Chapter 5: Two Guests

They gave Pippa and Bryson the blue suite across the corridor from mine.

Rooke's own guards carried their bags up, and Hester stood at the end of the hall and watched with her hands folded.

"The duke has decided you need company," she said to me, afterward, in a voice with no expression at all. "I'd lock your door."

I did not lock my door.

I sat in the armchair by my window with the lamp lit and waited, because I wanted to see who would come.

At eleven there was a soft knock.

Bryson stood in the doorway with a bottle of red wine and two glasses held in one hand, and his best sorry-boy smile.

"I wanted to apologize properly," he said. "May I?"

I looked at the bottle for a second.

[Make him drink first. Not because it's poisoned. Because he'll talk when he's pouring.]

"Come in," I said.

He set the glasses on my table and worked the cork out slowly, with his eyes on me.

"I was out of line at the restaurant," he said. "I'd never usually push a woman. I just couldn't stand seeing Pippa hurt."

"I noticed."

He laughed, a little too fast.

"She's my oldest friend. Not that you're not my friend too! But when it's someone you've known so long, you just react."

"Your oldest friend," I said. "I thought you'd met her through me."

"Right. Well. That too."

He poured, and I held out my hand for the glass.

"You first," I said.

"Sorry?"

"I'm not feeling trusting this week. Humor me."

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