“Kilgore, this is my sister. Blythe, this is the Marquess of Kilgore.”
She glowered at Callum. “I don’t curtsy.”
Callum looked to Beckford for guidance and found the man rolling his eyes. “My sister is opposed to doing anything required bySociety.”
Her eyes narrowed further, but now at Beckford, and he threw up his hands. “You rang?” she snapped.
“Yes, I’m going out,” Beckford said. “Can you manage things here?”
She plunked a hand on her hip. “Do you really need to ask that?”
“Last time I put you in charge you disappeared,” Beckford shot back.
“I already explained that,” his sister said. “I suppose you would have been happy if I let Lady Frederica die on the streets you claim to control?”
“You know Lady Frederica?” Callum asked Beckford, who looked as if he was imagining strangling his sister.
“Not really,” he said, jerking a hand through his hair.
His sister snorted. “He took one look at the fragile Society lady—”
“I’d hardly call her fragile,” Beckford interrupted, unwittingly contradicting the claim he’d just made that he did not know her.
“As I was saying,” Beckford’s sister growled, “one glance at the lady, and Gabe became as soft as my arse—”
“Jesus, Blythe!” Beckford snapped. “How am I to get you wed properly if you talk like a gutter creature?”
“I don’t want to be wed, properly or any other way. Gabe turned soft when confronted with the lady.” Blythe shrugged. “I guess Lady Frederica stirs his desire.”
“Blythe!” Beckford bit out.
Another shrug from his sister. “I would not have expected it, given how different she is in appearance from Georgette.”
“Who’s Georgette?” Callum asked Blythe.
“Gabe’s first wife. She—”
“That’s enough,” Beckford thundered at his sister and then glanced to Callum. “Are you ready to depart?”
Callum nodded, though in truth, the conversation between Beckford and his sister had been quite entertaining and enlightening. And slightly troubling, Callum realized with a frown. “Beckford, I don’t need to worry that you’ll tell Lady Frederica anything we’re doing, do I?”
Beckford shook his head. “I don’t see her.”
His sister chuckled, serving Beckford a smirk, as if she knew something he was not saying.
“I’m leaving,” Beckford announced, and he strode toward the stairs, leaving Callum and Blythe standing alone.
“If you can send your brother scurrying from the room, then I fear for the man whose heart you steal. You’re certainly no wilting flower.”
She grinned. “I like to think that’s true, but no man will steal my heart, and I doubt I’ll ever meet a man worth granting it to.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“A man cannot, by his very nature, love a woman as much as she loves him. I’ve seen it repeatedly, and I want nothing to do with that sort of one-sided love.”
“I beg to differ,” he said, then headed off after Beckford.
Chapter Sixteen
