Stubbornly Richard turned to the duke. “What million reasons? Name them. Name one.”
Again Cam sighed. “Let’s start with the fact that you’re not Christopher Evans, landowner from Shropshire. You’re Sir Richard Harmsworth and sure to be exposed as such. Sooner rather than later. You’ve been lucky so far that nobody has recognized you.” He made another irritated sound. “You have a real life outside this backwater. You have friends and family and responsibilities to your estates. What is your mother to think if you disappear off the face of the earth?”
The mention of his mother conjured a black mist behind Richard’s eyes. Cam, it seemed, liked living dangerously. He might yet get that fist in the mouth. “My mother has her own life.”
Cam didn’t back down. “Which doesn’t mean she’ll accept you vanishing like the morning dew. You could end up the subject of a criminal inquiry.”
“Tosh. Nobody—especially Augusta Harmsworth—cares if I leave London.”
“When I was at White’s last week, your absence was a hot topic. You surely can’t expect to disappear from the civilized world without people wondering where the hell you’ve gone—and why. There are even bets in the book about your whereabouts.”
“Anything I can make money on?” Jonas asked with a flash of the dark amusement so essential to his nature. “After all, I’ve got inside information on the elusive baronet.”
Irritated, Cam turned to him. “Dear God, I don’t know. There are a hundred theories as to where this dunderhead is skulking. He’s joined the army. He’s run off with an opera dancer. He’s decamped for the Continent because he murdered his tailor.”
“Sykes died?” Richard asked in shock. He was genuinely fond of his tailor, which was more than he could say for the frivolous clodpolls wagering on his location.
“Not as far as I know. But the general consensus is that only a sartorial mishap is likely to rouse Richard Harmsworth to murder.”
“Ha ha,” Richard said flatly. “And to think I looked forward to a pleasant evening with my oldest friends.”
Cam’s voice lowered to urgency. “Richard, this masquerade can’t continue forever.”
Defiance surged. “I like Little Derrick. They’re good people, better people than I’ve met hanging around society, pretending that nobody sneered at me. No one here gives a rat’s arse about the fall of my cravat or the cut of my coat. Damn it, they like Christopher Evans. I like Christopher Evans. I never had much truck with Richard Harmsworth. He was a dashed scurvy fellow.”
Cam’s expression softened, but his tone remained uncompromising. “That’s as may be. But you can’t spend your life hiding under an alias in deepest Oxfordshire. You know you can’t.”
“No, I don’t know,” Richard said stubbornly. “Does this mean you intend to expose me as an imposter?”
“Of course I won’t.” Cam sighed again and turned to Jonas. “Can you talk some sense into him?”
Jonas shrugged, then surprisingly smiled with a spark of devilry. “You know, I’d pay good money to set eyes on Genevieve Barrett. She must be one exceptional woman.”
Chapter Twenty-One
From the chaise longue, Genevieve surveyed her glittering surroundings. The Duke of Sedgemoor had invited his neighbors to dine and the guests gathered to begin the evening. So far, all she’d had to do was smile, but still she felt out of her depth.
His Grace’s drawing room at Leighton Court probably couldn’t compare to the accommodations in his larger houses. But to a girl from a humble vicarage, the gilt and white room with its ormolu mirrors was breathtaking. No wonder her father had returned from his first visit babbling with excitement.
She sipped her champagne, wryly amused that the expensive wine almost seemed part of everyday life. Whatever else she thought of Christopher, he’d broadened her horizons. Recalling the afternoon when he’d ignited those horizons into a thousand blazing suns, she shifted on her chair.
She hated him. Or at least she tried very hard to hate him. But nothing banished her heated recollections of that day on the river. She loathed the way that, despite knowing he was a liar and a thief, her body didn’t despise him at all. Her body wanted him to do it all again.
Do more.
She sought distraction by contemplating Sedgemoor’s guests. From her place before the open French doors—summer made one last, brief return—she could see everyone.
They were a disparate bunch. Sedgemoor was immaculately dressed in black and white and she required no special intuition to recognize a man of uncommon power. She’d expected that. What she hadn’t expected was how handsome he was, in a chilly, too immaculate way. Which was probably unfair. He’d greeted her with apparent pleasure.
He spoke with polite interest to Lord Neville and her father. More accurately, the duke listened to the vicar’s views upon the princes. If Sedgemoor was lucky, he might escape the intricacies of York and Lancaster before pudding.
Her gaze settled next upon Christopher. He lounged against the wall opposite, a sulky expression on his handsome face. Since returning from Oxford, she’d rebuffed his every approach. She couldn’t bear more deceit. Worse, she couldn’t trust herself to resist him.
Earlier he’d walked over to see the duke and Lord and Lady Hillbrook, who she gathered were old friends. He too was in black, stark tailoring only emphasizing his manifold attractions. He wore his fine clothing with an elegance that put even Sedgemoor in the shade.
Apart from the duke, the only people she didn’t know were the Hillbrooks. Even in Little Derrick, she’d heard about Jonas Merrick. The papers had covered his arrest for murdering his cousin, then the miraculous change in his fortunes when he’d been declared both legitimate and a viscount. Appalling scars marked his saturnine features. Just looking at them made Genevieve wince with compassion. The bond of affection he shared with his wife Sidonie was palpable, even to a stranger.
The Hadley-Childe sisters, two spinsters from a manor in the next village, completed the party. Both looked overawed in such grand company.