A beat of quiet ticked by, while Stephen resisted the urge to upend the table. “How can you sit there as serene as a bishop at a baptism when your very freedom is once more at issue? I am concerned for you, and I make it a point to never bother about anybody but family, which you might well not become. I am concerned for Constance and Althea, who will be caught up in your legal scandal even if you never speak your vows, and I am also selfishly disinclined to have a certified lunatic for a brother-in-law. Bad for business, Rothhaven. Very bad for business.”

“Hush, Stephen,” Constance said, “or I will make you hush.”

Constance had enormous self-control. Stephen had no wish to see that control snap in his direction. “I apologize,” he said, “but the situation is dire.”

She sank back into her chair. “We have faced dire situations before.”

Rothhaven’s reaction to a dire situation was apparently to enjoy his supper. “The difference this time,” he said, spearing a strip of roasted beef from the platter in the middle of the table, “is that a young girl also faces a dire situation. Her well-being must take precedence over my own.” He chewed his beef, then used the edge of his fork to portion off a bite of potatoes.

“I wonder if you aren’t truly daft,” Stephen said. “Thirty miles away, a lawyer as crooked as he is determined is plotting your downfall. If that happens, you won’t be permitted to marry, you won’t be allowed to oversee your own finances while your so-called guardian bleeds you dry. All the while, you sit there eating god-damned potatoes rather than doing something.”

Constance had gone silent, which was more unnerving than her display of temper.

“My lord,” Rothhaven said, considering a forkful of buttery potatoes, “do I tell you how to handle your canes? When to exercise your game leg, when to rest it? Do I presume to know the best means of ameliorating the pain it causes you?”

“My leg rarely hurts.”

Rothhaven saluted with his potatoes. “If you say so. I, on the other hand, have epilepsy. Experience suggests I had best leave the tantrums to others.”

Constance took a sip of her wine, her grip on the glass perilously tight.

“I am not having a tantrum,” Stephen said. “When I have a tantrum, I destroy the room.”

Rothhaven looked at him with faint humor leavened by a dash of pity, and Stephen knew he’d had his last room-destroying histrionic fit.