Bennett’s dining room. “Apparently, His Grace didn’t care to be seated with mere mortals,” Mr. Kestril remarked. Had the duke overturned that wineglass on purpose? Could he truly have been so irritated at not having been granted the precedence he considered his rightful due that he’d left a dinner party before it even started? She wrinkled her nose in disappointment. He hadn’t seemed like that sort of person, but he was a duke, after all. “I am rather surprised,” Mr. Kestril said, echoing her thoughts. “My lands run beside his, and he’s never put on airs. But I gather he’s courting Lady Caroline, and perhaps he felt the meal was beneath his notice when he was not seated beside her.” With the duke’s abrupt departure, the party felt flat and tiresome. Cedric was seated far above her at the table. Lady Caroline was flirting with him with an ostentatious intensity that should have made Merry jealous. It didn’t. Fortunately, Kestril was happy to talk. It turned out that he was a bird enthusiast who could list which birds she might glimpse in Hyde Park but would never see at home in Boston.
