She looked up at him with those intensely blue eyes. “I wouldn’t have thought to describe myself as such, but yes, I suppose I am. Your grandmother, too, although she would deny it to her dying breath.”

Gareth felt himself laugh as he watched his grandmother poke the Duke of Ashbourne in the leg with her cane. “Yes, she would, wouldn’t she?”

His maternal grandmother was, since the death of his brother George, the only person left in the world he truly loved. After his father had booted him out, he’d made his way to Danbury House in Surrey and told her what had transpired. Minus the bit about his bastardy, of course.

Gareth had always suspected that Lady Danbury would have stood up and cheered if she knew he wasn’t really a St. Clair. She’d never liked her son-in-law, and in fact routinely referred to him as “that pompous idiot.” But the truth would reveal his mother-Lady Danbury’s youngest daughter-as an adulteress, and he hadn’t wanted to dishonor her in that way.

And strangely enough, his father-funny how he still called him that, even after all these years-had never publicly denounced him. This had not surprised Gareth at first. Lord St. Clair was a proud man, and he certainly would not relish revealing himself as a cuckold. Plus, he probably still hoped that he might eventually rein Gareth in and bend him to his will. Maybe even get him to marry Mary Winthrop and restore the St. Clair family coffers.

But George had contracted some sort of wasting disease at the age of twenty-seven, and by thirty he was dead.

Without a son.

Which had made Gareth the St. Clair heir. And left him, quite simply, stuck. For the past eleven months, it seemed he had done nothing but wait. Sooner or later, his father was going to announce to all who would listen that Gareth wasn’t really his son. Surely the baron, whose third-favorite pastime (after hunting and raising hounds) was tracing the St. Clair family tree back to the Plantagenets, would not countenance his title going to a bastard of uncertain blood.

Gareth was fairly certain that the only way the baron could remove him as his heir would be to haul him, and a pack of witnesses as well, before the Committee for Privileges in the House of Lords. It would be a messy, detestable affair, and it probably wouldn’t work, either. The baron had been married to Gareth’s mother when she had given birth, and that rendered Gareth legitimate in the eyes of the law, regardless of his bloodlines.

But it would cause a huge scandal and quite possibly ruin Gareth in the eyes of society. There were plenty of aristocrats running about who got their blood and their names from two different men, but the ton didn’t like to talk about it. Not publicly, anyway.

But thus far, his father had said nothing.

Half the time Gareth wondered if the baron kept his silence just to torture him.

Gareth glanced across the room at his grandmother, who was accepting a glass of lemonade from Penelope Bridgerton, whom she’d somehow coerced into waiting on her hand and foot. Agatha, Lady Danbury, was most usually described as crotchety, and that was by the people who held her in some affection. She was a lioness among the ton, fearless in her words and willing to poke fun at the most august of personages, and even, occasionally, herself. But for all her acerbic ways, she was famously loyal to the ones she loved, and Gareth knew he ranked at the top of that list.

When he’d gone to her and told her that his father had turned him out, she had been livid, but she had never attempted to use her power as a countess to force Lord St. Clair to take back his son.

“Ha!” his grandmother had said. “I’d rather keep you myself.”

And she had. She’d paid Gareth’s expenses at Cambridge, and when he’d graduated (not with a first, but he had acquitted himself well), she had informed him that his mother had left him a small bequest. Gareth hadn’t been aware that she’d had any money of her own, but Lady Danbury had just twisted her lips and said, “Do you really think I’d let that idiot have complete control of her money? I wrote the marriage settlement, you know.”

Gareth didn’t doubt it for an instant.

His inheritance gave him a small income, which funded a very small suite of apartments, and Gareth was able to support himself. Not lavishly, but well enough to make him feel he wasn’t a complete wastrel, which, he was surprised to realize, mattered more to him than he would have thought.

This uncharacteristic sense of responsibility was probably a good thing, too, since when he did assume the St. Clair title, he was going to inherit a mountain of debt along with it. The baron had obviously been lying when he’d told Gareth that they would lose everything that wasn’t entailed if he didn’t marry Mary Winthrop, but still, it was clear that the St. Clair fortune was meager at best. Furthermore, Lord St. Clair didn’t appear to be managing the family finances any better than he had when he’d tried to force Gareth into marriage. If anything, he seemed to be systematically running the estates into the ground.

