A Lady's Guide to Improper Behavior by Suzanne Enoch Page B

attempt at distracting himself.
    Violet snuggled in against his shoulder as she used to do, and he steeled himself as both her arms wrapped around his. “Yes. He complained about going, you know, but my good friend Celia was going to play the pianoforte, and so I forced him to escort me.”
    “Love at first sight?”
    His sister chuckled. “Most definitely. We only realized later that Tess had forced Amelia to go because she reckoned Stephen might be there. She thought they would suit.”
    With a slight scowl he looked again at the lavender butterfly floating elegantly across the dance floor. “Amelia and her cousins do seem very close.”
    “They were all raised together by their grand-mother. That’s her,” Violet said, gesturing with one forefinger. “The Dowager Viscountess Weller. She’s very nice, too. And quite funny. She’s obsessed with cats. She asked us all to call her Grandmama Agnes.”
    Bartholomew glanced over at her—and blinked. Grandmama Agnes wore a hat topped with three brightly colored ostrich plumes, the thing so enormous he was somewhat surprised she didn’t topple over. Despite her advanced age she looked bright-eyed enough, with an open, friendly countenance very like all three of her grandchildren.
    But his curiosity had little to do with grandmothers. “What’s your opinion of Amelia’s family?” he pursued. “The cousins, I mean.”
    “Well, I think Michael is excessively handsome,” she said, and sighed. “Extremely excessively handsome.”
    “Mmm-hmm.” He wondered whether Stephen knew of their sister’s infatuation, but then Violet had had a new beau for every letter she’d written him since she’d turned fifteen. “And the sister?”
    “Tess is wonderful. And very witty. And she knows a great deal about how to encourage or deflect the attentions of a gentleman. So I hope you don’t hate her simply because she spoke a bit harshly to you the other night.”
    Hate wasn’t the word. “Confounded by” fit much better. And “infatuated with.” He shook himself, realizing that his sister expected a response. “I spoke harshly first,” he decided. Then he blinked. “What does she know about encouraging the attentions of a gentleman?”
    “Oh, a great deal. She’s already published a booklet on proper behavior. Anonymously, of course, but Amelia told me it was Tess after she saw me reading it.”
    “Really?” He doubted some of the things she’d said to him were in that booklet.
    “Truly.” The cotillion ended, and Violet bounced to her feet as a young man approached. “Hello, Andrew,” she chirped, and took his arm without a backward glance at her brother.
    Tolly stopped her with his cane. “Introductions, Vi,” he said. This fellow might be known to Stephen, but as Violet had already noted, he’d been away. And he was not a damned sack of potatoes, for God’s sake.
    “What? Oh. Apologies, Tolly. Andrew, this is my brother, Colonel Bartholomew James. Tolly, Mr. Andrew Carroway, Lord Dare’s third brother.”
    With a nod, Tolly dismissed the pair of them. He couldn’t very well tell Andrew that he’d met his older brother, Captain Bradshaw Carroway, at the Adventurers’ Club, unless he wanted to be asked to leave it.
    “How’s the leg?”
    Alexander Rable, the Marquis of Montrose, sank onto the chair beside him. Alarm bells immediately began ringing in Tolly’s skull; the two of them hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words together over the past five years, and there was a quadrille being played thirty feet away. “I still have two of them,” he returned.
    “I heard you lost everyone under your command. And by ‘lost’ I mean they died.”
    The hostility didn’t surprise him; they’d never been on friendly terms even at Oxford. He did not, however, appreciate the path this little conversation was taking. “They were murdered,” he corrected, keeping his voice level.
    “But you weren’t.”
    “Are we playing a game of state the obvious?