Page 68 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

“Good evening, Your Grace,” Steffon said as they wandered off in search of fresher gossip, and Frederick was left briefly, blessedly alone with his brandy and his temper.

It did not last.

“Your Grace!” Lord Wilson’s voice carried across the room before the man himself arrived, trailing two companions and an air of a man already several glasses past his own good sense. He dropped into Thomas’s abandoned chair without ceremony, reeking of cigar smoke and motioning toward Daughtry and Steffon. “I couldn’t help but overhear the two of them. Is it true the mysterious little Birchall girl is back, and hunting for a husband?”

“Her title isLadyBirchall,” Frederick said, very evenly, although he hated the fact that the name was associated with her. “And I would ask you to refer to her as such. With the respect a lady deserves?—”

“We’re at White’s, it’s just a bit of fun?—”

“Lady. Birchall.”

“All right, Your Grace,” Wilson said as he waved it off, entirely unbothered. “The Lady Birchall, then. Can I get you another drink?”

“I am quite fine.”

“Well, I remember her, you know. Pretty little thing, even prettier now I’m told, and a year alone in the country with nothing but her own company to keep her warm.” He grinned at his companions, who laughed obligingly. “A woman that desperate to be married… Well, a man could have considerable fun finding out just how desperate, before he commits himself to anything so permanent.”

The room did not go quiet, as other men went about their games and their drink.

The room did not need to go quiet, because Frederick was no longer aware of the room at all.

He was aware, distantly, of his chair scraping back hard enough to topple, of his hand closing around the front of Wilson’s coat and hauling him up out of his seat with a strength he hadn’t known he possessed until that exact moment.

Wilson’s smug expression collapsed into shock, then alarm as Frederick’s other hand found his throat and pressed.

“Say that again.” Frederick’s voice came out low and entirely unrecognizable to himself. “Say it again, and I promise you, you will not finish the sentence.”

Wilson made a strangled sound, his face going an alarming shade of red. Somewhere behind Frederick, voices were rising, one of them Thomas’.

“Rathbourne, for God’s sake!”

“You’re going to suffocate the man!”

“What is His Grace thinking?”

Hands were grasping at his shoulders, his arms, trying to pull him back, and he held on a moment longer than he should have, a moment longer than any reasonable man would have.

It took the combined effort of three men to tear him loose.

Finally, Wilson dropped, gasping and red-faced, back into his chair.

The room was utterly silent now, every face turned toward him. Glasses hung suspended halfway to mouths, cards were forgotten on green baize tables.

Frederick stood in the middle of it, breathing hard, his cravat askew, and found he did not care in the slightest who was watching. His face was still so hot; he was so angry and mostly at himself.

“Lady Birchall,” he said, to Wilson, then to the rest of the room besides, in a voice that did not shake despite the violence still humming through his hands, “is a lady of better character than every man in this room combined. And I will not stand by while she is spoken of as though she were goods on display for the amusement of men who haven’t half her worth between them. The next man who speaks of her as Lord Wilson just did will answer to me. I trust I have made myself sufficiently clear.”

No one answered him, not even Thomas. Wilson, still wheezing, did not so much as lift his eyes.

Frederick straightened his coat with unsteady hands, set down a coin for his unfinished brandy, and walked out of White’s without looking back.

CHAPTER 26

“You’re scowling at that pillar as though it personally offended you.” Thomas appeared at his elbow with a glass of. “Go and ask her to dance. You’re making the whole room uncomfortable, standing there glowering like a thundercloud.”

“I am not glowering.”

“You are doing a very passable impression of it.” Thomas glanced toward Anna. “Ask her. You almost choked a man to defend her honor. You owe her a dance.”