Chapter 8 #2
Rhys supposed Bretagne’s eyes had every right to ask that question—his mouth, too. He and Bretagne weren’t actually friends, only friends of friends of friends, which didn’t give Rhys the by-your-leave to pop by unannounced on any old evening.
With obvious reluctance, Bretagne folded his newspaper, set it aside, and unfurled his long, lean form. “Lord Rhys,” he said, “have a cigar with me in the garden.”
And so it transpired a few minutes later that Rhys was outside walking the grounds and smoking a cigar with Lord Percival Bretagne when his sole intention had been to see Miss Birdwell.
Lies, half-truths, and obscured intentions could get one into a right mess.
“So,” said Bretagne on an exhalation of earthy cigar smoke, “if you aren’t here about your father’s ring, then why are you here?”
The directness of the question caught Rhys on the back foot. “Well, I—” It occurred to him that he was terribly unskilled at subterfuge.
He’d only ever been skilled at one thing, it seemed—being a rake.
Bretagne scrutinized him askance. “Are you attempting to court my daughter?”
Now, it was Rhys’s brow’s turn to lift with surprise.
Bretagne didn’t wait for a response. “I’ll say this once. Lucy is not for you.”
Rhys couldn’t even be offended. He knew his reputation. “I’m not here for that reason.”
Bretagne caught his gaze and spent the next three seconds searching it. Finally, he nodded, apparently mollified by what he found there. “Then can you get on with explaining yourself?”
Rhys understood subtlety wouldn’t suffice. “Miss Birdwell—”
Bretagne’s straight dark eyebrows crashed together. “Tilly?”
“She takes meals with your family and spends evenings with you?”
Obviously, he hadn’t come here to ask that question, but he found he wanted to know the answer.
“What of it?”
“Isn’t she Lady Percival’s servant?”
“I never took you for a snob, Osborne.”
Rhys just kept getting it wrong, didn’t he?
Bretagne snorted. “Tilly is my wife’s servant as much as she could be anyone’s servant.”
Rhys didn’t know how to reply to that, so he held his silence.
“Tilly is no one’s servant,” explained Bretagne. “She’s family. Not in the literal sense, of course, but as good as.”
“But she works as your wife’s lady’s maid.”
“Because she wants to.” Bretagne puffed his cigar. “Tilly doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to. My wife has made that very clear to her.”
“Yet she stays?”
“It’s unorthodox,” Bretagne allowed. “But my wife and Tilly have their own relationship.”
Rhys heard the implication. Bretagne wouldn’t be getting in the way of the bond his wife and Miss Birdwell shared.
“An interesting on dit hit my ears a couple of weeks ago, which I’d ignored,” continued Bretagne.
“Quite a few on dits must cross your path.” It was why he’d come to Bretagne with the problem of Papa’s missing signet ring in the first place.
“This one concerned you.”
“Well, I have made something of a spectacle of myself in the past.”
He was buying time and knew it.
“Recent,” said Bretagne. A quirk at the corner of his mouth indicated he might’ve started enjoying himself.
“Oh?”
“You were observed at Mivart’s with a rather eye-catching blonde.”
Rhys remained silent. Nothing was to be gained by lying to Lord Percival Bretagne.
“So, I’ll ask you this once. Why were you gadding about Town with my wife’s lady’s maid?”
A sudden, inexplicable, and utterly unexpected urge to defend roared up inside Rhys. “Her name is Miss Birdwell.”
“I know her name,” said Bretagne, plainly irked. “My question is—why do you?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time.”
Rhys found he wasn’t inclined to bend or stand down beneath Bretagne’s pressure. “A story that’s between her and me.”
That got a lift of Bretagne’s eyebrows, and Rhys couldn’t help feeling a moment’s satisfaction.
Under no circumstances would he betray Miss Birdwell and tell Bretagne the story of how they’d become entangled with each other, which had involved her swiping an invitation not intended for her and sneaking out to a masquerade ball where she’d danced, cheated a card cheat, won Papa’s ring for herself, and generally had one of the best nights of her life.
Rhys could neither begrudge her that night nor reveal it to another living soul.
Once Bretagne comprehended he wouldn’t be getting any information on that subject from Rhys, he said, “You’re here for Tilly, yes?”
It wasn’t a question.
It was a demand.
“Yes.”
“And why is that?”
“She’s helping me.”
Which was both true and untrue, at once.
She was both helping him recover Papa’s ring and obstructing him at the same time.
But more was true, too.
She was helping him in ways he didn’t understand, but felt.
Bretagne’s eyes narrowed into near-black daggers poised to wound at the slightest misstep from Rhys. “You’re not toying with her?”
“No.”
“You won’t hurt her?”
“Never.”
He’d nearly growled the word.
In his entire life, he’d never spoken a word with as much intensity.
Bretagne stubbed out his cigar in a dish outside the French doors. Before he reentered the drawing room, he caught Rhys’s gaze. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”
With that, Bretagne left Rhys outside to reckon with those words, alone and, frankly, unbalanced.
To his ears they sounded suspiciously like permission.
Permission to court Miss Birdwell.
Which, in his nine and twenty years, was a first.