He snorted. “D-do I take you a-as one welcomed i-into their fold?”
“No,” she said automatically.
A slight frown played on his lips.
“You are too nice,” she said honestly.
Her words raised a grin. How very blessed the Edgertons were. They had not only family, but also friends. It was wrong to begrudge people who’d given her everything, this special something, and yet, she’d trade a portion of her soul for such luck. “Thank you for your support. I imagine it cannot be easy to dance attendance with,” a bastard. “One such as me.”
He snorted. “D-don’t be silly.” Lord Primly jerked his chin. “Who would you rather me spend the evening with?”
She started with surprise at the steady deliverance of those words. Gone was the man’s stammer.
“There is Lord Albertsley, rumored to be cruel to his servants.” He motioned discreetly to a stout lord with a bulbous nose.
Jane frowned. “That is horrid.”
He continued. “Or there is Lady McAtwaters, who won’t speak to anyone who is less than a baron.”
A shocked laugh escaped her. “Surely you jest?”
He winked. “Well, perhaps a bit. I’ll not tell you what they say of Lady McAtwaters.” Some of his lightness was replaced by seriousness. “Th-these people are not better than you. They might disparage you and treat you as less worthy, but you are not, and do not give them the satisfaction of thinking they are.” Jane suspected the earl spoke to the both of them and the kindred connection between them grew. He cleared his throat. “M-more worthy that is.”
He fell silent and Jane looked out at the dance floor once more, contemplating Lord Primly’s words. The whole of her life she’d been told she was inferior because of her birth. It was difficult to shrug off years of those very reminders. Yet, in the time she’d spent with Gabriel and his family and now Lord Primly, she’d come to realize—she was not different than these people and they were not different than her. They were all broken people in some way, moving through life, carving out happiness when and where they could. The muscles of her throat worked. And she wanted to carve out that happiness with Gabriel. Jane squared her jaw. Whether he wished it or not. She was going to fight for him.
She located Gabriel with her gaze and found his stare trained across the room, upon an older, vaguely familiar stranger at the opposite end of the hall. The same man he’d been staring at earlier. “Who is that?”
Lord Primly followed her stare. “The unsmiling fellow?” That could be very nearly everyone present. “The Duke of Ravenscourt.”
A loud humming filled her ears. She stomped on the earl’s feet once more. “The Duke of Ravenscourt,” she repeated back dumbly.
He nodded once.
The Duke of Ravenscourt. Her father. A man she’d caught but two glimpses of during her childhood. The blonde of his hair had been replaced by a steely gray and his form had more weight to it than she remembered. But it was him. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. How odd to attend the same social function as one’s father but still have no idea that the man who’d sired you was just fifty feet away—until a chance look across the ballroom floor.
The music drew to a stop and Lord Primly made to escort her from the floor. “If you’ll excuse me,” Jane murmured. And of their own volition, her legs carried her those fifty feet to the figure she’d spent the course of her life hating. A man who’d never acknowledged her existence but who’d settled funds upon her regardless. Such a man must have cared—if even just a bit.
Alone, with a crowd of nobles likely too fearful to approach the austere lord, he sipped from a crystal champagne flute and eyed those in attendance with a kind of boredom from above the rim. Jane came to a stop before him. He flicked a cool gaze up and down her person.
She smoothed her palms along the front of her skirts. Of course, there was all manner of dictates on the rules of etiquette in terms of introductions. Yet this man was her father. Surely because of that, a different set of rules applied?
He broke the impasse. “May I help you?” Icy derision coated his question.