Page 76 of The Best-Kept Secrets
With a look of pride, Aunt Penelope said, “Indeed. Well puzzled, Miss O’Doyle.”
Eve spun once more. It was good to see her so obviously cheerful. She’d had so much on her mind of late. Her eyes met Duke’s, and he couldn’t hold back a smile, though she didn’t fully return it.
“Does this thing of the mineral kingdom, which has been selected, perhaps, because of a connection to this group, happen to be a knife, as was suggested earlier?”
Amused chuckles sounded.
“I’m afraid not.”
She narrowed her eyes in a theatrical look of contemplation. “It truly isn’t?”
“Nay,” Duke answered but with just enough hint of “neigh” to turn the chuckles to outright laughter.
Even Eve smiled at him. That dimple of hers tugged at his heart once more. “It’s to do with horses, then.”
In a very clearly enunciated grumble, Grandmother said, “Cheating is to be the order of the day, it seems.”
“It’s only a game, Grandmother,” Duke said.
“An already juvenile game that has to be made embarrassingly simple for simple-minded girls.”
Stunned silence settled immediately over the room once more. Shock rendered Eve pale, even as blotches of color spread over her cheeks. She looked horrified. Even more than that, she looked hurt.
Uncle Niles moved, clearly meaning to stand and, likely, break his word to Penelope to keep quarrels behind closed doors.
Duke stood, saving him the trouble. “It is time for you three”—he motioned to his parents and grandmother—“to retire for the night. Come along.”
“Come along?” Father scoffed. “We are not children to be ordered about.”
“You are behaving abominably, Dubhán,” Mother said.
“Iam?” Were they so mired in bitterness and a desire to punish Aunt Penelope that they didn’t even realize how horribletheywere to everyone else? “I am far too tired to argue with you about this, and I have less than zero desire to enact a scene in front of so many people who ought not be subjected to this.”
“You do not usually resort to dramatics,” Father said in tones of dismissive bother.
Duke held his father’s gaze with a hard one of his own. “Do I look as though this is a mere performance?”
For the first time, the offenders seemed to actually believe him.
“I will walk with you,” Duke said firmly.
They rose, watching him with varying looks of surprise. He motioned to the open door, then followed them through it.
“You cannot be in earnest, Dubhán,” Grandmother said as they walked down the corridor. “This is unseemly.”
“Do not lecture me on uncouth behavior, any of you.” He took a breath to keep hold of his calm. The corridor deposited them in the grand entryway at the foot of the equally grand staircase. “The things you have said tonight would have been merely embarrassing if they hadn’t also been unkind. And I have never, in all my time in Society, heard anyone speak to a lady of thetonthe way you”—he looked at his grandmother—“just did to Miss O’Doyle. I will endure a lot of things from the three of you, but not that.”
“She is an insignificant girl from a family considered unimportant even in Irish circles,” Father said. “Mother’s comment was, perhaps, overly harsh, but it isn’t as though she spoke a bit severely to royalty.”
Another quick breath to keep his temper in check. “Two things the three of you need to understand. The first: I do not care how ‘insignificant’ you consider any of my friends. I will defend every last one of them against any unkindness you show them.”
Mother’s hand was, of course, already pressed to her heart in a show of injured sensibilities. Grandmother appeared surprised but plotting. Father only looked more annoyed.
“The second is this,” Duke said, “and listen well because I will offer no further warnings. You have, both directly and indirectly, caused Miss O’Doyle pain, and you have done so at a time when she is away from her family and worried for her sister. At a time when you ought to have felt some flicker of human kindness, you have chosen to be cruel.”
For once, his warring family was silent.
“One word, one look of unkindness toward Eve O’Doyle,” he said, “and I will have you tossed bodily from this house.”
