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“ I t’s not that I take issue with the event itself,” Freddy was saying, watching Abe shuffle around the room in search of his cufflinks with narrowed eyes, “or that he invited you. It’s that my brother is having an event and invited you and not me. ”

“That sounds like much the same thing, Bentley,” Abe mumbled, checking for the third time in the top of his chest of drawers.

“It’s not as though I’ve ever snubbed him in a public way like this,” Freddy continued to whine, his eyes narrowing as he watched his housemate. “Perhaps if you put your things where they go, Murphy, you would not have to scavenge for them when the time arose that they were needed.”

“I beg your pardon? How do you know where my particulars go?”

“I don’t,” Freddy snapped, turning on his heel and snatching open the compartment on Abe’s nightstand, which, somehow, was exactly where the cufflinks had gotten to.

“But I know where things do not go, and your belongings seem to always find their way to those places. Waistcoats on stair railings, shoes askew in the sitting room, and one baffling time, your bedroom pillow in a dining room chair.”

“My back was bothering me,” Abe replied, unable to stop amusement from creeping into his tone at the absolute state of the Earl of Bentley. “Are you browbeating me over tidiness, my lord?”

“It’s not only the clutter,” Freddy continued, tossing the cufflinks over the bed and into Abe’s outstretched hand.

“You tracked mud in for every single day of the storm last week. It wasn’t a simple matter of footprints; it was like you had filled a bucket with the stuff and set about anointing all of our wooden surfaces with it when my back was turned. ”

Abe scoffed. “I assure you that I don’t wait until your back is turned to do a damned thing. Can you help me with this?”

Freddy stomped over to the other side of the room, his hair falling petulantly over his eyes. “You are hopeless,” he muttered, handling the cufflinks altogether rougher than was absolutely necessary. “Do you even know how to conduct yourself at a Society gathering?”

“Oh, probably not,” Abe replied cheerfully, shaking out the finished sleeve and then proffering the other one. “I’ll figure it out as I go.”

“I’m just asking you to be considerate,” he said primly, avoiding Abe’s eye as he latched the cufflink. “There are people in this house other than you.”

Abe froze for a moment before a loud burst of laughter escaped from him. “Oh ho!” he laughed, following as Freddy spun and made to storm out of the room. “Physician, heal thyself! Alert the presses. Announce it from the pulpit. Come all to the miracle: Freddy Hightower teaches compassion!”

“Oh, stuff it, Murphy.”

“I cannot,” Abe answered with another burst of laughter, taking the stairs behind the other man. “I truly cannot. Are you forgetting how we met, Bentley? How I bailed you out of a foreign prison and while I was bringing you home, you drugged me and disappeared. You took my ring!”

“I returned that,” Freddy grumbled, though it was clear from the color on the back of his neck that the point had been made.

“You did,” Abe agreed, biting back the urge to antagonize him further. “And I’ve forgiven you, but be reasonable, man.”

Freddy paused in the doorway, taking a deep breath and pushing his flop of blonde hair back from his forehead. “You’re right. Enjoy the evening, Murphy. Send Silas my regards.”

“No regards for Dot?” Abe asked before he could stop himself.

Freddy stiffened, his grip on the doorframe tightening for a moment before he released a sigh, seeming to deflate.

Abe frowned, a pang of guilt hitting him square in the chest. “I’m just teasing, Bentley. That’s all in the past now.”

Freddy shook his head and vanished deeper into the house, leaving Abe alone in the foyer, frowning at how things had taken such an unpleasant turn.

The Fletcher house had never looked quite so fine, as far as Abe knew.

Hell, just two years ago, the place had been stripped of its furniture and was as silent and cold as a mausoleum. In the wake of Freddy jilting Dorothy Fletcher and leaving her alone with her sick papa and not a soul to help, things had likely seemed desolate and hopeless in this house.

Things had warmed and filled significantly since then. Dot and Silas had found one another. Percy Fletcher had regained his ability to walk. A baby had joined the family. There was more bringing warmth into this home than just the direly needed furniture.

It was enough to give a cynical man hope. And Abe had always considered himself a bit of a cynic.

“Mr. Murphy!” Silas Cain called, weaving his way through the party guests. Aside from his eyes being the same startling shade of blue, one would likely never guess that this dark-haired, dour-faced man was Freddy Hightower’s half brother. “You came!”

