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Over the Viscount’s head—not difficult, Alistair stood taller than everyone in the room—he caught a glimpse of Bonkinbone laughing with a small cluster of men of a similar age. His friends? Acquaintances? Or just sycophants? Agents?

Either way, Alistair knew he’d not be speaking to them.

He might’ve been surprised into speaking to Hattrick, but he’d not make that mistake twice.

After enough niceties, the Viscount’s wife interrupted her husband. “I see another of my friends, Charles, and we must not monopolize the Duke.” She smiled prettily, and Alistair was surprised to realize she actually meant the kind gesture. “Your Grace?”

He nodded, in a bit of a daze, and as the couple drifted away, he was startled by a body on his left.

Alistair couldn’t help the way he flexed his knees and shifted into a defensive position, but Fawkes just twitched a brow. The man moved like a ghost.

“They seemed nice enough.”

Grunting, Alistair straightened and nodded. His friend was holding a glass of champagne but was not drinking it. Instead, the lithe man eyed the gathering, intelligence flickering behind his dark eyes.

“Didnae expect ye to hold a party, Alistair,” he murmured. “Yer new wife talked ye into it?”

How to explain that this soiree was an elaborate ruse to lure a traitor from hiding? And was he even allowed to share details of the investigation? How many people knew about that?

It was safer to just shrug.

His friend seemed to understand. “She’s doing well, yer Olivia. No’ shaming ye at all, despite her lowly beginnings.”

Alistair’s gaze flicked to his left, unable to miss the bitterness in the other man’s tone. Fawkes had never spoken of his family—although someone had paid for his schooling—and Alistair and Kipling had always had the impression he was some lord’s by-blow.

Were those words really about Olivia? Or himself?

Taking a deep breath, Alistair admitted the truth. “Liv…better than…” He trailed off, gesturing to the gathered guests, hoping his friend would understand.

But Fawkes had whirled on him as soon as he’d spoken her name, his mouth agape. When Alistair reached out and shoved his shoulder—a not-so-gentle way of making him quit—the other man shook his head.

“Apologies. Ye…ye havenae spoken since school. At least to me.”

His friend’s expression turned wary.

Oh shite.

Fawkes had always doubted his own worth, and Alistair cursed himself for letting the other man think he’d been left out of an important realization.

So Alistair nodded to where his wife was chatting with Amanda and two other women, gesturing gaily and making them laugh. “Liv…made me.”

It was easier than saying what he wanted to say.

Olivia showed me I dinnae have to be afraid of humiliation, no’ when I’m with people who care about me.

She showed me I can trust ye—and my family and other friends—to accept me as I am, rather than mock me.

She showed me I dinnae have to be afraid.

Fawkes was staring at him in amazement. “Well, God bless Olivia, then,” he murmured.

When Alistair shot him a look, the other man immediately raised his glass to his lips and turned back to the crowd, as if to hide his embarrassment. “Kipling’s no’ here, then?” he blurted, as if desperate to change the subject. “I would’ve thought, him being back and all…”

Kipling was back from Europe? Alistair’s raised brow encouraged his friend to continue.

“Ye didnae hear about the accident which took his uncle last week?”

Alistair narrowed his eyes, considering. He had been busy this last week, but he remembered several articles about the duke’s death in a bizarre hunting accident in America.