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“I have no idea.” Her gaze avoided meeting his before she turned to make her way purposefully through the crowded ballroom toward where she might make her escape through the open double doors out into the hallway.
Once outside, she made her way to the room where the ladies’ and gentleman’s cloaks had been placed upon their arrival. Only to find, after retrieving her cloak and turning to leave, that Gabriel had followed her and now stood in that room with her.
That the two of them were completely alone together in a house that was crowded with the rest of the Landers’s guests.
Dear God, did this man have no sense of propriety?
No hint of self-preservation that ensured he remained free from the traps often set by matchmaking parents?
Or was St. Albans simply so arrogant in regard to no one daring to question his behavior that he really could choose to behave exactly as he pleased?
Even if the latter were true, as Lily had already pointed out, that license did not apply to her own behavior. Which she already knew was going to be questioned byeveryone. Some, like her parents and close friends, would do so to her face. Others would prefer to gossip and speculate outside of her hearing.
“Would you please step aside?” she requested when Gabriel remained standing in front of the open doorway.
His boot-clad feet remained firmly in place. “The alliance you made a week ago in my library with my daughter and your other friends means that you should not have been dancing with Maybury when I arrived,” he stated in a hard voice.
Lily felt the warmth of anger enter her cheeks. “We all like to dance, and at no time during our discussion did any of us state we would refuse to dance with a gentleman.”
A nerve pulsed in the duke’s clenched jaw. “So, it is permissible to dance with them, but not to marry them?”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean, as I suggested might be the case and which you denied at the time, that it is also permissible to fuck them without marrying them too?”
Lily gasped at what she believed to be the duke’s deliberate attempt to shock her with this vulgarity. The flintiness she discerned in his scathing gaze and the derisive twist of his lips confirmed as much.
Quite what she would have said in answer to his crudeness, Lily had no idea, because the arrival of another gentleman in the open doorway prevented her from saying anything further.
“I suggest you take advantage of my arrival and leave us, Lady Tremayne,” Lucien Lyons, the Duke of Hellsmere, invited with a gentle smile.
Lily gave one last pained glance in Gabriel’s direction before brushing past both gentlemen as she rushed out into the hallway.
She did not breathe easily again until she was safely seated inside the family carriage and on her way home to Truro House.
No doubt her escape was only fleeting, and the earl and countess, along with her brothers and their wives, who were also attending the Landers’ ball, would all have questions for Lily to answer.
At this particular moment, Lily had no interest in what questions they might ask. Her thoughts were all centered upon escaping the outrageous behavior of the Duke of St. Albans.
The same man she had found herself thinking of constantly during the week of his absence.
Wondering how he would behave toward her when they saw each other again.
She now had her answer to that question.
Gabriel could not have shown her, told her, in any more candid terms, how much contempt he now held her in.
CHAPTER SIX
“You were wrong in your assessment of the situation a week ago, St. Albans,” Hellsmere drawled. “The subject of Lady Tremayne has now become one of great interest to me,” he added softly.
The two gentlemen had followed Lily outside. Gabriel, because he wished to reassure himself that she had departed safely in the Truro carriage. Hellsmere, because… Well, Hellsmere invariably had his own reasons and held his own counsel on most things he did and said.
“I believe I have warned you of how unwise it would be for you to speak of that lady again,” Gabriel grated, waiting until Lily’s carriage had completely disappeared before turning to look at the other man.
“I am simply curious regarding the depth of your…zeal in pursuing her,” Hellsmere voiced carefully.
Gabriel snorted. “It is so zealous that I have been away from town this past week! A week during which I worked Jacobson so tirelessly, he might never forgive me,” he added with self-derision.