He said nothing.
She pressed on. “You think I am reckless. You think I do not see the consequences of my actions. But I do. I see them every time you look at me like this, as if I’ve let you down. I see them in the way the children watch us, desperate for a sign that we are a family and not just two strangers sharing a roof.”
Oscar’s face was a mask.
“I will not live like this, Oscar,” Nancy said. “I am only human. I feel things. I want things. And I refuse to pretend I do not care, just to make you more comfortable.”
He looked at her, and for the first time, the mask slipped. Only a little, but enough.
She saw pain there. And loneliness. And something that looked like terror.
“I am not made for these games, Nancy.”
“Neither am I.”
He shook his head. “You are too much for me.”
“And you are not enough for yourself,” she replied, surprised at her own cruelty.
He turned away, staring into the hearth.
She watched him, arms wrapped around herself, as if to keep from shattering.
She thought of her mother, of the words whispered to her on the morning of the wedding: Don’t let anyone extinguish your fire, my darling.
She remembered the way Oscar had touched her hand, back in the carriage, and how she had craved that touch even as she despised herself for it. She wanted to say:I wish you could love me.To say:I think I already love you, in spite of everything.
Instead, she said, “I will not let you turn my fire to silence, Oscar.”
He flinched, as if she’d struck him. He looked at her again, as if to speak, but the words were lost.
Clenching his jaw, he turned and left the study, the door closing with the finality of a tomb.
Nancy stood, shaking, in the center of the room.
She was drained and wrung dry. Hope had been a beautiful, stupid thing, and now it guttered at the edge of her consciousness. She thought, for a moment, of going after him. Of trying to explain that her anger was only the other side of longing.
But she knew, with a cold clarity, that it would not matter.
Oscar did not want her.
CHAPTER 30
"Is Lord Eastmere in?" Oscar barely paused on the threshold of Covent Garden’s most infamous gaming hell, the battered green doors swinging wide to admit him and a cloud of cigar fug.
The majordomo, whose name Oscar had never bothered to learn, straightened at the desk. "Arrived not one hour ago, Your Grace," he said, with the oily respect reserved for men whose pockets ran deeper than the Thames.
Oscar offered nothing but a tight nod and stalked past, his boots striking sharply against the tile. The gaming floor was its usual menagerie: gentlemen in wrinkled linen, whores painted to the eyes, a scatter of fortune-seekers playing at greatness and failing spectacularly. It was a place built for hiding in plain sight, which is why Oscar suspected Adrian would haunt it even on a night he was expected elsewhere.
He took the room in at a glance. Adrian's preferred table, the one near the east window, was occupied by a pair of minor baronetsand an overdressed merchant’s son, none of whom bore any resemblance to the Viscount.
Oscar prowled the perimeter, ignoring the curious glances, the half-bows, the whispered bets on whether tonight he would finally lose his legendary composure.
He did not find Adrian in the hazard pit, nor in the private rooms behind the bar. He did not find him at the billiards, nor among the knots of idle gossipers near the terrace. For a moment, Oscar wondered if the majordomo had lied, but one did not rise to the rank of Duke without learning to read a servant’s face.
He doubled back to the entry. "You said he was here," Oscar said, low, to the majordomo.
The man blanched. "I saw him myself, Your Grace. He received a note, then left through the back—perhaps fifteen minutes ago. I assumed he would return. Shall I send a runner, if he comes again?"
