“Once I fill the position of my duchess, I’ll be free to take a mistress, a long-term lover I can keep by my side.”
“You’d think to make Minerva your lover?”
Royce nodded. “Yes.”
He wasn’t surprised by the silence that followed, but when it lengthened, he frowned and glanced at Hamish. “You were supposed to clout me over the ear and tell me I shouldn’t have such lecherous thoughts about a lady like Minerva Chesterton.”
Hamish glanced at him, then shrugged. “In that department, who am I to judge? I’m me, you’re you, and our father was something else again. But”—tilting his head, he stared toward Wolverstone—“strange to say, I could see it might work—you marrying one of those hoity ton misses, and having Minerva as your lover-cum-chatelaine.”
Royce grunted. “It would work, if she wasn’t unresponsive to me.”
Hamish frowned. “About that…have you tried?”
“To seduce her? No. Just think—I have to work closely with her, need to interact with her on a daily basis. If I made an advance and she rejected me, it would make life hellishly awkward for us both. And what if, after that, she decided to leave immediately despite her vows? I can’t go that route.”
He shifted on the wall. “Besides, if you want the honest truth, I’ve never seduced a woman in my life—I wouldn’t have the first clue how to go about it.”
Hamish overbalanced and fell off the wall again.
Where was Royce? What was his nemesis up to?
Although the bulk of the guests had left, Allardyce, thank heaven, among them, enough remained for him to feel confident he still had sufficient cover, but the thinning crowd should have made his cousin easier to see, to keep track of.
In the billiard room with his male cousins, he played, laughed, and joked, and inwardly obsessed over what Royce might be doing. He wasn’t with Minerva, who was sitting with the grandes dames, and he wasn’t in his study because his footman wasn’t standing outside the door.
He hadn’t wanted to come to Wolverstone, but now he was there, the opportunity to linger, mingling with his other cousins who, together with Royce’s sisters, were planning what would amount to a highly select house party to capitalize on the fact they were there, together and out of sight of the ton, and, more importantly, their spouses, was tempting.
Yet his long-standing fear—that if Royce were to see him, were to look at him often enough, those all-seeing dark eyes would strike through his mask and Royce would see the truth, would know and act—remained, the nearness to his nemesis keeping it forever fermenting in one part of his brain.
From the first step he’d taken down the long road to becoming the successful—still living—traitorous spy he was, he’d known that the one being above all others he had to fear was Royce. Because once Royce knew, Royce would kill him without remorse. Not because he was an enemy, a traitor, not because he’d struck at Royce, but because he was family. Royce would not hesitate to erase such a blot on the family’s escutcheon.
Royce was far more like his father than he believed.
For years he’d carried his fear inside him, held close, a smoldering, cankerous coal forever burning a hole in his gut.
Yet now temptation whispered. While so many of his cousins remained at Wolverstone, he, too, could stay.
And over the years of living with his fear, of coming to know it so intimately, he’d realized there was, in fact, one way to make the living torment end.
For years he’d thought it could only end with his death.
Recently he’d realized it could end with Royce’s.
Six
Royce walked into the drawing room that evening more uncertain about a woman than he’d ever been in his life.
After Hamish had staggered to his feet a second time, he’d made a number of suggestions, not all of which had been in jest. Yet the instant Royce’s gaze landed on Minerva, he rejected Hamish’s principal thesis—that his chatelaine was no more immune to him than the average lady, but was concealing her reactions.
From him? Gauging others was one of his strengths, one he’d exercised daily over the past sixteen years; she’d have to possess the most amazing control to hide such an awareness of him, from him.
As if sensing his regard, she turned and saw him; leaving the group with whom she’d been conversing, she glided to him. “Did you find the more detailed list of candidates I left on your desk?”
Her voice was cool, serene. She was annoyed with his treatment of her initial list.
“Yes.” There was nothing subtle about his tone.
Her eyes locked with his. “Have you read it?”