Alec thought; emeralds to rival the sparkle of her gaze.
He made his way slowly through the crowd, watching Charlotte laugh and sip her champagne. He’d never seen her look this carefree. The realization rankled so sharply that he stopped and took a grip on his reactions. Her smile looked so natural, the tilt of her head so relaxed. She leaned back in her chair, the lines of her body open and enticing. She’d never appeared so happy with him, never listened to him as eagerly as she seemed to one of Edward’s vacuous friends. Was she shallow, after all? And why should that make him angry?
It didn’t. He wasn’t angry. He stepped closer.
“So she brought us all along to see for ourselves that the drawing room was haunted,” one of the men was saying. “And the cloth on a small table was moving in and out, with an eerie buzzing sound, just as she’d said. So Tony walks over and flips up the cloth, and there’s his bulldog, fast asleep underneath.”
“Buster always snored like a steam engine,” said another man—Tony presumably, chiming in on his cue—and was rewarded with peals of laughter.
Alec let it die down before closing the last little distance to the group. “Good evening.” Edward glanced up at him. Alec was sure that he’d been aware of his arrival and ignored it.
“You all know my cousin Alec,” Edward said carelessly. “Alec, I think you’re acquainted with everyone.”
He’d met them. He always forgot their names. He supposed that was as rude as Edward’s careless greeting, but it was difficult to see it that way.
“Oh, except…” Edward gestured toward two girls who didn’t look familiar.
“Mary Simmons and Susan Blake,” supplied one of the women. Elliott, that was it. She was married to the plump man. The other couple was called Billings. He couldn’t recall the names of the remaining two men, the storytellers. Well, one was Tony, obviously. Uninvited, Alec snagged a nearby chair and brought it to their circle. He headed for a place next to Charlotte, but Miss Simmons and Miss Blake quickly moved to make room for him between them, while Edward draped an arm across the back of Charlotte’s seat, clearly refusing to yield the spot. Alec set his jaw, reined in his temper once again, and sat.
“Alec who?” said Miss Simmons, and giggled. “Edward didn’t tell us your last name, the naughty boy.”
“Wylde,” he supplied. Here was a girl whose name his cousin couldn’t recall referring to him as Edward, as if they’d known each other since childhood. It represented all he disliked about his cousin’s set.
“Ooh, and are you?” breathed Miss Blake. She giggled as well.
Someone should take away her champagne for her own good, Alec thought, and then wondered if he was becoming an intolerable prig.
“Practically worthless,” Charlotte said to Edward. She had to be referring to his uncle’s collections.
“You don’t have any champagne,” observed Miss Simmons. “Tony, he has no champagne!”
Alec strained to hear what else Charlotte was saying. Edward leaned toward her and spoke too low to overhear. He became conscious of a desire to throttle his cousin.
“He’ll have to snag himself a glass,” said Tony. “Can’t pour it down his throat.” He waggled the bottle, and the two girls dissolved in giggles.
He should have told her not to tell anyone, or… the truth would discourage robbery, he supposed. And what harm could it do? The real problem was, he hated to see Charlotte in such intimate conversation with… anyone else. He burned to pull her to her feet and take her away from Edward.
This wouldn’t do. He would not be ruled by irrational feelings—still less stage a spectacle for all to see. He could just imagine the turning heads, the whispers. Aunt Bella would be in the front rank; how she would love it if he made a fool of himself. Damn the girl! Why must she laugh that way, with her head thrown back, her lovely throat exposed as if for kisses? Kisses he could almost feel burning on his own…
Alec realized that the plump Mr. Elliott was speaking to him across Miss Simmons. “Believe you were at Eton with my brother,” he repeated.
“Oh, ah, yes?”
“John Elliott. Cricket.”
Translating this laconic statement, Alec remembered playing with his brother on the school eleven. He hadn’t known him well outside the playing fields.
“Alec here was a cracking bowler,” Mr. Elliott told the others. “Mainly thanks to him we trounced Harrow at Lord’s three years running.”
Everyone looked at him. What did one