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“Ha! I am your older sister. You think I don’t know gentlemen frequent brothels?”

His eyes fluttered closed, and a headache thumped to life at his temples. He exhaled before opening his eyes and trying anew. “Knowing and mentioning are two entirely different things, dear sister.”

She gave him a pointed look. “Are you saying you would prefer that I feign ignorance?”

“Yes,” he ground out, not about to tell his sister any more than was strictly necessary.

He had promised Phee that her secret was safe with him. He wouldn’t tell Ro what had happened at Wingfield Hall. Nor would he tell her why Mal had attempted to distract him in the oldest means possible. But despite the sumptuous arrangements at the establishment Mal had taken him to, Apollo had been numb. He had sat in a parlor with a handful of beautiful women, all of them fawning over him and eager to take him to bed.

And he had felt nothing.

Nothing, save revulsion and the intense wish it had been Phee there with him instead.

He and Mal had left in relative ignominy—neither of them had gone to one of the vaunted private rooms.

“Whilst I am sorry indeed to disappoint you, brother, I cannot in good conscience pretend that I don’t know exactly what sort of nonsense men like Wrighton find themselves wrapped up in. Or perhaps I should say who they find themselves wrapped up in.”

He frowned at his sister. “Ro, this is beyond the pale for the breakfast table.”

“Shall I wait until luncheon, then, to discuss your friend’s penchant for frequenting houses of ill repute?” Aphrodite suggested brightly. “Or perhaps tea would be a better opportunity. Mother could be present then. No doubt she would greatly enjoy such a conversation.”

Thank Christ their mother wasn’t at the table now and that she preferred to take her morning meal in the privacy of her chamber, though he knew Ro never would have mentioned a brothel in their mother’s presence.

“Are you going to fill your plate, or do you intend to continue standing here exasperating me?” he asked, perhaps in a sharper voice than he had intended.

“No need to be so vexed with me. I was only making some simple observations.”

“They hardly seemed simple to me,” he grumbled.

“Wrighton is a perfectly dreadful man. I don’t know why you suffer his company.”

“Because he is my friend and the closest I shall ever come to having a brother.”

“Well, what am I?” Ro demanded, planting her hands on her hips by the sideboard. “Why should you need him when you have me? I am clever, witty, I tell the best jokes, and I don’t frequent brothels. I also have excellent taste in dresses.”

“Small mercies,” he muttered.

“And friends,” she added. “I have superior taste in character, I must say. My closest friend is a paragon of selflessness and virtue, whilst yours is a paragon of selfishness and all things wicked.”

She was speaking of Phee.

He exhaled slowly, the mere thought of her like a blow. Yes, Phee was indeed that. But he had shown her a hint of the wicked during their all too brief time together. Not that he alone was at fault, he reminded himself sternly. She had taken the hostess duties for the club upon herself, and she intended to do so again in the future.

She just wanted nothing to do with Apollo. And the pain that knowledge produced was akin to having his chest cracked open.

“Apollo?”

His sister’s voice pierced the haze of yearning that had infected his mind. He glanced up to find her watching him from the sideboard, plate half filled, a curious expression on her face.

Thankfully, she hadn’t an inkling of what he felt for Phee. Nor that they had been together at the house party. That he’d held her in his arms, in his bed, that he had mapped every freckle on her beautiful body, and he knew what her husky cries sounded like when she came.

Don’t think about that at the breakfast table, you utter dolt, he inwardly reprimanded himself.

It wouldn’t do to get a cockstand just by thinking of Phee whilst his sister was in the same room. Sweet God. What a depraved monster he was.

He cleared his throat. “What is it, sister?”

Aphrodite approached the table, plate in hand. “Did something happen at the house party?”