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"About Patience?"
"I said leave it!"
"For God's sake," Aidan muttered. "You're acting like a moon-eyed ass."
Jude gritted his teeth and glared so fiercely at the dancers that one gentleman shot him an alarmed look.
"In fact, you look almost as miserable as I was when I lost my... the woman I meant to marry."
Aidan n
ever spoke of it, and the shock of hearing him talk of her swept some of Jude's mood away. "But she died," he said stupidly.
"Yes, but there was an argument. Before. We were estranged for a time... and then I never saw her again."
"Christ, I'm sorry."
Aidan rolled his shoulders as if loosening the memory from its hold. "Getting back to you—"
"I'd prefer not."
Aidan relented, finally, so they stood in companionably stony silence again, as good gentlemen of
the ton often did. After a time, Jude realized the dancers had changed partners, and he caught sight of the man on Marissa's arm. "Who's that?"
Aidan followed his gaze and his face went hard. "The infamous Charles LeMont."
"Bloody hell." Just as Jude had suspected, Marissa's first love was a slender reed of a man. His golden locks curled in a perfectly tousled mess. His face was pale and smooth as a girl's. What a damned joke. "He practically violated your sister. Are you just going to let him dance with her?"
"Are you?" Aidan drawled, and Jude could've sworn the gaslight in the room went red for a moment.
He breathed deeply and told himself that creating a scene in the ballroom would be even worse than whatever whispered rumors the blackmailer might spread.
"Edward pulled him aside as soon as we arrived. LeMont seemed appropriately clueless before his wife hurried over to ask after our ailing horse. And he certainly looks harmless."
He did, even to Jude's jaundiced eye. Pretty, he might be, but there was nothing rakish about him, and he touched Marissa only when the dance strictly called for it. Not that Jude ceased his scowling. She was dancing with her former lover, knowing Jude would see her, knowing he'd be jealous. In fact, at that very moment, Marissa's eyes met his across the room, and she stared hard at him, with not even a hint of an embarrassed blush on her cheeks.
And Charles LeMont had seen her thighs. That was more than Jude could claim.
Frustrated with himself, he turned and walked toward the hall without a word to Aidan. Jude had never believed jealousy an appropriate response to any situation. It was a useless exercise practiced by prideless men. Either a woman wanted you or she didn't. Either she'd be true or she wouldn't. No amount of worrying or raging would change that.
And yet, here he was, fretting over Marissa as if she were a toy he could possess.
He meant only to give himself some breathing room, perhaps have a glass of brandy to calm his nerves. But when he was only feet from escape, a woman stepped into his path, and Jude froze in shock.
"Hello, Jude," she said softly, her eyes crinkling in a smile.
"Corrine," he responded, as her name was the only thing making it through the churning shock of his mind.
"It's wonderful to see you."
"You've returned from Jamaica." Obviously.
"It was dreadfully hot there. I've no idea how my sister survives it." She sighed prettily.
A few heartbeats later and his mind was back in reasonable order. "Your sister and her family are well?"
She spoke a bit about the plantation she'd visited and what the island was like, while Jude tried to recover from the shock of seeing his former lover here, at a country ball in the middle of nowhere. Her black hair and brown eyes looked the same, but her skin had bronzed a bit on her journey, and she was thinner as well.
