Page 27

“Indeed,” Wyndham bit off. “The identities of my true friends and confidantes, for one thing.”

Miss Eversleigh flinched as if struck, and at that moment Jack decided that he’d had quite enough. “I suggest,” he said, his voice light but steady, “that you speak to Miss Eversleigh with greater respect.”

The duke turned to him, his eyes as stunned as the silence that descended over the room. “I beg your pardon.”

Jack hated him in that moment, every prideful little aristocratic speck of him. “Not used to being spoken to like a man, are we?” he taunted.

The air went electric, and Jack knew he probably should have foreseen what would come next, but the duke’s face had positively twisted into fury, and Jack somehow could not seem to move as Wyndham launched himself forward, his hands wrapping themselves around his throat as the both of them went crashing down to the carpet.

Cursing himself for a fool, Jack tried to get traction as the duke’s fist slammed into his jaw. Pure animalistic survival set in, and he tensed his belly into a hard knot. With one lightning-quick movement he threw his torso forward, using his head as a weapon. There was a satisfying crack as he struck Wyndham’s jaw, and Jack took advantage of his stunned state to roll them over and reverse their positions.

“Don’t…you…. ever strike me again,” Jack growled. He’d fought in gutters, on battlefields, for his country and for his life, and he’d never had patience for men who threw the first punch.

He took an elbow in the belly and was about to return the favor with a knee to the groin when Miss Eversleigh leapt into the fray, wedging herself between the two men with nary a thought to propriety or her own safety.

“Stop it! Both of you!”

Jack managed to nudge Wyndham’s upper arm just in time to stop his fist from reaching her cheek. It would have been an accident, of course, but then he’d have had to kill him, and that would have been a hanging offense.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Miss Eversleigh scolded, looking straight at the duke.

He merely raised a brow and said, “You might want to remove yourself from my, er…” He looked down at his midsection, upon which she was now seated.

“Oh!” She jumped up, and Jack would have defended her honor except that he had to admit he’d have said the same thing were he seated under her. Not to mention that she was still holding his arm.

“Tend to my wounds?” he asked, making his eyes big and green and brimming with the world’s most effective expression of seduction. Which was, of course, I need you. I need you and if you would only care for me I will forswear all other women and melt at your feet and quite possibly become filthy rich and if you’d like even royal all in one dreamy swoop.

It never failed.

Except, apparently, now. “You have no wounds,” she snapped, thrusting him away. She looked over at Wyndham, who had risen to his feet beside her. “And neither do you.”

Jack was about to make a comment about the milk of human kindness, but just then the dowager stepped forward and smacked her grandson—that would be the grandson of whose lineage they were quite certain—in the shoulder.

“Apologize at once!” she snapped. “He is a guest in our house.”

A guest. Jack was touched.

“My house,” the duke snapped back.

Jack watched the old lady with interest. She wouldn’t take well to that.

“He is your first cousin,” she said tightly. “One would think, given the lack of close relations in our family, that you would be eager to welcome him into the fold.”

Oh, right. The duke was just brimming with joy. “Would someone,” Wyndham bit off, “do me the service of explaining just how this man has come to be in my drawing room?”

Jack waited for someone to offer an explanation, and then, when none was forthcoming, offered his own version. “She kidnapped me,” he said with shrug, motioning toward the dowager.

Wyndham turned slowly to his grandmother. “You kidnapped him,” he said, his voice flat and strangely devoid of disbelief.

“Indeed,” she replied, her chin butting up in the air. “And I would do it again.”

“It’s true,” Miss Eversleigh said. And then she delighted him by turning in his direction and saying, “I’m sorry.”

“Accepted, of course,” Jack said graciously.

The duke, however, was not amused. To the extent that poor Miss Eversleigh felt the need to defend her actions with, “She kidnapped him!”

Wyndham ignored her. Jack was really starting to dislike him.