Page 55 of A Portrait of Love

Honey could see that the duke had recovered from the first, but instead of defending himself or attacking, he simply waited.

Simon’s fit froze in midair, inches from his brother’s face. “Fight me, you bastard.”

The duke didn’t so much as twitch.

Simon dropped his arm and made a sound thick with disgust. He spun around, fixing Honey with an incendiary glare. “You should go, Miss Keyes.”

The words were the verbal equivalent of a slap and Honey flinched. Before she could respond, the duke spoke.

“No, Miss Keyes. Please stay. This involves you as much as my brother.” He extracted a snowy white square from his impeccably cut coat and dabbed at the blood at the corner of his mouth.

Simon clenched his jaw and shook his head. “There is no this Wyndham.”

“Unfortunately, there is, Simon. Although you may have not noticed, Lord Renshaw, Albert Grayson, and four other gentlemen were with me a few moments ago. I foolishly thought to bring them back to my library,” he gestured to the shattered decanter, “and I stupidly thought I might enjoy a glass of my brandy with them.” Although he’d never raised his voice, he was more menacing than a cobra. “But what do I find? I find you. Dishonoring one of our guests.”

Honey swallowed and stood. “Your grace—”

He turned to look at her and the rest of her words died in her throat.

“You, Miss Keyes, are ruined.” His soft words hung in the air like a thick, unpleasant London fog.

“No,” she said, shaking her head vigorously. “I am not a girl in her first Season. I do not need to protect my reputation to attract an offer of marriage.”

A look of pity flitted across his granite features and it made her blood run cold. “No, Miss Keyes, you need to do something even more delicate and difficult—you need to convince the aristocracy that you are the type of woman they can permit into their homes. The type of female they can trust their wild, young heirs with for private sittings. The type—”

“That is enough, Wyndham,” Simon said.

The duke merely looked at his younger brother.

Honey could not see Simon’s face, but she knew there was a battle going on between the men. Only the soft ticking of a clock disturbed the brittle silence.

And then Simon’s shoulders slumped. “Christ.”

The duke nodded and straightened, his arms falling to his sides. “I will give you a few moments together.”

And then he strode from the room.

***

Damn, damn, damn, damn. The words were like the insistent cawing of crows in Simon’s head.

He turned to the woman. To Honoria.

She was staring across the room at him with the terrified eyes of a prisoner at the dock.

Christ. Fortunately, he did not speak the profanity out loud, this time.

He ran a finger around the disaster that was his cravat, wondering why he was so bloody hot when the room felt as frigid as a tomb.

Simon forced a neutral expression onto his face. Or at least as neutral as a man with half of his face in ruins could appear.

“Will you sit?” he asked. She looked as skittish as an unbroken filly, and rightfully so. She’d found herself trapped between two men who’d been fighting each other for almost fifteen years.

Tonight Honoria Keyes had become a casualty of their war.

She sat and Simon lowered himself into the chair across from her. Best not to sit beside her as it seemed like that led to trouble. Still, hard to imagine what worse trouble there could be other than this.

His gaze flickered over her wrinkled gown and loose hair and he cleared his throat. “Miss Keyes—”