“Howell, she doesn’t even see you.” That remark was offered gently. “Lady Joanna might be able to overlook your lack of a title, but you have neither fortune nor prospects beyond a career waiting for old Ballie to go to his reward. She will never see you.”

Was Lady Joanna Peabody the cause of the distance Howell felt from his brother? “Her ladyship doesn’t see you either, brother, despite your fine wardrobe and witty banter.” None of the respectable ladies took Eddie or Howell seriously, not when Elsmore was running around unmarried. The other kind of women were too busy fawning over James, not that paying for a woman’s attentions appealed to Howell.

“And the sheer hell of it,” Eddie said, shoving away from the door, “is that Elsmore sees all the hopeful ladies as so many pretty duties he must stand up with.”

Howell returned to checking figures, which he could do with one part of his attention while mulling over Eddie’s strange mood with another. Ballentyre occasionally roused, but mostly napped, while Howell reviewed ledgers—Eddie had left him one of James’s in addition to all of Ballie’s—and contemplated another twenty years of tidy columns and small errors.

Ballentyre’s clerks were going to pot, that became plain before Howell had finished the first ledger. Eddie was unhappy, that was also obvious and puzzling, and as for Lady Joanna…

Maybe someday, but today was not that day.

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Pepper pot was Ellie’s favorite soup, and yet, she’d barely tasted her serving. Elsmore had taken leave of her after they’d eaten, a bit of gallantry she’d appreciated. For her to have kissed him and then all but burst into tears had to have been as bewildering to him as it was to Ellie.

Voltaire sat on the mantel looking peevish, as if she blamed Ellie for chasing away the person who brought the lovely gammon.

“I kissed him,” Ellie said, dashing away another stupid tear. “I should have known better.”

Voltaire closed her cat eyes and flicked her tail.

The tears were because the duke had kissed Ellie back. Gently, then passionately and gently, and oh…ye angelic choruses, he knew more about kissing than Ellie had ever known about anything. She’d been a fool to yield to impulse with him, but his savoir faire had been equal to the occasion. He was a virtuoso kisser, having so much ability to stir both sensation and emotion—yearning was an emotion, wasn’t it?—that Ellie wanted to simply be still and recall every instant of Elsmore’s embrace.

And then—the most sophisticated kindnesses—he’d agreed that such a glorious intimacy was “of no moment.”

A sharp rap on Ellie’s door nearly startled her out of her chair. “Coming.”

“Don’t open the damned door until you know who is calling,” came an annoyed male voice.