Rules to Catch a Devilish Duke (27 page)

“If I may say so, Miss Sophia, you look stunning tonight,” Henning said, offering her a toast.

Several other men, all unmarried, Adam noticed, raised their own glasses to her and muttered their agreement. Adam wanted to toast her, as well, since stroking his hands along her curves was momentarily out of the question. She’d donned the deep crimson gown he’d ordered for her, the one he’d demanded to see fabric samples for to be certain it would perfectly complement her hair. Now she looked like flame and fire, vibrant and laughing and the most alive person in the room.

To keep from staring, he bent his head and concentrated on his roast turkey. Henning, Timmerlane, and Lassiter had found four of the surviving gobblers and brought them down, though he’d been halfway to hoping that they would successfully escape their fate.

Someone tapped a glass, the sound cutting through the conversation and laughter, and Adam looked up again. And narrowed his eyes as Aubrey Burroughs stood, his wineglass in hand.

“A toast,” Burroughs said with a broad smile as everyone quieted. “To our host, His Grace, the Duke of Greaves, for so generously sharing his bounty.”

“His Grace,” the guests affirmed, lifting their own glasses in his direction and then drinking.

Burroughs was a clever bastard. Adam couldn’t attack him now without looking petty—and jealous. It would appear precisely as Aubrey likely intended, that something he didn’t want to share had been taken.

Swearing silently, Adam glanced at Sophia, to find her fair cheeks even whiter than usual. His anger deepened. Sophia didn’t know that he’d been informed about her conversation with Burroughs. What did she make of the toast, then? That Aubrey was attempting to leave clues about her sharing her own bounty with his male guests? That seemed the most likely explanation.

Distressing Sophia was not allowed. He stood.

Before he could charge around the table to plow into Burroughs, Camille Blackwood gave a small, surprised yelp and shot to her feet. “I have a toast, as well,” she said in an unsteady voice, sparing a quick, annoyed glare at her husband still seated beside her.

Because a female had risen, every man present was then obligated to do the same. Burroughs wasn’t the only clever fellow at the table. And Keating was proving to be a better friend than Aubrey had ever managed to be.

“What is your toast, Mrs. Blackwood?” Lassiter asked with a lazy smile, as everyone lifted their glasses.

She looked at Keating again, and he put an arm around her. “May I, my love?” he asked.

“Certainly. In fact, I insist.”

He grinned. “To good friends. A growing circle of good friends.”

The echo of his words was drowned out by Sophia’s delighted shriek. “
Your
growing circle?” she demanded, grabbing Camille’s free hand and bringing it to her chest.

Camille nodded, finally smiling. “Yes.”

Sophia hugged her friend. The Hart sisters, to their credit, began applauding, offering their own good wishes, as did Lady Caroline. Though Eustace’s end of the table for the most part remained subdued, he was likely the only one to notice that in the general wave of congratulations.

With a grin of his own, he walked around the table to clap Keating on the shoulder. “Well done, Blackwood.”

“Thank you.” Keating grabbed him by the arm, pulling him closer. “Calm down,” he murmured. “I don’t have any more surprises up my sleeve.”

“He wasn’t supposed to mention this one until I had a chance to tell Sophia privately,” his wife chimed in sweetly.

Still smiling, her joy obvious, Sophia leaned up to kiss Keating on one cheek. “Never mind that. I am so happy f—”

“Dash it! You clumsy oaf!”

Adam looked beyond Sophia. Burroughs backed away from the table, his impeccably tailored brown jacket and black and brown waistcoat covered with the remains of a turkey dinner. Beside him, Udgell held an empty plate and swatted a napkin at the mess, smearing it in further.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Burroughs,” he rumbled, his face as impassive as usual. “An unforgivable mistake.”

“Yes, it is unforgivable!” Aubrey snapped around to pin Adam with a glare. “You should do better than hire apes to serve you.”

In the entire fifteen years of Udgell’s service, Adam had never known the butler to drop anything. Ever. “To the kitchen, Udgell,” he said mildly, hiding an abrupt urge to smile. “Go and change your clothes, Burroughs. It’s not the fall of Rome.”

