Finishing off his glass, he moved to top off hers before absently noting there was not much room in her glass to do so.

“You want me to, what,” he mused, carefully filling his glass and setting the open bottle back down, “fan your fantasies that I am this … how did you put it? ah, yes, ‘ass,’ within minutes of meeting me. A greedy, greedy man who cares only for his reputation, and who clearly does not know his own brother as well as some strumpet whose interest in him will blossom and wither with the season.

“I have seen how this ends, Katherine. Some redhead,” he smiled sneeringly, and that word seemed strangely more degrading than ‘strumpet’, “with an apple of your eye and a thousand other beloved men with their trousers down before you.”

He took a longer sip of wine, propping his polished shoe on his ankle with a distant look.

“Not even graduated, Uriel. He is a boy. A boy, not even established in his career yet. A boy with a man’s body. You know that,” he scoffed with a bitter laugh. “Just know, too, that I will always stand behind Uriel … and when you leave him, we will find you.”