Richard and Leith exchanged glances, then looked at Morland and Wincombe. It was an awkward situation, but starving themselves wouldn’t help, and perhaps acting normally for the time being might help people find their mental feet.
Correctly divining the general consensus, Leith said, “Thank you, Gearing. We’ll join the ladies.”
The rest of the gentlemen had drawn nearer. Richard and those seated rose, and as a group, they followed Gearing out of the library and across the hall to the drawing room.
Richard was among the first of the gentlemen to enter the long room. Spotting Rosalind standing by a window halfway down the room, he made his way to her, noting, as he did, the hushed voices and wide eyes of the female contingent. As husbands joined their spouses and the younger gentlemen approached the younger ladies, in the quick, quiet questions and the murmured answers, Richard sensed welling curiosity over what, exactly, had happened. Over who had killed Monty Underhill and why.
Given Monty’s character and personality, the general feeling of complete bewilderment, of being unable to reconcile that such a thing had happened, wasn’t surprising. Quite literally, no one could conceive of what might have moved anyone to such an act.
Rosalind was standing a little apart from the other guests. She registered Richard’s approach and acknowledged his presence with a vague nod, but her attention remained fixed across the room.
Richard halted beside her and tracked her gaze to the group of younger ladies and, now, younger gentlemen. Rosalind’sexpression carried a frowning quality as she stared at her younger sister, Regina.
Richard looked back and forth. He sensed Regina was aware of Rosalind’s regard but was pretending to be oblivious. Returning his gaze to Rosalind, he quietly asked, “Are you all right?”
She glanced his way, considered him for an instant, then replied, “Well enough.” Then she grimaced faintly and added, “I’m not the swooning sort.”
Richard nodded. “Duly noted.”With a certain relief, what’s more.
From the doorway, Gearing announced, “My lords, ladies, and gentlemen. Luncheon is served.”
With Pamela and her family absent—including her sister, Susan—Richard’s aunt Agatha, Lady Campbell-Carstairs, was the senior lady present. She rose from an armchair by the hearth and waved her cane at Leith—the senior nobleman—and he obediently crossed to offer his arm.
Together, Agatha and Leith led the company forth. While some of the elders present made an effort to observe precedence, most simply fell into line with whomever they’d been standing beside.
Meeting Rosalind’s soft blue gaze, Richard offered his arm. “Shall we make our relatives happy?”
Her lips lifted a fraction, then she laid her hand on his sleeve and raised her head. “Why not?”
Rosalind walked with Percival out of the drawing room and fought not to let her awareness slide sideways, yet her senses seemed irresistibly drawn to the gentleman pacing with easy grace beside her.
Percival was proving to be something of a conundrum. While on the one hand, fully half her mind was focused on her sisterand what was going on in Regina’s head, Percival was proving to be an effective distraction.
And if she wished to be seen as behaving normally, then it was unquestionably he to whom she should be paying attention.
Over six feet tall, broad shouldered, lean, and powerful, he exuded an air of effortless control somewhat at odds with his undeniably rakish handsomeness. Sable-brown hair, slightly wavy locks in fashionably rumpled disarray, combined with unusually dark-blue eyes set beneath black eyebrows, well-defined cheekbones, and the spare angular planes of a face that veritably screamed his aristocratic antecedents to create an image of male beauty that any female with eyes would notice.
She’d noticed, but she’d told herself that beauty was as beauty did, and Percival’s reputation as a hedonistic rakehell was of far more weight in the matrimonial scales.
And yet…
She’d expected to instantly take against him—on meeting him, to immediately have any number of sound arguments with which to quash the suggestion that he and she might suit. Instead…
The gentleman she’d met the previous evening had been…something other than what she’d imagined he would be.
He’d been—and still was—attentive without being pushy, supportive and willing to step in and assist her as she wished, not as he deemed he should. Certainly, he was far more intelligent and capable than she and, she suspected, wider society had assumed. He was incisive, decisive, and rational in a way that appealed to her. She preferred stability, and with his innate understanding of their world and his straightforward way of dealing with it and, it seemed, her, he was—entirely unexpectedly—shaping up as an excellent prospect, possibly her best prospect, for achieving all she wished for in life.
As they passed into the dining room, she slanted a faintly puzzled, distinctly curious glance his way.
He seemed to feel her gaze. Briefly, he met her eyes, then they reached the table, and he drew out a chair for her almost midway down the board.
She owned to feeling pleased when he claimed the chair beside her and sat. For some incalculable reason, she felt safer with him near. She told herself it was because, with him beside her, she didn’t need to make conversation with anyone else, and he seemed amenable to eating and observing the company without needing to chat all the time.
She used the moment when everyone was shuffling about and sorting themselves into a semblance of appropriate seating to locate her sister. To Rosalind’s eyes, Regina appeared unusually pale, and as she sat between two of the younger gentlemen—Patterson and Fentiman—farther down the table on the opposite side of the board with the other younger ladies and gentlemen, Regina seemed notably subdued.
With typical youthful resilience, the rest of the younger crew had largely rebounded from the shock and uncertainty their host’s murder had evoked. Judging by their expressions and the comments traded back and forth, a sense of curiosity and readiness to be intrigued and, indeed, entertained had taken hold.
Percival offered a platter, and Rosalind was forced to pull her mind and her gaze from her sister. But once the wider company settled to consume the cold collation the staff had put out, as, understandably, most felt weighed down by the unexpected and inexplicable murder, conversation grew sporadic, allowing Rosalind to continue to ponder Regina’s strange behavior.
