Page 17 of Seductions of a Duke's Daughter (The Duchess's Investigative Society 4)

Demeter bunched a napkin in a fist. “I’m going to kill Blake. How could he not tell me? We spent all yesterday together!”

“He wished to find out what had happened first before worrying you.”

Blake was not the deceitful sort, but he clearly loved Demeter and wanted to protect her from worry. As did they all. No one deserved a beautiful wedding more than Demeter. She was the most kind-hearted sister and had always shied from attention. However, just once, Demeter seemed to have embraced the idea of having a day devoted to her and her fiancé.

“Oh blast.” Demeter chewed on her bottom lip. “Whatever will I do now?”

“I suggested to Mrs. Doyle that there might be another gown that can be used. She is working on it at present.”

“Another gown?” Demeter stared at Eleanor as though she had just declared she was in love with Oliver. “You spotted another gown?”

“I do have some taste and it is quite beautiful I promise.” And she’d had Oliver’s assistance, but she was not going to mention that. “Besides, I am determined to find out what happened to your gown. We shall track it down.”

Understanding entered her sister’s gaze and she nodded slowly. “Perhaps you and I should take a walk later and see this new gown.”

Thanks to her stepmother setting up The Duchesses’ Investigative Society, none of them lacked for investigative skills. These days, it consisted of only Eleanor, her sisters, and Charlotte—a good friend of theirs—but it was enough. Between them they would find what happened to the gown.

∞∞∞

It wasn’t the first time Oliver dined at the Fallons and it wouldn’t be the last, he was certain. However, there was something entirely different about dining here tonight. He couldn’t blame Aunt Sarah, a woman whose loud wit was only matched by the huge green silk turban she wore barely covering long lengths of wild gray hair or the eccentric duke, who barely uttered a word apart from to demand more terrine and smile generously every time one of his daughters spoke.

All the duke’s daughters and their husbands were in attendance tonight—Cassie and Luke, Chastity and Valentine, Demeter and Blake of course. Their brother Anton and his wife Eliza occupied one end whilst he had been put opposite Blake and next to, naturally, Eleanor. If he were dining anywhere else, he would assume it had been deliberately engineered by the mother or the woman herself.

He knew better, of course.

But whilst Eleanor might not appreciate his presence, he enjoyed hers. As hard as he tried, he could not cease looking at her in the candlelight. Her dark hair had been tamed into a simple chignon, one that flattered her high cheeks, and emphasized a determined jawline. Though the simplicity of her pale green gown matched her hair, it flattered curves that kept drawing his eye.

Good God. Anyone would think he was starved for female company, the way his attention kept falling to her neckline. It had only been—what?—two months since he and Eva had ended things.

Two months was long enough, Oliver supposed. He could distract himself with ease if he really wanted to, but he had no taste for quick, impersonal dalliances.

He focused on Aunt Sarah who was regaling them with a tale of a trip to Venice when she had fallen into the canal.

“Of course, Simon tried to rescue me, and fell in too!” she declared. “We looked a state, but I was quite the attractive woman back then and many an eye was on my—”

“Aunt Sarah!” Anton scolded before she could continue.

Aunt Sarah rolled her eyes.

“Is it dessert time?” asked the duke.

“Dessert? I’m scarcely through the main meal,” Cassie complained.

“I’m not one for dessert,” Valentine commented.

“That’s not true,” Chastity said. “Remember that time when—” She clamped her mouth shut and color burst into her cheeks.

Valentine’s throat bobbed and a look passed between the couple that made Oliver smile.

If he were at dinner with his family, an argument about his lack of a wife would have broken out by now, and the rest of his family would be sitting around giving each other cold looks. Dinner with the Fallons was always interesting.

And all the more so given his dinner companion.

“Any luck on finding this mysterious redhead?” he asked Eleanor in lowered tones.

“Not yet.”

“Might she not really exist?”

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