Evidently the affection and loyalty his servants felt for Sophia went even deeper than he’d realized. And Udgell was getting a damned Christmas bonus.

*   *   *

“What says everyone to a game of snapdragon?” Adam asked, strolling into the drawing room with the rest of his male guests on his heels. The faint scent of cigars and port touched Sophia a moment later.

Camille, seated on the couch beside her, clapped her hands. “I haven’t played snapdragon in ages!”

Sophia had heard of the game, of course, but she’d never played it herself. Rising, she pulled Cammy to her feet as two footmen moved furniture out of the middle of the room and set a plain wooden table in the cleared area. A third footman arrived with a large, shallow porcelain bowl in his hands, while a fourth carried a smaller bowl of raisins and a decanter of warmed brandy.

Adam took the bowl of raisins, then produced a small black button from his pocket. “Whoever finds this button,” he said, showing it off, “will receive a boon from me.”

“An estate?” Drymes asked with a grin.

“Your damned horse,” someone whose name she didn’t know stated.

As everyone began suggesting outrageous gifts, laughing and talking over each other, Adam lifted his hand. Without him having to say a word, the room quieted. For a moment Sophia wondered what it would be like to have everyone hanging on her every word and commanding everyone’s attention with a single gesture. Adam did it effortlessly. Even when he was sitting or standing or skating on ice, he drew everyone’s attention. He certainly drew her attention.

“I see that I need to be more specific,” he drawled. “Whoever finds the button,” he repeated, “will receive
this
boon.”

Another footman approached, a small mahogany box held carefully in both hands. When he stopped in front of his master, Adam opened the box’s lid, reached in, and withdrew a delicate silver chain. At the end of the chain, sparkling in the chandelier light, hung a splendid, perfect diamond. It spun slowly, as large as a chestnut and worth more than she could earn in three years at the Tantalus. In five years, even.

Adam put the diamond back and shut the box lid again. “Do you accept the challenge?”

In response to the chorus of “yes,” he ceremoniously dropped the button into the bowl of raisins and swirled his finger through it. “Queue up, one line to each side of the table. You get two attempts, and then move to the back of the line for your next go-round.”

The footman with the brandy poured it into the shallow bowl, and Adam liberally sprinkled the hundreds of raisins all across the flat bottom. The same footman lit a touchwood in the fireplace, while the others went about putting out all the candles in the large room. In the near total darkness, Adam took the touchwood.

“Best of luck,” he said, and lit the brandy.

Blue flames poured out over the top of the bowl, eerie and beautiful in the darkness. The faces immediately around the bowl took on a blue cast, like Christmas ghosts in the stories she’d read as a child.

And then, one by one, their owners giggling and challenging each other, hands darted into the bowl, emerged covered with blue flame, and popped the burning raisins into their mouths. “Oh, my goodness,” she breathed.

“It ain’t as hot as it looks,” Mr. Henning supplied from behind her. “The trick is to get the fire out before the brandy burns off.”

Ahead of them Sylvia Hart yelped, covering her mouth with one hand. “That stung,” she exclaimed, lowering her hand again and laughing.

Well, if Sylvia Hart could withstand it, then so could she. With someone chanting “Button, button, who’ll get the button?,” her line swiftly advanced. With the lights out, it was difficult to distinguish countesses from Tantalus girls until they were directly in front of the bowl, and that felt … nice. She could join in the laughter and playful taunts without being cut or ignored or glared at for presuming to mingle with her betters.

Then it was her turn. She’d been watching the others, so she took a breath and slipped her hand into the bowl. Heat crackled along her fingers, noticeable, but not painful. She grabbed a raisin, lifted out her flaming, brandy-covered hand, and popped it into her mouth.

Hard and smooth landed on her tongue.
The button
. She half choked, stunned, and spat it out surreptitiously under the pretense of coughing. Damnation. This would never do. Taking a towel, she wiped off her hand while keeping the button hidden between two fingers.

Thinking fast, Sophia dipped her hand back into the bowl for her second attempt. She opened her fingers, dropping the button. In the same motion she scooped up a raisin and closed her mouth around the blue flame. Then, forcing a laugh, she moved around to the rear of the queue.

A hand closed over her mouth, another around her shoulders, and pulled her backward.

