The Love of a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke #3)(9)

He paused mid-pour and gave her a questioning look. “Yes, Imogen?”

By the teasing glint in his eyes, she knew he expected her to scold him for his high-handedness. Imogen gave her head a slight shake, tired of being the boring, predictable, lady. “Nothing at all,” she bit out, resenting it perhaps as much as she detested the pitying glances she garnered from everyone except her still gleeful mother. Oh, how disappointed her late Papa would have been of his wife’s mercenary grasping for that coveted title. Loyal to a fault, he would have been almost as disappointed in his wife as with Rosalind’s behavior; gloating over the title duchess she’d snared, uncaring that her elder sister’s heart had been breaking. That was the true pain that remained of the hasty marriage between the Duke and Duchess of Montrose.

“Dare I ask what has you ladies hiding away in the library?” Lord Alex asked, giving his glass a slow swirl.

“Nothing,” Imogen said quickly. It brought his head up. Too quickly. She trained her gaze on Chloe. They’d been friends so long they often gleaned one another’s unspoken thoughts.

Chloe stooped to rescue their collection of scandal sheets. “Oh, we’re merely pouring through the gossip columns,” she said. Apparently, her friend didn’t know her quite as well as she’d hoped. Imogen gave her a silencing look. “We’re trying to ascertain the least popular events to attend.” A silencing look her friend studiously ignored.

“Indeed,” he drawled. Fortunately, Lord Alex sounded about as interested as if his sister had announced their intentions to take their vows in the church and have him serve as witness.

“Oh, yes.” Imogen fought back a groan. Please stop talking. “We’re taking care to avoid the crushes.” She waved a hand about. “Those events where all the most popular gossips are in attendance. You see, that has been my clever plan to—” Imogen stepped on her toes. “Did you just step on my toes?” Chloe asked it with the same shock as if Imogen had turned her puppy into cherry tarts.

“My foot slipped,” she muttered, that slight, now none-too-subtle gesture.

Lord Alex attended them with real interest, now.

Splendid.

Her friend gave her long, commiserative look, which bordered too close to that pitying kind. She glanced away.

“Well?” Lord Alex prodded. “Out with it.”

Chloe firmed her lips and shook her head once. Now she would be silent? Well, there was something for at least belated awareness.

In one effortless move, he leaned across the sofa and plucked the copy of The Times from his sister. Imogen’s breath caught as his well-muscled forearm brushed her shoulder. “Thank you,” he said under his breath. He proceeded to skim the front page.

Embarrassment drove back the momentary lapse in sanity his innocuous touch had roused as he skimmed the pages of the scandal sheet that documented her shame. Imogen shifted back and forth on her feet, making a show of studying the room. Her gaze collided with Chloe’s.

Sorry, her friend mouthed, and then turned with a flounce to her brother. “It isn’t really well-done reading the scandal pages,” she said the way a nursemaid might deliver a set-down.

“No, it isn’t,” he murmured, not taking his eyes off the page. “You really should refrain from that.” Then Lord Alex looked up from the page. He met Imogen’s gaze square on. She tipped her chin up a notch. Daring him to say a blasted thing of the dastardly duke and her duplicitous sister. All of it. Any of it.

“Here,” he tossed the paper over to his sister who effortlessly caught it. “All rubbish, that.”

Imogen swallowed hard. Lord Alex was correct. At his unspoken defense, warmth slipped into her heart and, for the first time in a long time, she acknowledged the truth of that. It was all rubbish. Every last bit of it. After months of dwelling on the hurtful gossip, there was something freeing in that sudden realization.

“That is all you’ll say?” her friend exclaimed, cutting into this momentary weakening of the shockingly gallant gentleman.

“Chloe,” she began. She appreciated her friend’s loyalty, but she also craved her discretion. Even if the bounder before them was only her brother, the indolent Lord Alex.

“Oh, uh, yes. Well, then.” Chloe gave a flounce of her curls, this time correctly interpreting Imogen’s silent pleading.

“What would you have me say?”

Nothing. She’d have him say nothing about the scandal, or her broken betrothal, and assuredly nothing about His Grace, the Duke of Montrose.

Both ladies exchanged a look.

He took another swallow of his brandy. “I suppose I could say any lady would be fortunate to avoid marriage to the arrogant fop.” With that, he tossed back the remaining contents.

That. I would have you say that. Chloe laughed and spared Imogen from finding words. Her heart quickened. He could say that particular something about her humiliation. Lord Alex returned his gaze to her; a dark glint in his cynical eyes. Then the warm, fluttery sensation in her chest was extinguished with a reminder of the truth—with his glib tongue and right words he was no different than any other rogue. It would be silly to serve as voyeur to this exchange between Lord Alex and Chloe and form any opinion but the one she’d gleaned of him over the years.

“I daresay I’d rather wed a mere second son than a lofty duke who’d break a lady’s heart,” Chloe said, in a bid to be supportive.