Page 95
Sophie crossed her arms over her chest and lengthened to full height. The door was but three steps away, and escape called her with magnetic pressure. But the people within …
“I hope he’s a fellow of a contemporary mind. If he’s only after your father’s estate, he’ll make a misery of you.”
Her mouth fell open. His gaze slid to hers, and he took a long drag on his cheroot. “What?” He had the courtesy to direct the smoke toward the garden this time. “You ought to at least threaten him with an entail, see what he’s about. You certainly seem staunch enough for the task.”
The muscles between her shoulder blades relaxed. Good, he was still speaking in assumptions. For a moment, she had felt to be on trial at the assizes—proof that his veneer of confidence served a purpose, if even a small one.
“Clearly, you do not know my situation as well as you think, Lord Hansbury,” she said, pleased to be the smirk-wearer this round.
“I know about everything there is to know. About the peers and their dratted palaces, anyhow.” He stood a moment, stretching his long limbs as if he were in the comfort of his home before leaning on the railing again. “Did you not see the archaeological specimen sat in the corner, Lord Milton all but kneeling before him?”
Sophie furrowed her brow. “I did.”
“That’s my father; the famed Duke of Marham. He knows every grain of sediment beneath our heels, and so he ought, given he’s old as dust himself.”
“Your father?” God help her, she was acting just as indecorously as him now!
She scrutinized his face. Two thin lines creased his forehead, and the same about his mouth. Then again, that could be owed to his current scowl—
At any rate, this man could not possibly be older than five and thirty, while the shriveled gentleman inside had to be at least—
“Allow me to put an end to your calculations. They appear painful.” Lord Hansbury did not, however, put an end to his glaring. “He’s in his eighty-fifth year.”
“And you …?”
“Two and thirty.”
Sophie held his stare, aware of her slack jaw but unable to close it.
“Might you stop looking at me that way?” Another set of twin lines appeared on his face, deep ones between his brows. He turned to face the garden and flicked the end of his cheroot roughly. “You’re like to offend me at this rate, and that’s rather hard to achieve. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of an older fellow siring children.”
“No. Of course.” Her cheeks stung faintly. “But I thought you were his eldest.”
“I am his eldest son. He burned through three wives and six daughters before et voilà, yours truly was brought into the world on a scream.”
A thick grey haze wafted toward her face and she sidestepped the cloud. The scent still captured her.
“All’s to say, I know of your family. Same as I know of anyone else’s.”
Sophie tore open the strings of her reticule. If he insisted on staining her every breath with that nonsensical stench, she would cover her face with a handkerchief. “For all your father’s knowledge, he must not stay abreast of Napoleon’s comings and goings in the Indian Ocean. My brother died there, at Grand Port, and he was the last male in the whole line. There’s not a man alive, respectable or otherwise, to entail to.”
Her fingers finally fell upon the thin weave of a handkerchief, and she ripped it from her reticule. Deutschland. Memories of that night in Balfour’s, the handkerchief and tears and switchel and comfort, scorched through her consciousness.
“Is that what they tell you?”
Lord Hansbury’s spluttering laugh spurred her mind back to the present. Her hand lifted, the roadways and rivers drawing clearer as the handkerchief approached her face. Sophie crammed it back into her reticule. She yanked the strings closed with a weesh. Better to smell this idiot’s smoke than clove and ginger. Even the thought, the taunt, made her chest seize painfully.
“Damn.” Hansbury shook his head, and a blond lock came loose and grazed his forehead.
Mercifully, he hadn’t seemed to notice a change in her demeanor. No doubt he would diagnose her with some new love-related ailment if he had.
“Paternity, Miss St. Quinton, is an unending web. I guaran-damn-tee you there’s a far flung, very disreputable cousin of cousins who could inherit title and estate both. More than one, for what it’s worth, unless you St. Quintons are in the practice of castrating your own for the last five hundred years.”
“Really, sir—”
“Truthfully, I cannot believe your father hasn’t made the arrangements already. He must be a soft breed. Maybe he thinks you incapable of shackling yourself to anyone of note, if he’s acquainted with your drawing room manners.” He grinned, a broad, proud smile, and tipped his chin upward for another smoke.
She wanted to punch him in his fool face. She snatched the cheroot from his hand instead, flung it to the ground, and crunched it beneath the toe of her slipper.
