Page 113 of Courting the Wrong Duke

Rosalind bit back a smile. “What man?”

“Gabriel Frost.”

She deposited the paint box upon the table with more force than necessary.

William had mentioned finding Gabriel lying in the garden, apparently reconsidering his entire existence because of Isabella. Rosalind suspected she was about to learn why.

“He came to the gathering last night.”

“Gabriel did?”

“Yes, and he exposed me.”

Rosalind’s amusement vanished. “What happened?”

Isabella began setting out her brushes as she explained. Gabriel had arrived uninvited, and when someone questioned how he had discovered the gathering, he claimed Miss Hartwell had invited him.

Unfortunately, everyone there knew Isabella only as Miss Bell.

“He announced my identity before half the room,” Isabella finished. “The one place in London where no one cares who my father is, and he made certain they all knew.”

“You think he did it deliberately?”

“Of course. Why else use my real name? Men like Gabriel Frost cannot bear discovering there is somewhere their name and fortune grant them no particular advantage.”

The hurt beneath her anger kept Rosalind from teasing her, though deliberate cruelty was difficult to reconcile with a man who had apparently spent the remainder of his evening lamenting his existence upon William’s lawn.

“Have you considered that he might simply have made a spectacular fool of himself?”

“He is not a fool.”

Rosalind’s brows rose.

“Not entirely,” Isabella amended. “He can be perfectly intelligent when he chooses. He spent nearly twenty minutes discussing a landscape, and he knows considerably more about composition and color than I expected.”

“How unfortunate.”

“What is?”

“Discovering redeeming qualities in a man you despise.”

Isabella ignored her and squeezed paint onto the palette. “Then when I denied knowing him, he looked positively stricken. As though I had somehow wounded him.”

“Perhaps you did.”

“Nonsense. A man with eyes that particular shade of dark brown has no business looking at anyone that way.”

Rosalind paused.

So did Isabella.

“That particular shade of dark brown?”

“Do not.”

“I said nothing.”

“You were about to.”