Cornell laughed. “You want satisfaction, Worthingham?” he asked. “You wish to name your seconds?”
“You can count on me, Ralph,” Hugo said from behind him.
“But I fight only with gentlemen, Hugo,” Ralph said. “On the other hand, I punish vermin.”
“No, you don’t,” another voice said, and Ralph very briefly closed his eyes. Graham Muirhead! He had come to throw himself between the combatants and urge them to kiss and make up, no doubt.
“Stay out of this, Graham,” Ralph said.
“Not a chance.” Graham strode past him. “The ladies are my sisters, and I protect what is my own.”
With which words, worthy of Freddie Nelson for bad theatrics, he knocked Cornell down with a blow to the chin that would surely have felled an oak.
“Neatly done, lad.” Hugo’s voice was full of admiration.
Ralph looked at his brother-in-law in some astonishment. He could not see his face clearly in the darkness, but his voice sounded a bit sheepish when he spoke again.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose that answers one question. Did I kill him?”
Ralph looked down at Cornell.
“I do not believe dead men moan,” he said. “But it was not for lack of trying, Gray. I should resent you. I wanted the satisfaction of doing that for myself.”
“You had better return to your guests, Ralph, and put to rest any nasty speculation that is going on,” Hugo said. “Though I do not imagine anyone would care to contradict Bewcastle’s explanation about spiders. Have you ever noticed his eyes? Pure silver and straight out of the wilderness. I doubt anyone has ever contradicted him. You go on up too, Muirhead. You do not want murder on your conscience. Not when you are a clergyman. Come on, then, lad. You cannot moan down there all night. Show some backbone. Take my hand and I’ll help you up. I’ll show you off the premises. There will be a door here somewhere, I daresay, leading straight out to the street. It will save you some embarrassment.”
“A word of advice, Cornell,” Ralph said before following Hugo’s advice. “Stay far away from both the Duchess of Worthingham and Mrs. Nelson for the rest of your natural lifetime. I am not sure I will be able to keep the Reverend Muirhead on his leash if you do not.”
Freddie Nelson, he discovered a short time later, was still in the supper room, talking with great animation and flamboyant arm gestures to a small group of captives who looked as though they would far rather be in the ballroom.
Lucy was dancing with Bewcastle and managing to look both triumphant and terrified. Chloe was dancing with George and was smiling brightly and looking across the room at him with anxious eyes.
Ralph winked at her and grinned—and suddenly her smile was so dazzling that it almost knocked him off his feet.
* * *
“Graham did?” Chloe stared at Ralph in disbelief. “Graham?”
She had had no opportunity for the last hour to ask him what had happened, though clearly something had. It had been whispered about the ballroom that Lord Cornell had insulted Lucy in the garden. But the whisperings had not grown into full-blown gossip and perhaps would not. The Duke of Bewcastle, who had escorted Lucy back to the ballroom and then danced with her, had confronted those who were gathered on the balcony with his exquisitely jeweled quizzing glass half raised to his eye, and apparently that glass wielded by that particular nobleman was considered one of the most lethal weapons in the ton. Or so Gwen had whispered in Chloe’s ear, and Chloe could believe it. How the sunny-natured duchess could live with him, Chloe did not know. One well-placed glance from those silver eyes was surely capable of freezing grapes on the vine. Though he had gone to Lucy’s rescue and made up a story about a spider. He was holding one of the duchess’s hands in both his own at the moment, his head bent toward hers while she smiled and talked.
“It was as neat and deadly a blow as I have ever seen,” Ralph said in answer to Chloe’s question. “It was a privilege to witness it, though I must confess I would rather have dealt it myself. Hugo escorted Cornell off the premises. I do not believe he will be troubling either you or your sister again.”
“Thank you,” she said. “But Graham?”
He grinned at her. “Have I told you how lovely you are looking?”
“Am I?” she asked him. “I am not . . . too vivid? Some people might believe I ought to be still in black.”
“My mother is not,” he said, “or my sisters. And you are wearing this particularly bright shade of green at the specific request of my grandmother. I must compliment her on her good taste, by the way. It is perfect. And as for your hair . . . Well, it would seem you are stuck with that color and I am stuck with having to look at it until you turn old and gray.”
“Ouch,” she said.
“I look forward to growing old with you, Chloe,” he said. “In the fullness of time, that is. I look forward to being young with you first and then middle-aged. I look forward to living all my life with you. Promise not to die before me?”
She did not know whether to laugh or cry.
“Only if you promise not to die before me,” she said.
He laughed softly. “We will do all things together, then, will we?” he asked and raised his head to look about the ballroom.
It was very late—or very early, depending upon one’s perspective. Grandmama and Great-Aunt Mary had gone home after supper, and a number of the more elderly guests had left at the same time. But most remained. There was one set left—a waltz. There had been two others during the evening. Chloe had danced the first with Lord Easterly, her uncle, and the second with Viscount Gilly, who had been perfectly agreeable without making any further reference to the relationship between them. And she had watched Ralph dance the first waltz with the Marchioness of Attingsborough and the second with Lucy.