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Chapter One
“You need a lover.”
Lady Demeter Fallon arched a brow and eyed her aunt. Aunt Sarah often blurted out inappropriate comments but she hadn’t anticipated one whilst she was innocently curled up on a rug in front of the slowly dying fire of the parlor room. She handled a pink rose petal, rubbing her finger absently over the soft surface while she debated how she could use it once it dried. A collage perhaps. Or some sort of book about the flowers at Guildbury House.
“Or a cat.” Aunt Sarah lifted her white cat as though Demeter might have forgotten what a cat looked like and offered him out. Simon, always strangely at ease with being manhandled—or was it womanhandled?—simply stared, daring her to dismiss the idea.
Demeter narrowed her gaze at the cat. She loved animals, she really did, and as much as she wanted more of them at her father’s house, it would never solve her problem. “I do not need a cat. O-or a lover. After last Season, why would you even suggest that?”
The only person who knew of her uncharacteristically scandalous behavior last year was Aunt Sarah, and she also knew what a failure the moment had been. Though, perhaps her aunt had forgotten. Demeter wouldn’t put it past her.
“It is quiet here since your sisters married and Eleanor is excellent at occupying herself. You, on the other hand—” she gestured to the open leather-bound book in front of Demeter, its empty pages seeming to mock her “—you seem to be pretending you are a little girl again. You need something to keep that quick mind of yours busy.”
Demeter glanced at the rose petal in her hand and released it with a sigh. She was too old for pressing petals. Or painting teacups. Or embroidering her initials into handkerchiefs.
But it didn’t matter. Because she had a plan. No more sitting around and being the dull, quiet spinster sister. She allowed herself a tiny smile. This Season, everything would be different.
***
Blake had awoken from many hangovers throughout his lifetime. The sort that made one wish they hadn’t been born or at least had never discovered the wonders of imbibing vast quantities of alcohol.
He groaned as he rolled and tried to push himself up from the chaise longue, eyes still shut in a bid to appease his pounding head.
This had to be one of the worst.
Someone jabbed his arm again, the sharp stab to his muscles hurting far more than it should. He groaned again and cracked open an eye. Her face took several moments to come into focus. Ever elegant, his mother in all her feathers and satins made him feel like a dry, worn-out, husk of a man, despite having only just turned thirty. He craned his neck to view her as she stood over him.
“You poor dear,” she clucked.
He scowled, shifted onto his back, and firmly closed his eyes. “I am not a poor dear, Mother.”
“Some lemon tea and a damp cloth should help I think.”
He heard her march across the drawing room, the pad of her shoes across the rug changing to light taps upon wood before the servant’s bell echoed through the house.
He needed more than lemon tea and a damp cloth. He needed many more hours of sleep. In a bed preferably.
At what moment he’d passed out on the chaise, he did not know. Much of last night was a blur. He’d been celebrating the start of the Season with some friends at White’s then it had turned into impromptu drinks at his townhouse and then...well, it all went sort of dark after that.
For all he knew, half of his friends might also be slumped across various chairs and beds throughout his house, in goodness knows what state of undress. A mother should not be witnessing such scenes.
Most especiallyhismother.
For some damned reason, the woman kept insisting on turning up at the most uncomfortable of moments this past week. Could she not return to being the absent mother he’d grown accustomed to all his life?
She returned to his side and pressed cool fingertips to his forehead. He winced when his head pounded in response but after a moment, he sank into the pleasant sensation of her calming touch. He could count on one hand the number of times his mother had touched him with tenderness. What was going on?
He batted her hand away and she tutted. “You are getting too old to behave so, Blakey.”
If his eyes had been open, he would have rolled them. Did she not think he realized that? Did she not understand he knew all too well that hitting thirty meant his hangovers laid him out for a day and his back could most decidedly not survive a night of sleeping on a chaise, even if it was at least his own chaise?
He’d reached the irritating age where he wanted his own bed—making living the life of a rake all the more difficult. How was one to skip from bed to bed when one desperately wanted one’s own pillow and mattress? He smirked to himself. He could hardly arrive at a lover’s house with a pillow in hand now could he?
“What do you want, Mother?” he finally asked with instant regret. His mouth was arid and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
“I am here to look after you, of course,” she said in sweet tones that belied the usual hard snap of her responses.
She might not be a duchess or a countess but with family wealth stretching as far back as the medieval era, she had all the breeding and entitlement that came with it. He’d never seen his mother flustered by anything and if she was not looking down her nose at him, she was doing it to someone else.
