“The scenery in Cornwall is grey rocks and greyer water. What could possibly be refreshing about that?”
“Perhaps I’ve developed an appreciation for monochrome landscapes.”
The cards were familiar in his hands. The rhythm of betting and bluffing and calculating odds came back to him easily, from long practice. This was the duke, the rake, the man he had been before Mel Grace had looked at him in a moonlit garden and told him he was hiding behind his worst self.
She was right, of course. She was always right. And here he was, proving it.
The evening proceeded as such evenings always did. Cards gave way to brandy, brandy gave way to the inevitable exodus toward whatever entertainment the night offered. There was a ball at Lady Dearborn’s, someone mentioned, and the Duke of Trevane’s presence would certainly be noted if he attended.
Thus, he attended.
The ballroom was exactly as he remembered every ballroom in London: glittering, crowded, thick with the scent of hothouse flowers and expensive perfume. Rhys made his entrance at the optimal moment and allowed himself to be absorbed into the familiar machinery of social performance.
Lady Forsythe found him within moments, as she always did. But tonight there was someone else as well, a widow named Mrs. Hartington whose husband had passed the previous year and who had been making it abundantly clear, through every means available to a woman of her position, that she found the Duke of Trevane interesting.
“Your Grace.” Her smile was warm and knowing.
“We have missed you dreadfully. London has been quite dull without its most notorious rake.”
“I doubt London noticed my absence.”
“I noticed.” She laid her hand on his arm as though she knew exactly what she was doing.
“I notice everything about you.”
He should have stepped back. He should have extracted himself with some polite excuse and found a corner of the ballroom where he could be alone with his thoughts and his regrets.
Instead, he accepted a glass of champagne from a passing footman and allowed Mrs. Hartington to lead him toward the dancing.
The champagne was cold and dry and familiar. The music was the same music that had played at a hundred balls before this one. Mrs. Hartington was beautiful and available and entirely uncomplicated, a woman who wanted nothing from him except the temporary pleasure of his attention.
It would be so easy, so comfortable. The duke did not have to think about governess he could not have. The rake did not have to face the man he was failing to become.
He drank too much. He knew he was drinking too much, could feel the familiar loosening in his limbs and the dulling of his thoughts, but he did not stop. The champagne keptappearing in his hand, and he kept emptying his glass, and the ballroom grew hazier and more distant with each passing hour.
At some point, Benedict appeared at his elbow.
“You are a trifle elevated,” Benedict observed, with the particular tone of a friend who had seen this performance many times before.
“I’m refreshed.”
“You are half-seas over and Mrs. Hartington is circling you like a shark that’s scented blood.”
“Mrs. Hartington is a delightful woman with excellent taste in company.”
“Mrs. Hartington is a social climber who would happily compromise you in the garden if it meant becoming the next Duchess of Trevane.”
“There will not be a next Duchess of Trevane.” The words came out more forcefully than Rhys intended.
“There will not be any Duchess of Trevane. I have made my position on matrimony abundantly clear.”
“Your position on matrimony was made when you were five and twenty and heartbroken. You are one and thirty now, and from what little you’ve told me, your circumstances have changed considerably.”
“My circumstances have not changed.”
“You’ve spent five weeks in Cornwall. You’ve been present for your daughters in ways you never were before. You’ve been writing letters and making plans and talking about the future as though it matters.” Benedict’s voice softened slightly.
“Something happened down there. Something that made you different. And now you’re back in London, getting drunk at a ball and allowing Mrs. Hartington to paw at you and I don’t understand why.”
