feelings went in one direction and one alone. According to reports, Tolliver was more generous.
All this—frolicking, hadn’t Elinor called it?—would be going on for two weeks. The thought wearied him. At least he wouldn’t have to make an appearance more than once a day, to proclaim the motto and begin the Revels. He did so now, rising, his cloth-of-gold coat magnificent in the candlelight.
“Fais ce que tu voudras,” he pronounced the ancient words. “Do what thou wilt.” The resounding cheer made the candles waver, and he smiled faintly.
And then he turned around and left, as the adjoining doors were opened, and the festivities began.
Charles Reading was in the library, sitting cross-wise on one of the leather chairs, his booted foot swinging, a glass of claret in his hand. “You didn’t stay?” he inquired idly.
“As you see. You didn’t attend?”
“As you see,” Reading replied evenly. “Are we getting old, Francis?”
“My boy, you’re a child compared to me,” he protested.
“Oh, give o’er, Francis!” he said in a lazy voice. “I’m eight years younger—scarcely a child. I wonder why you like to fancy yourself older and wiser than anyone else. His grace the Duke of Leicester is in attendance tonight, and I believe the old gentleman turned eighty.”
“I gather his main pleasure at that advanced age is to simply watch,” Francis said, pouring himself a glass.
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“Then why aren’t you there, watching? It might keep your mind off other things.”
Charles sent him a dangerous look. “Other things such as what?”
“Such as your pathetic affection for Elinor’s sister.”
“Elinor, is it? I hadn’t realized the two of you had become so…intimate,” he said with just the touch of a sneer.
Rohan refused to be offended. “I’m enjoying the approach to the summit, my dear. Once reached I imagine I’ll quickly lose interest, so I’m putting it off as long as possible. And you? I trust someone a bit more…approachable has caught your eye?”
“No.”
“No?” Rohan echoed in mock horror. “My dear boy, you are ill. ‘Tell me no more of constancy, that frivolous pretense.’”
“You know nothing about it,” Reading said in a less than equable voice.
“Faith, I’m ‘as constant as a northern star,’” Rohan quoted back cheerfully. “For ‘there is nothing as constant as inconstancy.’”
“I’m not in the mood to swap poets with you, Francis,” Charles said.
“My dear, that voice could almost be called surly. Perhaps you should ride to Château de Giverney and give in to temptation,” he suggested.
“And be her ruination?”
“When has our kind ever cared about such things? Fais ce que tu voudras, child. Do what thou wilt. She won’t object, I promise you.”
Reading swung his head around, gimlet-eyed. “What do you mean by that?”
“Are you going to call me out, Charles? I meant nothing but that the poor chit is enamored of you, and if you choose, you could take advantage of that fact.”
“No,” he said shortly. “Let us talk of other things.”
“Certainly. Do what thou wilt,” he said mischievously. “Did I just hear you growl?”
“I went and looked around the street where you were shot,” he said grimly, changing the subject. “And we will resist discussing whether I wish the bullet had come a little closer. You are damn irritating at times, Francis.”
“It’s part of my charm.”
“I could see no way the shooting could have been an accident. It would have been a tricky shot to make, and I wonder at anyone even attempting it. It could have just as easily hit whoever else rode in the carriage with you, and it was woefully inadequate.”
“Woefully so,” Rohan echoed lightly.
“So who would most like to kill you?”
“Apart from you at this particular moment? The two men who covet my titles come to mind. My dear French cousin Etienne would be delighted to see me dead. He’d come into the title, the estates, and he’d no longer have to sully his hands with common people. He really is the most insufferable snob. He thinks the canaille are subhuman, made only to serve him.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Oh, heavens, don’t tell me you’re a reformer?” Rohan said with deep distress. “I much prefer my creature comforts to a fair and just world. My servants are rightly terrified of me, and I never have to do a thing to prove how heinous I can be.”
“Everyone is rightly terrified of you, Francis.”
“With the exception of you, dear boy.” He thought for a moment. “And Elinor. I imagine that’s a great deal of her charm. Is Miss Lydia terrified of you?”