If anyone was watching from the Dalrymple establishment where he’d just called, he didn’t want them to think he was running away. Even though he was. He had never understood the duke’s fascination with Acantha Dalrymple. True, she seemed kinder lately, sweeter, the blue of her gowns setting her eyes to sparkling. But he could not shake the feeling that her nature was entirely too grasping. It was as if, having arrived in this place in Society, she must cling to it with both hands or crawl over the backs of others to reach higher. As it was, she had been most unhelpful in unraveling the mysteries of her shriek at the Venetian breakfast. “I do not wish to speak of it,” she’d insisted, long nose in the air. “It is most ungentlemanly of you to remind me.” “I simply wished to ensure that you had taken no lasting harm,” he’d promised her as he’d sat near her in the family’s withdrawing room. Singular space. Several rooms in various ducal properties were arranged around a particular color, but he’d never seen one where every shade clashed.
