Page 61 of Her Heartless Duke

His friend ducked his head with a sheepish grin. “My mother.”

“Then you really should stop listening to ladies’ idle talk!”

All in all, it seemed like it was looking to be a rather bad night for him to be playing billiards. Perhaps, he should really be joining Daniel at the bar instead of listening to gossip from Miles—or Miles’ mother.

Then again, he did not exactly trust his friend to be thoroughly accurate. Men did not tend to pay so much attention to the affairs of women, so the information might have been bent and distorted somewhere along the way.

Or so he hoped.

“Well, I heard she came back to Bennet House after dark a couple of days ago,” Isaac heard one of the gentlemen from the other table say.

“Indeed,” another one confirmed. “Lady Olivia was seen descending from a carriage, properly accompanied by a chaperon, although I was not too familiar with the lady with her.”

“Most probably a servant.”

“Well, that is too bad, really. All the nice young ladies now appear to be unavailable—”

They were talking aboutOlivia.

Isaac immediately felt his blood boil, his temper shooting through the roof as he strode menacingly toward the other table.

“Just what,” he snarled, “did you say about Lady Olivia?”

The gentlemen from the adjacent billiards table looked at him in varying degrees of shock and confusion. No doubt, they had heard about the reputation of the Duke of Langley, the ferocious hero returned from the Peninsula.

Well, he was going to prove to them those rumors they had probably already heard about him…

“What the hell, Langley!” Miles burst out in exasperation, desperately trying to drag him back. “This is not the place to be having a brawl!”

Isaac barely managed to keep himself in check, although his fists were still calling out for that man’s blood.

How dare they talk about Olivia that way? They do not know her the way I do!

And perhaps, therein lay the problem—he knew more about Olivia than he should have allowed himself, more than what was proper.

The blame for all this gossip that now swirled around her could be laid squarely at his door.

“And here I thought she means nothing more to you than Daniel’s little sister!”

Isaac glared at his friend. “He was insulting her honor!”

Miles rolled his eyes. “He most definitely wasnot.”

He had no patience to be discussing this with his friend when he would much rather plant his fists somewhere else.

“Come on. Let’s get you somewhere quieter before you cause more trouble than you’re worth,” Miles sighed. Then, he cast a glance at Daniel, who was beginning to look more than a little foxed. “Bothof you.”

Grumbling, Miles managed to herd both of them into a carriage without much problem, save for Daniel, who protested a little at having been made to leave the bar and his drink much earlier than he preferred.

Later on, when Isaac was back in his rooms in Anderleigh Hall, he could not help but wonder how his entire life order had been upended since Olivia approached him with that ridiculous proposal of hers.

Before her, he had crawled from tavern to tavern, sometimes engaging in the same brawls that Miles effectively prevented just earlier. He had never started one over a woman, though.

I need to see her, he thought.If only to assuage this madness that has taken over me…

For better or for worse, she had changed his life in ways that he never thought she could.

And he would be lying if he said he was not glad for it.