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The other man grinned at him. “You are so deliciously easy to provoke where she is concerned.”
Lily, as Gabriel recalled, preferred it when he concentrated thatdeliciousnesson physical pleasures.
“What did I say to make you smile?” Hellsmere eyed him quizzically.
“I was thinking of Lily,” he admitted.
The other man shook his head. “You will be a double—atriplefool, if you let such a diamond slip through your fingers,” he muttered.
Gabriel was already well aware of that. But if Lily meant to end things between them, he did not see how—
Damn it, he was the Duke of St. Albans.
The arrogant, imperious, the bloody-minded Duke of St. Albans.
A man who had never backed down from a fight or a challenge in his life.
He would not think of doing so now either. Not when it was in regard to something as important to him as Lily now was.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lily grimaced. “I am afraid I cannot agree with the conclusion you have both drawn in regard to the Earl of Shefford having to be the guilty party in the situation you have just described to me.”
Once Lily had instructed a footman to take the message to her mother, she and the two gentlemen had retired to the privacy of the summer house in the garden, where Lily now sat, and the gentlemen paced.
It had given them the required privacy for Gabriel and Hellsmere to tell Lily of their investigations into the suspected spy in Salisbury’s government. A man who was passing on important information to those French people still interested in having Napoleon return as their emperor.
Because it was still rather cold out, Gabriel had insisted that she keep his jacket draped about her shoulders. Lily was grateful for its enveloping warmth.
“Why the hell not?” the Duke of Hellsmere now stopped his pacing to demand.
“Mind your tone and words, Hellsmere,” Gabriel warned the other man darkly.
“Despite our surroundings, I am not a delicate flower around whom either of you need to guard your language,” Lily dismissed. “I have a father and two older brothers who do not choose to behave so thoughtfully,” she assured derisively. “The reason I do not agree, Your Grace—”
“Lucien,” he invited.
“Absolutely not,” Gabriel bit out. “I forbid it.”
“The reason I do not agree, Your Grace,” Lily repeated.
She had no intention, by word or expression of revealing how much Gabriel’s vehement denial of her addressing one of his closest friends by his first name had hurt her.
Even though she dearly wished to tell Gabriel what she felt about him thinking he had the right toforbidher to do anything!
For now, they had far more important things to discuss than her annoyance at his highhandedness.
“Is because, as I have already stated, the Earl of Shefford was not a man to so publicly bring attention and scandal upon himself,” she continued briskly. “The spy you are describing is also a traitor to the Crown and his country. The Earl of Shefford, despite being an unpleasant man in the privacy of his home, was nevertheless a fierce patriot whom I do not believe would ever have betrayed the Prince Regent or his government.”
“Shefford was an unpleasant man in private?” Gabriel said slowly.
She nodded. “Very much so.”
“In what way?”
She sighed. “In that he never allowed his wife or daughters to ever forget what a deep disappointment they all were to him. His wife for presenting him with three daughters, and those same daughters for existing instead of the son and heir he had wanted. After the birth of their third daughter, the countess was unable to have more children, which meant there would never be a son. To that end, the earl no longer so much as spoke to his wife in the privacy of their home, and his daughters were treated as the disappointments to him that they were.”
“Despicable as such behavior is, it does not absolve him from also being a traitor,” Hellsmere reasoned.