Page 3 of The Duke’s Masked Wallflower

“Will we see you at Almack’s next week, Your Grace?”

“Have you heard, you must have, of that Levant fellow, Your Grace?”

The questions came thick and fast after that, likely owing to the punch circling the room on silver salvers. He answered them to the best of his ability, a little woozy from the punch in question, and the brandy he had imbibed with James.

James, he thought. Where did James go after the drawing room?

Just as he was about to ask whether the surrounding gentlemen had seen the marquess, he spied James from across the room. He wasn’t sure how he managed to spot him past his mask and his light inebriation.

It was an almost supernatural ability he possessed, and James possessed it too. The feeling of knowing they were nearby, a sense that could only manifest between people who had spent most of their lives together.

If the gentlemen had continued talking around him, Gabriel didn’t hear a word of it. He reached his free hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers tightly around the bird. The glass talons bit into his hand through his glove.

James stood in the archway to the ballroom with a young woman. From this distance, she appeared to Gabriel as an amorphous, pale shape, but the way they stood had an intimate quality.

It was fleeting, but he saw it. The way their bodies curled toward each other while leaving sufficient room for propriety. Her hands hovering in midair, as though waiting to be caught. The tilt of her neck and her ear angled just enough so that if James wanted to say something privately, he could say it, and only she would hear him.

Gabriel had found himself engaged in similar dances before. The charge of the moment. The heat building between two people who should be cold and proper with one another.

This must have been his news, Gabriel thought, swallowing hard. James is not a rake. He is not like me. He is a serious gentleman. He has never sinned. This woman must be an object of formal courtship.

He didn’t bother announcing his exit before he cut through the group of gentlemen and headed toward the archway. The music was loud around him. Who had told them to play Haydn at this volume? Someone almost crashed into him, and he steadied her before pressing forward.

James must have seen him coming. By the time they were face to face, the woman had disappeared.

“Are you not making your speech soon?” James asked, pursing his lips, like he always did when he was lying.

“I would rather hear a speech from you. Who was she?”

James narrowed his green eyes behind his mask. The tips of his ears turned red. He hesitated a moment, then sighed. “You must mean Miss Warwick.”

“That is for you to decide,” he countered, keeping his voice low. “Who is she to you?”

“She is Charlotte’s younger sister.”

“Your sister-in-law, Charlotte? Very neat.”

“We did not become acquainted with those purposes in mind. There were never any intentions between us.” James glanced around, stepping back slightly from the archway. It was dim and quieter in the hall behind them. The air was cooler. Gabriel’s eyes were fixed on the half-masked face of his friend. “But yes, it is what you are thinking. She has become very dear to me.”

“That did not take long at all to say.” Gabriel released the bird at last and extracted his hand from his pocket, digging into the other one for his snuff tin.

“What do you mean?”

“You could have told me earlier in the drawing room. You could have told me any number of weeks ago. What was the root of your hesitation?”

James looked down at the space between them. And for the first time in his life, Gabriel felt like the elder of the two men. “Quite frankly, I do not know what kept me silent so long on the matter of this engagement.”

“Do you mean to announce it soon?”

“I have asked her father for permission, and he has agreed and blessed us. My brother is content to see me settled, and his wife is also content with the arrangement. And Miss Warwick and I... Well, of course, we are happy too.”

Gabriel nodded. “Then I have nothing more to give you but my congratulations.”

James was silent a moment before looking up again. “It is not the worst thing for a man to take a woman into his company.”

“On that, we may agree,” Gabriel said darkly.

“Permanently.”