If her hands were palsied, though, her mind was not.
“That girl,” she said, pursing her lips toward Amaranthus, who stood on the other side of the room, in conversation with a young man he didn’t know. “Who is she?”
“That is Viscountess Grey, ma’am,” Grey said courteously. “My brother’s daughter-in-law.”
Mrs. Fleury’s slightly red-rimmed eyes narrowed in closer inspection.
“Where’s her husband?”
Grey felt the usual qualm in his innards at mention of Ben, but answered smoothly.
“My nephew had the misfortune to be captured by the rebels at the Brandywine, ma’am. We have had little news of him since, but hope that he will soon return to us.” Even if it’s in a box … Hal couldn’t stand much more uncertainty—and he would have to write to Minnie soon.
“Hmph.” The old lady raised her quizzing glass—yes, definitely palsy; he could see the chain trembling against her bosom—and gave Amaranthus a fierce stare through it.
“That young lady don’t act much like she’s pining for him, does she?”
Frankly, she didn’t, but Grey didn’t want to discuss his niece-by-marriage with Mrs. Fleury, who had used her widowhood to advantage and was quite obviously an accomplished gossip.
“She bears up bravely,” he said. “Allow me to fetch you another cup of tea, ma’am.”
While on this errand, he contrived to pass within hailing distance of Amaranthus and William, who were chatting with each other beneath a large portrait of the late Mr. Fleury, bewigged and dressed in plum velvet. This fine impression of a successful merchant was slightly spoilt by the artist’s effort to add a prosperous paunch to an otherwise lean figure; the alteration had required a hasty adjustment to Mr. Fleury’s posture, careless overpainting causing it to appear that the gentleman possessed a ghostly third leg, which hovered uncertainly behind William’s left ear.
There was no impropriety in their poses at all, but he was strongly aware of a charged atmosphere between them. It was visible in the effort they made not to touch each other.
As Grey approached them, Amaranthus accepted a plate of cake from William with such delicacy of touch that he might have just fallen into a privy, whilst William smiled into her eyes with an expression that anyone who knew him could have read, and that Amaranthus certainly did.
Jesus Christ. Surely they haven’t … maybe not, but they’re bloody thinking about it. Both of them.
That was disturbing on multiple grounds. He quite liked Amaranthus, for one thing. And as William’s stepfather, he wanted to think the boy had been brought up better than to make addresses to a married woman, let alone his own cousin’s wife.
But he knew all too well the power of the flesh. Strong enough to be visible to Mrs. Fleury, at any rate.
“John,” said a soft voice behind him, and he stiffened.
“Perseverance,” Grey said, shaking his head as his erstwhile stepbrother came up beside him, smiling. “Never was a man so well named.”
“You’re looking well, John,” Percy said, ignoring this. “Blue velvet always suits you. You recall the suits we wore to our parents’ wedding?” The smile was real, deep in those soft brown eyes, and Grey was astonished and annoyed to feel it run straight down his backbone and tighten his balls.
Yes, he bloody remembered that wedding and those suits. And—as Percy so clearly intended—he remembered standing beside Percy in church as his mother married Percy’s stepfather, his hand and Percy’s touching, hidden in full skirts of royal-blue velvet, fingers slowly entwining, the touch a promise. One Percy had fucking broken.
“What do you want, Perseverance?” he asked bluntly.
“Oh, quite a lot of things,” Percy replied, the smile now reaching his lips. “But principally … I want to talk to Fergus Fraser.”
“You did,” Grey said, setting his half-empty glass on the tray of a passing servant. “At Coryell’s Ferry. I heard you. And I heard him,” he added. “He wasn’t having any of you then, and I doubt he’s changed his mind. Besides, what the devil do you think I could do about it, even if I wanted to?”
Percy’s smile remained, but his eyes crinkled in a way indicating that he considered Grey’s reply to be humorous.
“I had the pleasure of meeting your son in the summer, at Mrs. Prévost’s luncheon.”
No. For God’s sake, bloody no.
“And while I did indeed meet Mr. Fergus Fraser again briefly in Charles Town some little time ago, I had also the privilege of seeing General Fraser at close range during the pourparlers before Monmouth.”
“So?” Grey kept his own smile fixed blandly in place, though he was well aware that Percy could read in his eyes what he was thinking.
Percy blinked, coughed once, and averted his gaze, fixing it instead upon Mr. Fleury’s phantom leg.
“Bugger off, Percy,” Grey said, not unkindly, and went to fetch Mrs. Fleury’s tea.
The sense of warmth and faint sexual excitement remained with him, though, along with a disturbingly exhilarating sensation of Percy’s eyes on his back. It had been a good many years since he’d felt Percy’s touch, but he remembered it. Vividly.
He pushed the feeling firmly away. He wasn’t likely to succumb to Percy’s physical charms nor yet his clumsy blackmail. What if Percy did decide to go round telling the world that he thought William’s resemblance to a Scottish rebel general rather striking? It might stimulate gossip for a brief time, but William had left the army and remained an earl. His position couldn’t really be endangered. All William would need to do, should any question be asked of him, was to give the querent an icy stare and ignore them.
He was going to have to find out what Percy was up to, though, and why. A thread of heat ran down his back again, as though someone had poured hot coffee down his neckband.
Across the room, he saw Amaranthus’s long forefinger come to rest gently on William’s chest, pointing out something obvious.
HER FINGER RESTED—JUST barely—on the largest of the beetles on his waistcoat, a two-and-a-half-inch monster in brilliant-yellow silk with black-tipped horns. And, of course, tiny red eyes.
“Dynastes tityus,” she said, with approval. “The eastern Hercules beetle.”
“Really?” William said, laughing. “Dynastes tityus means, if I’m not mistaken, Tithean rebel. Was Hercules a Tithean?”
“A Titan, was he not?” Amaranthus tilted her head, lifting one brow. Her brows were soft but well marked, a darker blond than her hair.
“Yes. Perhaps that’s what the person who named this thing meant—but why rebel? Is this fellow known to be rebellious?” He looked down his nose at his chest—and Amaranthus’s long, slim index finger. Her wedding band glimmered on the fourth finger, and he took a deep breath that made her pointing finger sink slightly into the ochre silk. She smiled up at him, and slowly withdrew the finger.
“As to the beetle, I wouldn’t know. But you are, aren’t you?”
“Me? How do you mean?”
“I mean that you don’t intend to live your life to please other people’s expectations. Do you?”