It was the one thing that made Gareth wonder if perhaps the baron didn’t intend to denounce him. Surely the ultimate revenge would be to leave his false son riddled with debt.

And Gareth knew-with every fiber of his being he knew-that the baron wished him no happiness. Gareth didn’t bother with most ton functions, but London wasn’t such a large city, socially speaking, and he couldn’t always manage to avoid his father completely. And Lord St. Clair never made any effort to hide his enmity.

As for Gareth-well, he wasn’t much better at keeping his feelings to himself. He always seemed to slip into his old ways, doing something deliberately provoking, just to make the baron angry. The last time they’d found themselves in each other’s company, Gareth had laughed too loudly, then danced far too closely with a notoriously merry widow.

Lord St. Clair had turned very red in the face, then hissed something about Gareth being no better than he should be. Gareth hadn’t been exactly certain to what his father had been referring, and the baron had been drunk, in any case. But it had left him with one powerful certainty-

Eventually, the other shoe was going to drop. When Gareth least expected it, or perhaps, now that he’d grown so suspicious, precisely when he most suspected it. But as soon as Gareth attempted to make a change in his life, to move forward, to move up…

That was when the baron would make his move. Gareth was sure of it.

And his world was going to come crashing down.

“Mr. St. Clair?”

Gareth blinked and turned to Hyacinth Bridgerton, whom, he realized somewhat sheepishly, he’d been ignoring in favor of his own thoughts. “So sorry,” he murmured, giving her the slow and easy smile that seemed to work so well when he needed to placate a female. “I was woolgathering.”

At her dubious expression, he added, “I do think from time to time.”

She smiled, clearly despite herself, but he counted that as a success. The day he couldn’t make a woman smile was the day he ought to just give up on life and move to the Outer Hebrides.

“Under normal circumstances,” he said, since the occasion seemed to call for polite conversation, “I would ask if you enjoyed the musicale, but somehow that seems cruel.”

She shifted slightly in her seat, which was interesting, since most young ladies were trained from a very young age to hold themselves with perfect stillness. Gareth found himself liking her the better for her restless energy; he, too, was the sort to find himself drumming his fingers against a tabletop when he didn’t realize it.

He watched her face, waiting for her to reply, but all she did was look vaguely uncomfortable. Finally, she leaned forward and whispered, “Mr. St. Clair?”

He leaned in as well, giving her a conspiratorial quirk of his brow. “Miss Bridgerton?”

“Would you mind terribly if we took a turn about the room?”

He waited just long enough to catch her motioning over her shoulder with the tiniest of nods. Lord Somershall was wiggling slightly in his chair, and his copious form was edged right up next to Hyacinth.

“Of course,” Gareth said gallantly, rising to his feet and offering her his arm. “I need to save Lord Somershall, after all,” he said, once they had moved several paces away.

Her eyes snapped to his face. “I beg your pardon?”

“If I were a betting man,” he said, “I’d lay the odds four-to-one in your favor.”

For about half a second she looked confused, and then her face slid into a satisfied smile. “You mean you’re not a betting man?” she asked.

He laughed. “I haven’t the blunt to be a betting man,” he said quite honestly.

“That doesn’t seem to stop most men,” she said pertly.

“Or most women,” he said, with a tilt of his head.

“Touché,” she murmured, glancing about the room. “We are a gambling people, aren’t we?”

“And what about you, Miss Bridgerton? Do you like to wager?”

“Of course,” she said, surprising him with her candor. “But only when I know I will win.”

He chuckled. “Strangely enough,” he said, guiding her toward the refreshment table, “I believe you.”

“Oh, you should,” she said blithely. “Ask anyone who knows me.”

“Wounded again,” he said, offering her his most engaging smile. “I thought I knew you.”

She opened her mouth, then looked shocked that she didn’t have a reply. Gareth took pity on her and handed her a glass of lemonade. “Drink up,” he murmured. “You look thirsty.”

He chuckled as she glowered at him over the rim of her glass, which of course only made her redouble her efforts to incinerate him with her glare.

There was something very amusing about Hyacinth Bridgerton, he decided. She was smart-very smart-but she had a certain air about her, as if she was used to always being the most intelligent person in the room. It wasn’t unattractive; she was quite charming in her own way, and he imagined that she would have to have learned to speak her own mind in order to be heard in her family-she was the youngest of eight, after all.