“Of course I did,” Abe replied, greeting the other man with a hearty handshake and a wide grin. “Much to the chagrin of certain third parties.”

Silas grimaced, giving his head a little shake. “I can imagine. I’d ask how that is going, but I’m afraid I can imagine it perfectly well.”

“Oh, you might be surprised.” Abe scanned the crowd, searching for a head of shiny brown curls with narrowed eyes. Plenty of blondes and redheads were about, but he didn’t see the object of his search.

“Oh?”

He sighed, abandoning his search after a second sweep of the room, and turned his gaze to Silas. “I got a full lecture on my way here for tracking mud into the foyer and leaving my waistcoat on the bannister. He’s turning into a proper old hen.”

Cain blinked at him, apparently uncertain if he was being teased with such a story. “You don’t say.”

“I wish I didn’t,” Abe replied with a chuckle. “He was awfully put out at not being invited when I was. I imagine he’d turn himself completely inside out if he found out his mother had been granted access as well.”

Silas made a noise like a dry cough, motioning to a servant with a tray of punch to come in their direction.

“I can’t say I was thrilled about that, to tell you the truth, but my wife insisted.

After all, how would it look to invite Miss Yardley and not her patroness? Still, it is rather uncomfortable.”

“I won’t pretend to understand the chapbook dramatics of your family ties, Cain, but I do have it on good authority that Lady Bentley knows another person of shared salacious history at this soiree. I daresay she’ll be too distracted to worry about her late husband’s byblows.”

“Charming,” Silas grunted, flattening the line of his mouth. “Is that all I am?”

Abe thought for a moment, tapping his chin. “You also consort with a demon cat.”

Silas huffed, though the quirk at the corner of his lip gave away the sincerity of his discontent.

As though summoned by their conversation, Lady Bentley and Miss Yardley made their appearance, sweeping in through the front doors to the raised interest of several of the gathered guests.

Cain’s bastard status to the late Lord Bentley was not exactly widely known, but neither was it a secret. Abe imagined that there would be a short mention of this scandalous attendance in the gossip sheets in the coming days, even if nothing further of any note took place.

Millie’s eyes found him at Silas’s side almost immediately, her pretty rosebud lips breaking into a quick and demure smile.

Damn him, but it made his heart leap.

“Shall I join you in greeting the lady?” he said quickly, hoping his voice would intercept Cain’s progressing frown.

“What? Oh.” Silas straightened his shoulders and took a sip of his drink. “Yes, I suppose so. Where is Dot?”

She was dancing, as it happened, with her father.

Percy Fletcher’s steps were still uncertain, and he was a man whose posture would never be quite right again, but one might simply think these things were just the result of progressing age. The signs of his apoplexy were lesser by the day. And he positively shone in the presence of his daughter.

Upon spotting her, Silas tarried for such a long time in awe of his wife that Abe had to take him by the elbow and move him toward the Lady Bentley and her fetching companion. But he knew better than to comment upon it.

There were few things that sent Silas Cain into defensive vapors, but any observation of his infatuation with Dot Fletcher was definitely one of them. Or it had been, at least, the last time Abe had attempted it.

The memory of it had him suppressing a smile as they approached the ladies.

“Lady Bentley,” Silas said with a polite (if stiff) bow. “I am honored you accepted our invitation. Miss Yardley, it is a pleasure to see you again.”

“Little Silas Cain,” Lady Bentley said with a dimpled grin, extending her hand as though their reunion were perfectly normal. “My, how you’ve grown.”

Silas gave a self-conscious laugh, kissing the lady’s knuckles in greeting. “I suppose I have.”

“I haven’t seen you since you were in leading strings, my boy,” she said, giving Abe a cursory nod. “Give me your arm and show me about this manor. We have much to speak about, I think.”

“Oh?” Silas managed, somehow completely swept away by a woman a head shorter and two stone lighter than he.

Millie and Abe stood side by side, watching them as they were engulfed by the partygoers.

“Well,” said Abe after a moment, crossing his arms over his chest. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

Millie smiled, tilting her head. “You know,” she said, “I’m hardly surprised at all anymore. Perhaps my capacity for surprise has been damaged after all I’ve seen this Season.”

She turned to him. A spray of teardrop pearls in her hair glinted in the candlelight. She seemed to inhale a little deeper than she had been, color blossoming in her cheeks. and she gave him the slightest curtsy in greeting, seemingly unaware of the tempting view it presented of her decolletage.