Lucius sharply withdrew his hand and bowed again, to make up for it. As he straightened, he caught Miss Essex’s eyes, across the table. She looked faintly surprised. Even though he’d long ago stopped caring much for his reputation amongst the ton, he felt a pulse of rage. Damned old hag, airing her ridiculous ideas about his family to the whole table.

“Lucius is rather old to be tied to his mother’s apron strings,” Rafe said, his normally lazy tones carrying a sting. If anything, Rafe loathed Lady Clarice more than Lucius did, since in the past year she had demonstrated a fixed determination to become the next Duchess of Holbrook, and nothing short of assault had dissuaded her of the notion.

“Tied to one’s apron strings—well, I should hope not! My own darling son is a man grown, and wouldn’t countenance my interference. But”—Lady Clarice reached for Lucius’s hand again, but he nimbly avoided her—“a mother needs to see her son occasionally, if only to revivify the wellsprings of her heart and being!”

Lucius opened his mouth to utter some commonplace, but Rafe nipped in. “Why, Maitland,” he said, looking down the table at Lady Clarice’s hell-raker of a son, “I had no idea that you were such a useful chap. Here you’ve been running about resuscitating your mother’s wellsprings when we all thought you were doing little more than following the races!”

Rafe’s comment was intolerably rude. It was intolerably drunken. It also gave Lucius time to retreat back around the other side of the table and sit down beside Miss Essex, revising his initial assessment of Rafe as sober: in fact, the man was utterly cast-away. Awkward, what with his wards at the table, but not unexpected.

One of Maitland’s qualities, however, was that he didn’t take offense quickly—a trait that had probably kept him alive during a lifetime crammed with well-earned insult. He merely laughed at Rafe’s jibe and returned to regaling the bottom of the table with a story about the horse called Blue Peter, whom he’d just won in a wager. “His hocks are just right, squarely set, beautiful knee, facing square. He’s young still, but he’ll take a good fifty starts for me, and win a number of those!” His eyes were shining. He leaned toward the black-haired sister, the only one showing any real interest in his tale, and said, “For tuppence, I’d race him this year, though he is a yearling. He never puts a foot wrong, flies along as sweet as a flea on a duck’s back.”

“What a charming analogy,” the blond sister put in. The sharp irony in her voice made Lucius raise an eyebrow: all that honeyed lushness hid an intelligent mind.

Maitland didn’t even spare her a glance, just kept his eyes on the passionate black-haired sister. “A yearling beat a three-year-old at Newmarket Houghton last spring.”

“At what weight?” the blond sister asked skeptically.

“Five stone,” Maitland said, finally turning to her.

The passionate black-haired missionary was nodding as if stars were circling Maitland’s head. In fact, it seemed to Lucius even after only a few seconds’ observation that Lord Maitland was the likely object of that sister’s particular religion. An odd choice at best, and one that would cause Rafe considerable trouble, if it went beyond calf-love.

“Charming,” the blond sister said. “I suppose I have never considered you in the role of an innovator, Lord Maitland. I was under the impression that racing yearlings was not an accepted practice.”

Lucius swallowed a grin and turned back to Miss Essex, who was talking to Rafe. She was wearing one of the most awful garments he’d ever seen, a shapeless black thing that made her appear to have a gorgeous bosom—and a stomach exactly the same size. The dress went out below the collarbone and just forgot to go in again.

She had a slender white neck, though…and slender shoulders too: he could just see their outline through the dull fabric. And from what he could see, her bosom appeared to be real, although the stomach was just an illusion. Under that black cape of a dress, she was—

She turned from Rafe and caught him looking. Her eyes flared. “I gather you are particularly close to your mother?” she asked sweetly.

A faint smile curled Rafe’s mouth. An English miss would never broach such a topic with him, not even in a fit of pique. He was far too big a fish to risk offending; all he’d had from young ladies for years were buttery smiles. “Alas, my mother and I have not spoken these nine years,” he said. “That circumstance makes our closeness debatable.”

Miss Essex drank the rest of her champagne. “I would venture to say that you are in error,” she said, in a conversational tone. “My parents are both gone, and I would give much for a chance to speak to either of them—just one time.”

Her voice didn’t shake, but Lucius felt a pang of acute alarm. “Ah, but it would be different if we shared mothers,” he said quickly.

“Why so?”

“’Tis my mother that chooses not to speak with me,” he said, and wondered at himself. Most of the ton, Lady Clarice amongst them, believed the shunning went the other direction. It must be something to do with Miss Essex’s dark eyes. They gazed at him with such curiosity that it was hard not to answer, even though he routinely avoided questions about his parents with dexterous efficiency.

“How could you know after nine years?” she asked. “Perhaps she is longing to see you. If she is bedridden a great deal of the time, I’m certain that you don’t have opportunities to meet accidentally.”

“We live merely two houses apart. If Mrs. Felton had the inclination to see me, it would be a moment’s work to send me a message,” Lucius remarked.

She looked shocked at that. An innocent, this Scottish girl. Probably she would be a huge success on the market: there were few enough ladies with her beauty combined with that bone-deep sense of honesty.

“Two houses apart? And you don’t speak?”

“Precisely,” Lucius said briskly. “But surely you are correct. Perhaps one of these days we shall meet accidentally, and all will be well.” He wasn’t going to tell some chit of a girl that he had bought a house in St. James’s Square precisely so that such meetings would happen. He had never told a soul how many times his mother had indeed accidentally encountered her only son…and let her gaze slide away as if she’d encountered a particularly repellent rodent.

Miss Essex appeared the stubborn sort, though, and leaned toward him to make another comment. Luckily, Lady Clarice commanded both their attentions.

“My son’s lovely future wife will be visiting us tomorrow,” she was saying. “I am persuaded that you know her, Mr. Felton, since you are quite cultured, are you not? Miss Pythian-Adams is quite the most cultivated young lady of the hour. Apparently the Maestro of the Opera House remarked that Miss Pythian-Adams has a voice to rival Francesca Cuzzoni!”

“I’m afraid that my reputation for cultivation must have been exaggerated,” Lucius said, as a footman placed turtle soup before his place.

Tess stole a glance at him. Mr. Felton clearly considered their conversation about his family to be over. She didn’t believe for a moment that his mother didn’t wish to effect a reconciliation: the poor woman probably dampened her pillow every night, longing for her cruel-hearted son.