Page 35 of Her Duke at Midnight
“Decisions?” Bennett perked up, his eyes brimming with excitement. “Decisionimplies that a proposition was offered. Perhaps even a…” He leaned in closer and nudged Adam with his elbow. “A proposal. Yes?”
Adam wanted to kick himself for how he’d fumbled the question. Had a man ever proposed a lifelong partnership with a woman with less finesse?
Marry me.Good God, did he think he was sending a telegram and every word would cost him an additional fee?
“I’ll speak to her again when I can.” Adam hoped Cecily would give him another chance to express the same sentiments, but more eloquently. Though he hadn’t a damn idea what he’d say.
“Perhaps you should go and find her now.” Bennett scanned the room as if looking to see if Cecily had returned to the drawing room.
Without even looking, Adam knew she hadn’t. When Cecily was about, he felt it, like the zing of an electrical current that sparked between them.
“She’s with Lady Fiona. She came to find Cecily and seemed quite ill at ease.”
“Ah yes.” Bennett took a sip of what looked like spiced cider. A cinnamon stick kept getting in the way when he tried to drink the concoction. “Lady Fiona gave that gaggle of gentlemen a bit of a talking-to.”
Bennett indicated a trio of men standing near the corner of the room. From the looks of it, they were already far in their cups. One or two of them were intermittently bursting into the kind of wicked laughter that usually indicated a group of men were discussing topics not meant for polite company.
Adam noted that Lady Derwent, though surrounded by a gaggle of lady guests, eyed the group of men warily.
“I wonder why the Derwents don’t just ask them to retire for the evening.” Adam didn’t see their host among the guests. “And where has Lord Derwent gone?”
“Apparently, there’s some delay with the musicians because of the weather. Otherwise, we’d all be dancing by now,” Bennett said with a longing glance toward the lovely Lady Lara Mercer, who stood among the ladies surrounding their hostess. “Apparently, Derwent has gone off into the village to round up a quartet.”
One of the drunk men let out a roar of laughter, and Adam found he couldn’t stand by and do nothing any longer. He recognized Whitlock and recalled that the man had rebuffed Cecily before she’d come to the library. If the men had been imbibing since then, they were too far gone to even participate in dancing.
“I’m going to speak to them,” Adam told his friend as he started across the room.
“That red hair would look quite nice wrapped around my fist,” Whitlock said far too loudly.
Another man Adam had met on the first day of the house party—Lord Bellwether—let out a lusty chortle in response. “And those lips of hers would look quite nice wrapped around my—”
Adam stopped the man with a hand on his shoulder, then spun him until they were face-to-face.
“Your evening is at an end, Bellwether. Go upstairs, sleep off your drunken excess, and never speak of her again.”
“Speak of whom, Everton? Your newest piece?” The man’s smirk made Adam’s gut twist. And the snickering of the other men lit something primal inside him.
“Go, Bellwether, before you regret it.”
Adam watched as the lecher weighed his options. Adam outranked him, and there was no defense for his disgusting aspersions.
“I shall go, Everton.” He glanced at the two other gentlemen and then back at Adam with a sneer.
After taking a step, as if he intended to depart, he spun back and leaned toward Adam, reeking of whiskey and foul breath.
“Don’t use her up, will you, Everton? Save a bit for the rest of us.”
Adam struck out with the force of his rage. No thought. No true decision. Just a need to defend a woman who’d become as essential to him as his next breath.
Only when Bennett wrapped a hand around his arm did he stop and survey what he’d wrought.
Bellwether slumped in front of him, Whitlock holding him up with an arm braced around the man’s waist.
Adam’s fist smarted with a sharp, searing pain, and blood stained the Derwents’ carpet, Bellwether’s clothes, Adam’s shirt cuff.
“What in God’s name goes on here?” Lord Derwent bellowed from the doorway, still wearing his overcoat, his shoulders white with snow. “Both of you will leave my house this night. We can offer no hospitality in the face of violence.”
Adam wouldn’t quibble with their host. What Bellwether had said was unforgivable, but Adam knew better than to let his temper get the better of him.
