps and slammed the door behind her. “Galahad.”
“Well, don’t you look delicious, Vee!” His cousin’s gaze swept down her cornflower-blue gown in appreciation. “Madame Devy has outdone herself this season!” Gal couldn’t deny that Giles had a point. The new hourglass fashions with their nipped waists suited her down to the ground—so much more so than the Empire-line styles she had worn when he had first known her. She had been wearing some pretty dresses all season, but none as grown-up as this enticing confection that seemed to be magically held up by just her plump breasts and some discreet boning, and hung off her shoulders, exposing acres of perfect skin. “If I wasn’t a happily married man, and your sister wasn’t quite so terrifying, I swear you would draw my manly eyes and turn my head.”
Gal’s eyes were certainly drawn to the pert and creamy two inches of cleavage currently on display, which he was certain he had never seen before because he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, he would have remembered it.
“Your Grace.” Lord Dorchester suddenly blocked his splendid view by bowing to Giles. “It is always an honor to see you.” He acknowledged Gal as he always did his apparent inferiors—with a curt and dismissive nod. But because Gal had the audacity to be a foreign inferior, and one from a former treasonous colony to boot, Dorchester’s beaked nose wrinkled slightly as if his imported stench offended him.
Thankfully, he was spared the chore of making any small talk with the windbag because Venus’s self-appointed adoptive parents, the Peabodys—the meddlesome, aristocratic Olivia and her acerbic, Boston-born-and-bred second husband, Jeremiah—were close behind. Gal adored them both but had always shared the closest affinity with Jeremiah. No doubt because they were both fish out of water in this strange land and shared a mutual sense of bemusement at some of the unique quirks of the British.
With relief, he strode toward them and was enveloped in one of thepetite Olivia’s bone-crushing hugs. “How is my favorite reprobate?” She held him out at arm’s length in the way his mother used to do to check if his outfit and hair passed muster. “And why haven’t we seen you in over a month? When I’ve sent you countless invitations?”
“I’ve been working. In Brighton.”
“In the scandalous but secret little gaming hell that you’ve opened there?” Olivia tapped her nose, fishing. “What’s it called again?” They both knew that he had never told anyone.
“A man has to earn a living, and who am I to stop people losing their hard-earned money at my tables if they are determined to lose it?”
Although naturally reluctant to disclose much about himself, Gal was always the cagiest about what he did in Brighton. Not because he was up to no good there, because he genuinely wasn’t, but because what happened there was private. It was intensely personal and, therefore, not up for discussion like all of the other intensely personal aspects of his life. If people thought he had opened a second hell, he wasn’t going to correct them. Especially as it was a believable assumption to make after the resounding success of The Den at the London docks.
After years of hard work, he was proud that his Brighton venture was finally turning a small profit rather than leaking money like water. However, it was the spit-and-sawdust Den that had quadrupled the size of the nest egg his grandpa had left him. That alone had paid for his new premises in Covent Garden and would also fund their refurbishment, so he was rightly proud to own it no matter how scandalous others might think it.
Olivia adjusted the knot of his cravat, smiling. “I have always had a soft spot for an entrepreneur. Especially one who rolls up his sleeves and isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.”
“If only everyone here in Mayfair thought the same.” He quirked an eyebrow in the direction of Venus’s boring lord, annoyed that the idiot had made him feel petulant when he usually rose above such nonsense.
Jeremiah rolled his eyes. “Take no heed of Dorchester. I’ve beenhere off and on for a quarter of a century, and he still looks at me as if I’m something nasty stuck to his shoe.” He echoed Gal’s thoughts exactly as he glared at the pair. “I haven’t the faintest idea what Vee sees in the uppity fool.”
“Me either.” Olivia made no effort to hide her disapproval as she gazed in the couple’s direction. “I have said as much repeatedly, but apparently, I do not know him like she knows him, and she admires hisgreat mind.”
“Not half as much as he admires it.” Another bull’s-eye from his fellow countryman. “I’ve never met a man who liked the sound of his own voice quite so much.”
“He sure likes to look down his nose, too.” It was a nose Gal’s fists itched to punch tonight, which was odd when he wasn’t a violent man unless the situation called for it, preferring diplomacy over fisticuffs—even in the docks. “I know that’s a common trait here in Mayfair, but somehow when he does it, it raises the hackles more.”
Jeremiah nodded his agreement. “That’s because everything about him grates. Even his lauded philanthropy leaves a bad taste in the mouth, as I’m convinced all his sermonizing about his benevolence is more self-aggrandizing than genuinely generous. As if he wants to be seen to be doing good because he craves superiority more than he wants to help.” Which was an insightful and more succinct summation of the man’s character than Gal could have managed.
“I’ve also told her that one should never trust a man with thin lips.” Gal always adored Olivia’s warped logic, and as per usual she felt no need to substantiate her outrageous comment with any evidence. “But as she is apparently two and twenty, and increasingly headstrong in her dotage, my sage motherly advice is ignored nowadays more often than it is heeded.”
Jeremiah rolled his eyes at the subject of their conversation in obvious loathing. “Thin those lips may be—but still they are not.” With reluctance, Gal looked and saw Venus hanging on Dorchester’s every word like a devoted puppy. “From the second Vee insisted he join us, hehasn’t stopped yapping. And my goodness, doesn’t he have an opinion on everything! In the ten minutes it took us to battle our way over here, he covered everything from taxation to taxidermy and the cause of cold weather to the benefits of colonization. But of course, we couldn’t scurry off like every other sensible person we encountered—I tried but was restrained.” He glared at his wife.
“I wasn’t going to be the only chaperone left alone with him, you wretch!”
“I’ll bet they have to gag him to shut him up in the House of Lords.” Jeremiah clearly needed to vent about the experience some more. “He’s such alearned experton everything, it’s a wonder Parliament haven’t surrendered and handed over the reins of this nation to him! Because Lord only knows nobody else has more opinions on how to run a country!”
“It was an exceedingly long ten minutes.” Olivia patted her husband’s arm in sympathy as she smiled at Gal. “But I fear Vee will need more than being bored to death before she realizes her droning viscount is a dead loss who isn’t any more interested in her intellect than any of the previous men of her acquaintance have been. Even though we all know that he is much too old for her and that she is trying to settle for something she doesn’t really want.”
Of their own accord, Gal’s eyes wandered to her again before he wrenched them back with a shake of his head. “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and she can do better.” So much better. “Look at all the fellas gazing at her and pretending not to.”
There was something about Venus that made even the happily married men shoot her a covetous glance. An allure that went beyond the lovely face, the enticing figure, and the graceful way she carried herself. Enough of one that even Gal, who really didn’t ever want to notice her, still found his eyes wandering her way whenever she was near.
“Exactly,” said Olivia, giving him an odd, calculating look. “But if she will not hear it from me, perhaps she will listen to someone from her own generation.” There was a worrying glint in her gaze now.“Maybe you should talk to her about it, Galahad? Find a subtle way to point out all that is wrong with him. Make her see Dorchester in the same unforgiving, bright light that we all do.”
If he’d have taken a sip of his drink, he’d have spat it out in shock. “Me?”
“Why not? There’s only a few years between you and you are not one of her immediate nagging family, so it might come better from you than anyone.”
“I think that’s better coming from one of her sisters.”