“Shh,” Adam breathed before she could muster enough breath for a squawk, and she relaxed a little as he towed her out the drawing room door.

“You frightened me half to death,” she whispered, smacking him on the arm when he released her.

“What were you doing in there?” he murmured back. She couldn’t see his face, but his voice had a flatness to it that didn’t sound at all amused.

“Playing snapdragon. I’ve never done so before.”

“You found the button.”

Blast it all.
“I did not.”

“I was watching, my dear. You may be adept at sleight-of-hand, but so am I. Explain yourself.”

How in the world was she supposed to explain this to someone like him? For a moment she occupied herself with wiping the remains of the brandy off her fingers. “I weighed the value of the diamond against what everyone else here would say and think and expect, the suspicions about my honesty and my relationship to you, and the question of how I would explain such a thing to my vicar of a spouse. The diamond weighed less, so I put it back.”

Her eyes began slowly to adjust, so that she could just make out the deep scowl on his face and the way he loomed over her. He would not, however, make her feel like a naughty schoolgirl caught knotting a rival’s hair ribbons. Sophia lifted her chin.

“I thought you didn’t care about my other guests’ opinions,” he said almost soundlessly.

“I don’t. I
do
care what trouble they can make for me, now and later. If gossip turns me into a thief, that could hurt the reputation of The Tantalus Club. I did not agree to Hennessy’s terms for leaving in order to injure the club by my own actions.”

Someone in the drawing room began cheering, the sound swiftly followed by groans and a few irritated-sounding whistles. He turned his head to listen, then looked back at her again. “This is not acceptable.”

“It’s the way it is. Now go give the prize to the winner.”

Adam cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, openmouthed. “Don’t tell me what to do,” he breathed, and vanished back into the drawing room.

Sophia sagged against the wall in the darkness. Until she heard him deliver the diamond to whoever had found the button, she wasn’t going back in there. If he began some nonsense about who the boon truly belonged to, she was running.

Yes, it would have been a lovely bauble, and she could have sold it and put the money in her account. An additional wardrobe or a carriage, or something else she would never be able to make use of in Cornwall, paid for. It simply wasn’t worth it.

“Ah, Lady Caroline. Your boon,” Adam’s voice came, and she relaxed, pushing upright again. Thank goodness. And the diamond was going to the woman Adam would select for marriage, as it should. She could almost ignore the uncomfortable, heated jealousy at the mere thought of it, if she tried very hard.

As the servants lit the candles again, she slipped back into the room. Someone proposed a game of charades, which she sat and watched. She’d attempted charades once at school, only to have her supposed teammates refuse to guess what her motions signified. It would only be worse here. And with Mr. Burroughs in the room, she didn’t care to make herself the center of attention, even for a game. Not tonight, anyway.

Lady Caroline pranced about the room, the diamond hanging from her throat. When Camille took a seat and made a face behind her hand, Sophia laughed. “She’s pleased with herself. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“It was purely chance. Someone had to win. I thought ladies knew how to be gracious in loss or in victory.”

“Oh, let her dance about.
You
have the better news, Cammy.”

Camille grinned. “I’m so sorry Keating blurted it out like that. I wanted to tell you on Christmas Eve, when I asked you to be the child’s godmother.”

Her breath stopped. “Me?” she whispered, a chill running down to her toes. “I can’t. I can’t even imagine what the vicar would make of taking in the child of Camille and Keating Blackwood.” She shuddered. What if she should have a child of her own? Would the Reverend Loines punish it for being hers? For her sins?

“You would manage, if necessary. Given my parents’ reaction to me and to Keating, I don’t want them responsible for a son or daughter of mine if something should happen to us. I trust you, Sophia.” She sighed. “Consider it, will you, my dear? Please?”

The idea of it sent her heart into her throat. At the same time, she knew what it was like to be raised in a household that felt inconvenienced and ashamed merely because of her presence. Slowly, Sophia nodded. For his own sake, the vicar had best keep his hands and his words to himself where a child was concerned. Any child. “I will do it. Just promise me that nothing will happen to you and Keating.”

Cammy hugged her arm. “That is my intention. Thank you. I feel better now.”