Page 5 of The Duke’s Defiant Love

"I considered it."

"He did," Tristan confirmed. "I received a note this morning threatening precisely that. I informed him that a duke who has attended exactly one social function in a fortnight cannot plausibly claim chronic illness without every matchmaking mother in London descending on Ravensmere House with beef tea."

"I would have accepted the beef tea over this."

"You say that," Nathaniel said, joining them at last, smoothing his cravat back into submission, "and yet here you are, three minutes into the evening, already looking for the nearest wall to stand against. Some things do not change."

"Some things," Tristan agreed, "are not meant to. Case in point, Sebastian. Already, Lady Aldridge is composing the next scandal sheet in her head."

"Given his reputation," Nathaniel said, grey eyes flicking over Sebastian with dry amusement, "I imagine she has a great deal of material to work with."

"A reputation I have never once denied earning."

"No," Julian said, with dry amusement, "though I notice you've grown considerably more discreet about it since the Season began. Careful, Sebastian. People will start believing the scholarship is the whole of you, and then where will the Circle's reputation be?"

"In ruins, presumably, the moment anyone discovers what actually happens at our meetings."

"Our meetings," Tristan said gravely, "are a rigorous academic pursuit."

"Our meetings," Nathaniel corrected, "have not featured a genuine text in eighteen months, unless one counts the wager Tristan lost to Julian over which of Lord Ashby's twin nieces would marry first."

"That required considerable scholarship. I researched extensively."

"You spent a fortnight at their family's hunting lodge."

"In the name of research." Tristan spread his hands, entirely unrepentant, and the four of them laughed; this was the only thing London had never managed to take from them.

This. Sebastian let himself feel it, briefly, the rare ease of being known without having to perform anything for the privilege. It was the only tolerable part of any evening like this one.

He was fond of women, fond enough that half the room's whispered rumors about him carried at least a grain of truth, but he had never once mistaken that fondness for anything requiring a ring, and the four of them, alone, near this window, were the only people in London who had never once asked him to explain the difference.

They had all weathered Eton together, and Cambridge after it, and the deaths of three fathers between them, and it took no effort at all to fall back into the old shorthand, the arguments picked up mid-sentence as though they had never set them down.

"...You cannot possibly believe that."

"I believe precisely what I said."

Tristan looked at him over the rim of his glass.

"That women are incapable of recognizing a rogue when they see one?"

Sebastian took the drink a passing footman offered, and glanced toward the other side of the ballroom.

"Yes." he took a hearty swig from his drink. "I have yet to see one who proved me wrong, which is precisely why I have so little patience for the argument you're all about to make."

"There is no argument yet," Nathaniel said. "You have simply announced you intend to win one."

"I have already won it. My paper on the subject was published in March." Sebastian allowed himself the smallest, most insufferable smile. "Universities are built on discipline and tradition, gentlemen. Centuries of it. A woman's natural sensibilities were never designed for that kind of rigor, whatever her intelligence otherwise."

Nathaniel laughed.

"At last, a scholarly conclusion with which I agree."

Tristan looked offended.

"I have no idea what you mean."

"You sent three flowers to Lady Wexford last Season," Nathaniel reminded him.