Page 46 of A Duchess Bound
“Unfortunate,” Pontoun said.
“Yes.”
Pontoun was watching him carefully. “I apologize. I was not thinking when I mentioned your father.”
“You don’t need to apologize. The man has been dead for decades now. He can haunt me no longer.”
If Pontoun noticed the lie, he chose not to remark upon it. “I noticed that you encountered Lady Everleigh,” he said.
Gerard nodded. He did not particularly want to talk about her either, given the recent strange things she had said about him, but it was better to discuss her than his father.
“How is she?” Pontoun asked.
“Luminous. Enjoying her widowhood an unseemly amount.”
“Who could blame her?” Pontoun asked. “The late Lord Everleigh was detestable.”
“And ancient,” Gerard added. “I am certain that she appreciates that fossil being gone.”
Lady Everleigh’s story was actually quite sad. As a young miss of eighteen, her parents had forced her to wed the lecherous Lord Everleigh, who was forty years her senior. She had spent her entire youth with that man.
“She once told me that she could not recall a single tender moment with him,” Gerard added, softening a little. “The man was a brute. A monster.”
“To her freedom,” Pontoun said, taking a glass of brandy and raising it in a toast.
“I will drink to that,” Gerard said, clinking his glass against the one his friend held. “Even if she has grown odd of late.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Gerard blinked, realizing too late that he had said more than he intended. He took a hearty swallow of his brandy. “I called upon her earlier in the week, and she said some things that were peculiar.”
Pontoun’s expression became wary. “Are you going to tell me something perverse?”
“Not at all,” Gerard said. “It was more that she sounded like…”
“Like?”
Gerard frowned, thinking. “You are not allowed to laugh.”
Pontoun grinned and leaned forward, suddenly appearing too interested in the subject. Gerard silently wished his friend would return to his morose complaints about the difficulty of procuring a love match.
“I am prepared not to laugh,” Pontoun said, with the tone of a man who was going to laugh.
Gerard sighed. “She sounded like I imagine someone’s mother might sound.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. She told me that I need to be searching for a suitable duchess,” Gerard said. “She is concerned that I have not yet produced an heir for the dukedom.”
Pontoun whistled between his teeth. “Thatdoessound like a mother.”
“I could do without her maternal advice,” Gerard said dryly.
“She is right, though.”
Gerard frowned. “I do not want any advice in that regard from you either.”
“I know. But whatisyour plan? Do you plan to be a rake forever and pursue an endless litany of ladies? And just let the dukedom….fall where it may?”
