Rhys stared at his champagne glass. It was empty again. He could not remember drinking it.
“Nothing happened,” he said.
“That is a complete flam!”
“It’s a simplification.”
“Tell me.”
But he could not tell Benedict. Could not explain the garden and the almost-kiss and the way Mel had looked at him when she said he was afraid to be real. Could not describe the midnight kitchen and the way his heart had cracked open when he saw her holding his daughter, singing lullabies, being everything he had never managed to be.
He could not bring himself to confess an attachment to a lady who remained resolutely indifferent to the dictates of the heart.
“I need more champagne,” he said, and walked away before Benedict could stop him.
The rest of the evening blurred together. The champagne flowed freely with more dancing and Mrs. Hartington’s hand remained firmly on his arm with her perfume in his nostrils and her laughter ringing in his ear. At some point, the ball drew to a close and he found himself in the entrance hall, waiting for his carriage, with Mrs. Hartington beside him and the certain knowledge that he was about to commit a most egregious folly.
“My carriage is this way,” she said, her voice low and inviting.
“Shall I give you a ride home?”
He should say no. He knew he should say no. But the champagne had dulled his better judgment, and the loneliness had sharpened his need for connection, and Mrs. Hartington was here and willing and entirely uncomplicated.
“I’ll escort you to your carriage,” he heard himself say.
“It would be ungentlemanly to let a lady walk alone.”
They walked out together, his arm around her waist, her body pressed against his side. The night air was cold, and she leaned into him for warmth, and he could feel the eyes of the departing guests tracking their progress across the courtyard.
This would be in the gossip sheets tomorrow. The Duke of Trevane, seen leaving Lady Dearborn’s ball in the companyof the beautiful widow Hartington. The implications would be clear. The scandal would be delicious.
He helped her into her carriage with exaggerated courtesy. She looked up at him from the seat, her eyes bright with invitation.
“Won’t you join me?”
“I have my own carriage.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He looked at her. She was beautiful and available. She would welcome him without questions or complications or the devastating honesty that made Mel Grace impossible to forget.
But, she was not Mel.
“Good night, Mrs. Hartington.”
He stepped back from the carriage door and signaled to her driver. She stared at him for a moment as a shadow of surprise played for a moment upon her features and then the carriage pulled away and she was gone.
Rhys stood in the cold courtyard and watched her go. Left to his own reflections, he could not but acknowledge that his conduct had been principled. He had escaped the worst dictates of his passion, and such a triumph over himself surely merited a degree of satisfaction
Instead, he felt nothing but the aching awareness that the gossip sheets would not report what had actually happened. They would report what had appeared to happen: the duke and the widow, leaving together, their intentions obvious.
And Mel would read it, somewhere in Cornwall, in the house where he should have stayed, she would read the gossip sheets and see exactly what she had warned him about.
A man who hides behind his worst self.
He went home alone, climbed the stairs to his empty room in his empty townhouse and lay in his empty bed and stared at the ceiling until dawn began to lighten the windows.
The next morning, Benedict found him in his study.
