Page 34 of A Deal With a Notorious Devil
He thought he heard the mousy woman beside him murmur something that sounded somewhat like a prayer as she skittered toward the wall, waiting to be led away to some other room by the hostess.
Em and Phoebe had hung back from the group of ladies as they sashayed by on their way elsewhere. “Kit, how lovely to see you,” Em said as she stopped near his chair. “I’m sorry we weren’t placed closer together. I should have liked to chat.”
“Interrogate him, you mean to say,” her husband, Rafe, said as he abandoned his chair, dropping into the now-vacant one at Chris’ left side. “You’ve been champing at the bit to do so since their wedding, admit it. You can meddle some other time; marriage plainly agrees with him.”
A derisive snort from just beyond Rafe’s shoulder, which grated upon Chris’ raw nerves.
“Laurence,” Phoebe chided, and she tipped her nose into the air in that same vaguely haughty manner to which Chris had so quickly become accustomed. “Do behave yourself.” In a show of solidarity, one which he surmised was shocking for its very public familiarity, Phoebe laid one hand upon Chris’ shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze.
“Go,” Rafe urged his wife. “I’ll interrogate him on your behalf. You’ll have to take Phoebe instead. We’ll compare notes later.”
Chris bit back a sigh as they filed out of the room at last, and a bit of the tension which had been sprinkled liberally over the table dissolved. Several of the gentlemen remaining affected a more relaxed air—apparently, as the ladies had departed, it was now acceptable to slouch and to make oneself comfortable rather than hold oneself in stalwart reserve.
Seemed a damned waste of time to Chris. And it made for a wretchedly painful dinner. His knee ached from the effort it had taken to maintain that inflexible posture. He’d be relying heavily upon his cane when it came time to leave, no doubt. He hadn’t let the butler take it from him, and so it had rested at his side all evening.
The men began to congregate at the end of the table near their host as the footmen stationed about the room brought out bottles of port, and Chris’ stomach pitched. He was meant to make polite conversation with these gentlemen. Somehow.
His fingers itched to tug at the uncomfortable tightness of his cravat. His thumb itched; the scarred pad of it scraping against the smooth silk of his glove. He was the only man present still wearing them, a fact which had escaped him before now in his studious efforts to avoid making some other mistake.
Hell. He’d failed before dinner had even begun. Likely before he’d even walked through the door. Phoebe had known it already, too. She’d gone to some lengths to assure him that it didn’t matter. And he wondered—had she meant to spare his feelings in advance?
“So,” said Lord Clarke. “Mr. Moore. I am given to understand that you and Lady Emma share a father.”
That much was now common knowledge. It would not have been cause for offense, except that it had been issued in a suggestive, sly tone—the vague disapproval a gentleman might display of a bastard brought to his table, half-noble or not.
Hell. He’d already failed. Might as well go out with flair, as Phoebe had suggested. “Yes,” he said. “My mother was a housemaid working in our father’s home.”
A contemptuous sniff from the gentleman seated across from Rafe; Lord Berwick. A pompous sort with a weakness for games of chance. “Well,” he said, lounging back in his seat as he lifted his glass to his lips. “No wonder, then, that he neveracknowledged you. A woman in her position ought to know better—”
“Careful, Berwick,” Chris said. “I possess more than a handful of your vowels. It’d be a pity were they to be called in, since I don’t believe you’re in much of a financial position to make good upon them.” As Berwick choked upon his port, his face flushing a mottled red, Chris suppressed a vicious grin. “In fact, my mother’s only mistake was relying upon the promise of a nobleman. God knows they’ve little enough honor to speak of.”
Rafe pursed his lips against something that might’ve been a snicker. But then, in the years they’d worked together rooting out secrets, they had both learned that sorry fact. Between the two of them, Chris suspected they’d acquired rather a lot of incriminating evidence against the majority of gentlemen present. Things that were, if not strictly illegal, then at least morally repugnant. Rafe had been born into this world, and had entirely too many principles to trade upon what he knew, but Chris—Chris had no such standards.
“That’s a hell of an accusation from a man of your stamp,” blustered Lord Clarke, his cheeks going ruddy. “A common criminal and a spy besides. A murderer, if the gossip is to be believed.”
Chris offered a shrug in response. “Murder is a matter of opinion,” he said. “Soldiers kill as a matter of course. Would you judge them murderers?”
“That’s different,” snapped Lord Clarke.
“I’ll say it is,” Chris said. “I have never killed a man for the color of his coat or the country of his birth.”
And that—that had done the job admirably. The table erupted in all manner of rumblings. Lord Clarke looked near to apoplexy. Lord Statham seemed to be in imminent danger of falling into a swoon. Phoebe’s brother made a succession of choking noises, his hand clenched so hard around his glass thatChris expected the stem to snap off at any moment. And Rafe—the only one present whom Chris knew had, in fact, been a soldier in the past—guffawed, no doubt at Chris’ audacity.
He’d done it. He’d failed withflair. And God, it had felt good.
“Good God,” Lord Clarke snarled. “I shall have to have a word with my wife. Can’t imagine what came over her to have invited such—such—”
“I would stop there, Clarke, were I you,” Rafe suggested mildly, though his knuckles had gone white around his glass.
“He’s not fit for polite company,” Lord Clarke blustered, “even if he does happen to be some…some inconvenient relation of your wife’s.”
“He was my friend first,” Rafe said, and there was a subtle threat within the words, as if to remind those present that while he might only have been a second son himself, he held enough sway with his family—and several others—to cause problems, if he so chose. “He’s done more to serve his country than the vast majority of those seated at this table.”
Without the threat of failure hanging over his head like the Sword of bloody Damocles, Chris found a shred of humor in how terribly simple a thing it had been to incite fury. Like a lit firework tossed into a ballroom, with just a few well-chosen words he could create a cascade of chaos. Beneath the table, Rafe ground his heel into the toe of Chris’ shoe, which Chris took to mean he hadn’t hidden his amusement half so well as he ought to have done.
But even if Rafe’s defense had succeeded in cowing a few gentlemen, some, it seemed, had more pride than sense. Lord Statham notched his weak chin still higher, and some hard gleam in his eyes suggested he had not forgotten that he’d been run off with a sack full of oranges lobbed from a balcony. He said, “Really, one has to pity Miss Toogood. Such a shame, to have lost her respectability with a bad marriage.”
“Now, see here!” Phoebe’s brother roared as he slammed one fist upon the table. A flicker of alarm slid across Statham’s face at the shout. Probably, in his eagerness to lash out at Chris, he had forgotten Laurence’s presence.
