His mother sighed. “Then do try not to run off your sister’s suitors. She’s been waiting two years for this moment, and I’ll not have her older and overly protective big brother scaring off the gentlemen.”

Anthony flicked another assessing stare over the crowd. “If they scare that easily, then I’d hardly think they’re worthy of Eloise’s affections.”

“You are doing it again,” his mother pointed out, squeezing an extra syllable into that last word for good measure.

“I’ll be all things pleasant.”

This time, the smile that formed on his mother’s lips turned sad. “If that is even possible anymore, dear son.” With a little shake of her head, she returned her focus to her daughter and the crowd surrounding the young lady, and Anthony gave thanks for that shift in her attention.

He wasn’t even a slight bit offended by his mother’s pronouncement, because he had been so filled with bitterness, his eyes having been opened years earlier to the level of machinations that people—even those who’d been like family to him—would go to.

After that great act of betrayal on his part, Anthony had fled. He’d used the opportunity to see the Continent and the world beyond that. When he’d returned, he’d been more than content to spend his days at his various country properties. This day had been inevitable, however. He’d known it.

There had always been the certainty that when he needed to get ’round to his responsibilities to the Grafton line, or when his sister at last had her Come Out, that he’d be required to immerse himself in this land he loathed, that he’d need to surround himself with the treacherous vipers who were the ton.

He looked out across the room, keeping his gaze just above the activity upon the dance floor and high enough that he was not actually meeting the eyes of any of the other guests. All the people present were largely strangers.

It had been years since he’d attended any affairs. That hadn’t always been the case. After he’d been caught in flagrante delicto with Rhys’ sweetheart, he’d been denied entry to the Brookfield home and had attended whatever function he might find that family at so that he could speak to Rhys, to plead for the other man’s forgiveness.

It’d been an absolution that the other man had no intention of giving.

Though, in retrospect, looking upon the situation with the maturity that life and years had lent him, he now knew that the forgiveness he’d sought had been to make himself feel better. It wouldn’t, however, have undone the heartbreak and heartache his actions had wrought.

Then, despite his best intentions to remain distant and removed from the guests, the crowd shifted, and his gaze snagged upon the Dowager Marchioness of Guilford in a mustard-green gown.