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Timothy glanced at his cards, excited to see several of the trump suit in his hand. “Then why are you here? Shouldn’t you be with them?”
Harcourt laughed. “I quickly discovered that chasing after a healthy toddler at my age is more difficult than it appears. Eva is as rambunctious as her mother at that age. Trentwith and Sabina had come over to assist, and Sabina shooed us both off. What did she say, Trentwith?”
“Something derogatory about men.” Oliver’s father closed his eyes. “If I recall, her precise words were, ‘Be gone. You both are more work than the children.’” He grinned. “I do love that woman.”
What’s most important.
Propriety dictated Timothy not press, but he couldn’t resist asking. “Is it difficult? Foregoing societal events? How do you deal with the wagging tongues?”
Trentwith tapped the ashes off his cheroot into a crystal ashtray. “Not for me. I’ve attended enough balls and soirées to last a lifetime. We attend small dinner parties with close friends and family”—he nodded toward Harcourt—“but if Sabina wanted to attend a ball, I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment. I would stand by her side proudly, and anyone who had something negative to say about it, well, let’s say they would be putting themselves at risk for bodily injury.”
“Hear, hear,” Laurence added. “I’ll ask Bea to plan an intimate gathering. Perhaps the duke and duchess, your son and daughter-in-law, Harcourt, the Weatherbys, and Marbry, of course. I should very much like to get to know your wife better, Trentwith.”
“Just keep Catpurrnicus locked up,” Timothy said, half-joking.
Harcourt led out a guffaw. “Is that what happened to your face? Since the conversation started with talk of a woman, I suspected . . .”
Everyone broke into gales of laughter, even Timothy, albeit perhaps not as heartily as the others. However, his amusement was cut short when Nash stalked into the card room.
The exuberance Timothy felt looking at his cards vanished, as if suddenly the trump suit had magically changed. “What’s he doing here?”
All three pairs of masculine eyes turned toward him, the same shocked expression on their faces as if painted by an unimaginative artist.
“Surely you’ve not been away from London so long as to have forgotten White’s is one of Nash’s favorite haunts,” Trentwith said.
Laurence stared at Timothy as if attempting to discern the workings of a complicated machine. Mercifully, he turned his attention back to the game, offering an eight of hearts as the first play.
Lulled into a sense that Laurence’s attention had refocused on the game, Timothy breathed a sigh of relief when Nash settled at an adjacent table. Too soon it would appear.
Laurence tapped the cards against the table as he retrieved them, having won the trick. “Although I cannot blame you, it hasn’t escaped my notice that your persistent foul mood today seems to increase whenever Nash is in proximity.”
“Humph,” Timothy grunted. “Lately, wherever I go, it seems he appears just to sour my mood. Like when you stroll in a garden and inadvertently tip over a rock to expose a hoard of wriggling insects beneath.”
Harcourt bellowed a laugh, drawing the attention of said insect—err—person.
In a voice loud enough to reach Timothy’s ears—without a doubt intentionally—Nash said, “Miss Pratt was a vision today at Montgomery’s garden party. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her quite so radiant.”
Timothy bit back the words threatening to attack. Letting them loose would only give Laurence more ammunition.
“Careful, Marbry, that’s a new deck.”
Timothy followed Trentwith’s gaze, embarrassed to find the cards he’d clutched so tightly now possessed markedly bent edges. He muttered a quick apology, his mind barely registering the numbering or suits they displayed.
“We’ll play out this hand and then request a new deck,” Harcourt offered.
Laurence simply returned to his previous scrutiny and uttered a condemning, “Ah.”
Somehow Timothy knew his friend’s judgmental declaration had nothing to do with the misshapen cards.
CHAPTER 23—DECISIONS MADE IN HASTE
Are you all right, my dear?” Priscilla’s father asked on their way home. “I am concerned about your reception at the Montgomerys’ party.” He studied her in the way, she supposed, most fathers did when worried about their daughter’s state of mind.
She couldn’t blame him.
Bitter resignation had permeated the compartment of the carriage from the moment she ascended and took her place across from the man who loved her unconditionally. With Timothy’s declaration, she accepted she would never gain his heart—although she’d not held much hope in the first place.
Yet, like many women, she held on to her dreams and hopes with tenacious claws, digging in and refusing to release until they lay dead in her hands.
