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Benjamin started. “What did you say?”
Pollock seemed at a loss. He pulled at his cravat. “Before Butland arrived, you were saying something about returning from the War.”
“Oh, of course,” Benjamin mumbled. For a moment, he had thought… Well, it didn’t matter now. “Yes, even amongst naval officers. Things weren’t much different, like London transplanted to the sea. The captains bought their titles, and the sorry sods lucky enough to be promoted couldn’t measure up.” He set his glass down on the sideboard behind them. He was only pretending to drink, anyway.
“You would think things like titles and money wouldn’t matter at war.”
Benjamin smirked, but his heart pinched, betraying him. “They matter everywhere.”
“And that is what led you to write? Being at sea?” Pollock asked with genuine interest.
“You could say that, yes.”
It wasn’t a complete lie, of course. The only reason he was bothering with this farce of an evening was to secure more patrons. More readers meant more money. With enough of it, he and his friends might have a chance at living comfortably. They deserved that and more for what they had suffered on the Continent.
His stomach churned as he cast another sweeping glance over the ballroom. There was a buzzing by the doors where more guests were pouring in. He tried to peer through the large windows looking over the entranceway, but the drapes had been drawn.
How strange, he thought,to be on the inside looking out and not the other way around. He had spent most of his life dreaming of leisure. From what he could tell, it wasn’t all it was chalked up to be—not by a long shot. To think his mother had given her life for this.
It would do him no good to consider the matter now.
“My good man, did you hear me?”
Pollock’s voice sounded from beside him. Benjamin snapped his head from the windows. “No, I fear I was elsewhere entirely.” He reached his hands up to run them through his hair, then remembered himself and straightened up. “What was it you said?”
Pollock brushed his absence away and gestured for the archway leading out to the antechamber. The entire hall had swiveled in its direction. “I said, the guest of honor has arrived. Look sharp, old chap.”
Benjamin looked, but not a thing about it wassharp. In fact, he felt rather dazed. The tides of guests curled around themselves, their multicolor ensembles parting like the sea. In strode a new collection of pretenders, their party headed by a man Benjamin had not seen in years. His breath hitched.
The man was smaller than he remembered but not wizened. He stood proudly, taking in the room as one might take in the sight of dinner, like he owned the hall and everybody in it. One of his hands was curled around a silver-topped cane, which matched the details on his fine velvet suit. His grey hair had been swept back, his whiskers had lost their color, but the squared angles of his face were unmistakable. Time had done nothing to erode his charisma.
“I know that man,” Benjamin muttered mostly to himself.
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Pollock replied, seemingly quite dazed himself. “He’s the Queen’s nephew—lauds over half of Southern England and then some.” He smacked his lips and intonated, “The Duke of Gamston,” as though the man were the leading figure of a play.
“No,” Benjamin spoke low. “I mean, Iknowhim. My mother once served the Duchess.”
“Golly, you are full of surprises. You sayshe used to.Was she dismissed?”
“Yes.” Benjamin paused. “For a time.”
He turned on his heel and snapped up the glass he had set down, debating downing the acrid punch at once. He steeled himself and wiped his mouth with the dark cotton sleeve of his jacket instead. If he had known the Duke was on the guest list, that he was adrattedhonored guest, he would have cast all ambition aside for the evening.
He loathed the man, plain and simple. They had worked his mother to the bone, him and his wife. They had trapped her in servitude and called it loyalty—but there was nothing loyal about what they had done to her. She had been cast aside without second thought when she fell pregnant by Benjamin’s father. Only ruination followed as it was wont to do when it came to women and their bastards.
His knuckles grew white along the edge of the table. He pushed himself back and turned around. It would do him no good to go back on his plan now; damn what the Duke might do if he found out who he was. He swiveled back to Pollock, who was still watching their entrance.
“And he’s with…” Pollock mumbled, tapping his lower lip. They couldn’t hear anything from the Master of Ceremonies over the chatter in the hall. “Ah, of course! The Duke of Richmond and his clan.”
Trailing after him, as Pollock had dutifully noted, was a spindly white-haired man, whose chops stuck out like the wires of a mane brush. He was shorter than the Duke, though not by much, and he seemed time-worn, frail. He glanced around in bursts, flighty like a bird, guided in by a man who looked like his twin—if only thirty years younger. His son, no doubt.
“His eldest is the Marquess of St Chett,” Pollock expounded as though he were a walking Debrett’s, “He’s set to inherit the duchy, but there was an awful ruckus a few years ago over his, shall we say,infatuationwith the visiting daughter of a French noble. Ernestine... something-or-other,” he rambled on, then shook his head when Benjamin seemed disinterested. “The girl behind him is Lady Eleanor, the Duke’s youngest. She is only recently debuted.”
Benjamin nodded along, looking the lady up and down and finding nothing particularly remarkable in her beyond her visible discomfort—except her eyes. They were a dark blue, the sort of which he had never seen, hidden beneath a set of long, dark lashes.
“That’s the lot of them, is it?” he asked, hoping the ball might get underway now the Duke had arrived. The sooner it began, the sooner it might end.
“Well, tonight, I suppose. However, Richmond is usually accompanied by—“
