“Formercolonies,” Luz Alana corrected with the sweetness of an adder, which his father noted with another one of those sneers.
“Handcuffs,”the man said with a bloodcurdling laugh.
“What are you talking about?” Evan spat out, unable to hide his annoyance.
“Handcuffs. It’s the same word aswife,esposas,” the duke explained, completely ignoring Evan. “The best part is that the word for mistress isquerida, which meansbeloved,” he added with relish as Evan gritted his teeth.
“It must be jarring.” Luz Alana’s voice surprised Evan’s father, and the older man turned to her with an expression of unguarded curiosity. “The British do love all things to be in their place.” Defiance blazed in her dark eyes, and she turned to Evan. “I suppose your father is not accustomed to seeing women with my countenance in the wife box, darling.”
She made sure her tone was as bright as the lights flickering on the chandeliers, but Evan did not miss the way his father paled at her words. “Thankfully my husband was able to surmise without any trouble that the woman he desired and the one he married could be one and the same.”
Evan’s chest puffed up her possessiveness while his father spluttered.
“How delightfully abrupt.” Charlotte’s caustic observation seemed to ricochet off the walls. At one time Evan had thought her one of the most lovely women in Edinburgh, and she was still that.
But it was such a hazardous beauty.
“She’s lovely, Evan,” she said, as if Luz Alana wasn’t standing right there. He opened his mouth to say something, but Charlotte was not done yet. “You could always find beauty in places others might not.”
He rushed to interrupt whatever else Charlotte was intending to say, but once again Luz Alana held her own.
“Forgive me, Your Grace, but I quite disagree with that assessment.” His wife’s smile could cut glass. “European men have always been quite adept in seeing the beauty in women who look like me. It’s ourhumanitythey’ve failed to recognize.” That Luz delivered with eviscerating cordiality. “Women like you see it too. How else does one explain the cruelty of so many mistresses to the women who worked for them?”
Charlotte’s sly little smile faltered, and the duke’s face flushed to an alarming puce. Evan felt some of the tightness inside him loosen. Others might underestimate Luz Alana, butheshould know doing so was a mistake.
“You’ve got a sharp-tongued one, Evan,” his father said, openly disapproving.
“I’m very fortunate,” he said, eliciting a chortle from Luz Alana, but before his father could react the raucous noise coming from the entrance announced the arrival of the cavalry he’d been promised. Beatrice, Gerard, Adalyn, Murdoch and the Leonas breezed in, pushing Evan and Luz Alana out of the receiving line and away from his father and Charlotte. Once the proper greetings were proffered, they all made their way into the ballroom.
“What did you say to Charlotte?” Adalyn asked Luz the moment they reached her, her face alight with curiosity.
“Oh, I just enlightened her on some pieces of history she seems to have missed.”
Evan had to swallow a laugh as their group made their way farther into the room, when his sister leaned in, visibly excited. “There’s the rear admiral!” she said in a hushed tone that somehow still managed to sound like a scream.
Then in an equally loud whisper Murdoch added, “With thecountess.”
“This is a remarkably unfortunate turn of events,” Gerard muttered, just as Luz Alana asked why that was a problem.
“The very, very short version,” Addy said through impressively unmoving lips—when it came to sharing ballroom gossip the girl was practically a ventriloquist—“Evan had a...special friendshipwith the Countess of Killian. He ended it. She made her unhappiness about this rupture known quite vocally. She’s coming to say hello, and the man with her is Charlotte’s uncle, the rear admiral.” Adalyn’s cringe likely mirrored his own face.
This was not a good development.
“Mierda,” whispered his lovely wife, which her friends echoed with equal gusto. “Exactly how many women you’ve bedded will I have to encounter this evening, darling?” Luz asked sweetly, her eye trained on the countess and the rear admiral who were now only a few feet away. Murdoch chuckled behind them, while Evan’s face flamed.
“Lord Darnick.” The countess was a beautiful woman, but she was also an accomplished fencer and an outspoken advocate for women’s suffrage. She’d even been an adventurous lover, but she’d been fickle and temperamental in a way that Evan had found...trying. Her husband, the Earl of Killian, was almost two decades her senior and did not share her views on almost anything. Taking lovers was one of the ways she rattled the cage she was in. He thought that under different circumstances she and Luz Alana could’ve been friends, but the pinched expression in his former paramour’s mouth told him that was highly unlikely.
“Countess, Rear Admiral,” Evan said, aiming for obstinately pleasant. “May I introduce you to my wife, Lady Darnick.” He wondered when the urge to pound his chest whenever he called Luz his wife would subside.
“A wife. Where have you been hiding her?”
Luz Alana frowned at the countess but extended a hand nonetheless.
“Oh, I wasn’t in hiding, I was in theDominican Republic.” If Luz Alana’s smile could cut, this ball would be a carnage. “Then I was selling rum in Paris.”
He was awed by wife’s skill in achieving a friendly tone that was also undeniably dangerous.
“Your gown is very pretty,” the woman commented, eyes sliding over Luz, assessing. “Not Worth. I know his lines,” the woman said haughtily, but Luz remained entirely unaffected. “And it has no bustle, so it must be from an earlier season.”
