“Yes, charming,” she said, watching his shoulders. They were broad and beautiful. If he didn’t even kiss her good night, she decided, that meant he was incapable.
Alternatively, it could mean that he found her unattractive. No. That option was unacceptable.
He pulled out her chair and she sat down, mentally giving herself a shake. Obviously, her earlier plan wouldn’t work. But she had once boasted of her ability to make any man flirt. Flirtation was halfway to the bedchamber.
This duke wouldn’t see it coming, and Godfrey could take a lesson in adulthood.
She leaned forward, employing the smile that set half of Paris on fire during her twentieth year. That would be the male half, naturally.
“Do tell me about yourself, Simeon?” she cooed. “I feel as if I hardly know you.” In her experience, there was nothing a man liked more than to talk about himself.
Simeon put his heavy linen napkin in his lap. “I am so uninteresting,” he said blandly. “I would prefer to hear about you. What have you done during the years while I was wandering around Abyssinia and the like?”
He was obviously a worthy opponent. He looked genial, friendly, utterly calm—and about as interested as he would be if she were a nursemaid.
“I traveled Europe with my aunt,” she said. “Surely you remember from my letters?” She let just a tiny edge sharpen her words.
The footman was pouring wine and Isidore noticed out of the corner of her eye that Godfrey was drinking with marked enthusiasm. Did boys of that age drink wine? She had the vague idea they were all tucked away in schools; certainly one never saw them at formal dinners.
“I expect that many of your letters did not reach me. I remember getting a note from my solicitor once informing me of some action he’d taken on your behalf.”
“Weren’t you concerned that I might discuss intimate matters in my letters?”
He looked surprised. “I never considered the possibility, given as we had never met. What intimacies could we exchange? Of course I instructed my solicitors to act on my behalf with regard to any missive from my family that appeared on their desk. One never knew how long it would take to get mail, let alone to return my instructions to London.”
“Didn’t you ever wonder where your wife was?”
He paused for a moment and then said: “No.”
Well, that was straightforward.
“I wondered where you were,” Godfrey said eagerly. “I still remember your stay at our house, though it was brief.”
“Impossible,” Isidore said. He was in that gangly stage, where his legs seemed impossibly long. He had the nose of a man and the eyes of a child. “You were only…how old? It was ’73.”
“I was almost three,” Godfrey said. “Don’t you remember playing peek-a-boo with me? I thought perhaps you had come to live with us.”
“I did,” Isidore said, seeing no reason to lie to him. “But I caused your mother such discomfort that my aunt decided it was better that I travel with her.”
He nodded. “The servants told stories about your visit for years.”
She raised an eyebrow.
He had a funny little grin, this brother of Cosway’s. “No one before or after has called the duchess a termagant to her face.”
“There you see,” Isidore said. “What a good thing it was that my aunt agreed to take me with her. The heart palpitations your mother escaped once I left can only be imagined. I trust,” she added punctiliously, remembering that she was speaking to a child and should add guidance, “that you did not follow in my disreputable example.”
“She’s not so terrible,” Godfrey said earnestly. “Truly. She gets frightened about money, and that makes her sniffy.”
Simeon reached out and knocked his brother on the shoulder in what Isidore assumed was a fraternal gesture.
Honeydew entered, followed by footmen carrying covered dishes. They were placed on the side table, just as she had instructed when she was envisioning a seductive meal. Honeydew waved the footmen outside and served the table himself as the three of them sat in utter silence. Godfrey had finished his wine, so Honeydew poured him another glass before retiring to the great house. Godfrey looked interestingly pink, and Isidore decided he was not used to imbibing.
Simeon’s eyes had a kind of ironic laziness to them that she found rather attractive, given that most men’s eyes took on a feverish gleam if she paid them attention, especially with her bosom on display.
“Did you and your aunt live anywhere in particular?” he asked.
He really had ignored all her letters, or not received them.
“We lived in Venice a great deal of the time,” she explained, “as my family is from that city. But my aunt plays the violin, and so we traveled to various European capitals and performed in the courts.”