Page 32 of The Duke’s Defiant Love

"Perhaps," Julian added, "you should learn to keep your opinions to yourself."

Sebastian gave him a flat look. "You have known me since Eton. You know perfectly well that I am incapable of that."

Amelia laughed again, and Sebastian felt something unexpectedly warm settle in his chest at the sound.

He had become accustomed to her challenging him. He had not expected to enjoy making her laugh quite so much.

Nathaniel, who had been watching the exchange with the quiet attention he brought to any conversation he intended to eventually dissect, cleared his throat. "I confess I am curious, Miss Hartwell, whether your interests extend beyond the classical world. I have been engaged of late in a dispute regarding the legal standing of a testamentary trust, a matter rather less romantic than Athenian constitutions, but one I suspect you might have an opinion on regardless."

"I have read a little on the law of trusts, though I confess I know far more about history. What is the difficulty?"

"The trust was left to the eldest surviving heir, but the eldest son died before the testator and left no son of his own. Only a daughter remains." Nathaniel's tone became more focused, the way it always did when he was testing an argument. "The question is whether she has any claim at all when the trust says nothing about what happens in such a case."

"Then I would think the silence matters." Amelia glanced at him. "If the trust does not say that a daughter is excluded, why assume that was what the testator’s intention? Surely the ambiguity ought to be resolved from the language of the trust itself rather than by supplying a restriction he did not expressly make.

Nathaniel's eyebrows rose.

"That is almost exactly the argument I have been making for the last three weeks."

"Then perhaps you have been making it rather more complicated than necessary."

Nathaniel shook his head, though he was smiling now.

Tristan laughed again, louder this time, drawing a glance from a passing cluster of gentlemen still lingering near the hall's entrance. "I begin to understand, Sebastian, precisely why you have spent so remarkable an amount of time discussing this particular woman while claiming to find her merely tiresome."

Amelia glanced at Sebastian. "I cannot imagine why."

"I never claimed she was merely tiresome."

"You did, on at least two occasions I can recall directly, and I have no doubt Nathaniel could produce a third if pressed." Tristan's grin was unrepentant, turning back to Amelia with open admiration. "Miss Hartwell, I confess I am rarely impressed by anyone as quickly as you have managed it."

"I shall endeavor not to let the achievement go to my head, Your Grace."

Sebastian said very little through the whole of the exchange, content, for once, simply to watch, finding the watching more satisfying than he had anticipated.

He had brought her into this circle expecting, at best, polite tolerance from men who did not extend their genuine respect easily to anyone.

What he found instead was Julian engaging with real interest rather than his usual detached courtesy, Nathaniel abandoning his careful reserve to argue a point with actual enthusiasm, Tristan laughing the unguarded laugh he rarely produced for anyone outside their intimate group, and Amelia meeting each of them without a trace of the careful deference most young ladies performed in a duke's company, holding her ground as easily here as she had in a ballroom full of strangers.

They like her. The thought settled into him with more weight than he expected., warm and slightly unsteady. He watched the three people whose opinions he trusted most extend to her, unprompted, the same genuine regard he had been fighting—with steadily diminishing success—to deby in himself.

CHAPTER TEN

"Ido not see why we cannot simply go this morning. The modiste has had the blue silk set aside for me a full week, and if we wait any longer someone else will have it out from under me." Mary buttered her toast, entirely undeterred by the fact that no one at the table had yet agreed with her.

"We shall go this afternoon, once your father has finished with his correspondence," their mother said, not looking up from her own letter. "I am not traipsing across London on an empty stomach and an unfinished breakfast, Mary, however urgent you believe the blue silk to be."

"It is very urgent."

"It has been urgent for a week, by your own account, which suggests it is not quite so urgent as all that." Their father did not look up from his newspaper either, though the corner of his mouth twitched in the way it always did when he found his youngest daughter more entertaining than he let on. "Perhaps if you set your mind to something other than silk for a little while? I’m certain the modiste might survive the delay."

"I have set my mind to a great many things this week. I simply prefer the silk."

Amelia let the exchange wash over her, only half listening, more occupied with her own tea than the fate of Mary's gown, until her mother set down her letter with an expression that made clear the real subject of the morning had only just arrived.

"Lady Thornton told me yesterday that half the drawing rooms in Mayfair are saying the Duke of Ravensmere has finally found a woman who can hold his attention." Her mother said it lightly, though her eyes cut toward Amelia with rather less lightness than her tone suggested. "I only mention it because I imagine you'd rather hear it from me than from Lady Thornton herself, at some ball, in front of an audience."

"People say a great many foolish things, Mama. I would not put much stock in it."