Chapter Ten
Lark moved through his club with deliberately slow speed so as to better listen to the day’s gossip.
The former Lord Chancellor, also Anthony’s uncle, had given a rather overwrought speech the day before, and that seemed to be the talk of the day.
The contents of the speech didn’t interest Lark much, but he was reminded again that Anthony had enough wealth and power to be above the gossip fray, something he’d repeated to Lark many times, and yet he’d made decisions based on keeping himself out of trouble.
He’d done so at Lark’s urging, though. Lark had been the one to insist they end their relationship so that Anthony marry, and now here they were.
Given all that had transpired in the last year, Lark had no deeper regret than pushing Anthony away so that they might not find themselves at the ends of nooses.
Perhaps Anthony’s powerful family and his money could buy his way out of trouble, but Lark had convinced himself that no amount of wealth, fame, or power would prevent the crown from hanging sodomites--not if he had enemies lurking about.
As he’d learned last year, before his would-be blackmailer met an untimely end, all it would take was someone he'd angered in the past learning his secrets to end everything.
He found Anthony sitting alone by the fire.
Something in his chest seized.
Lark approached slowly. He sat in the chair across from Anthony without saying a word, but the movement must have caught his eye, because Anthony looked over.
“Lark.”
“I am somewhat surprised to see you here.”
“Henry is with Mrs. Church. I needed to get out of the house and talk to my peers. Slow night, though.”
“Rotherfeld is holding a dinner party tonight to show off his fiancée, so Fletcher and Hugh are there. I have not the foggiest where Owen has gone tonight.”
Anthony looked surprised. “Rotherfeld is engaged?”
“You are out of the gossip loop, I see.”
“I’ve been otherwise occupied.”
“Yes. Well, Rotherfeld is engaged to Fletcher’s dear friend, Lady Louisa Petty, and Fletcher is beside himself about it, so that has been entertaining in its own way.”
“Rotherfeld is engaged to Lady Louisa?” Anthony tilted his head as if this were mystifying.
“What of it?”
“Lark… I hesitate to say this but…”
“Tell me.”
“Rotherfeld…that is, Fletcher has feelings for Lady Louisa? Why did Fletcher not offer for her?”
“I think he did not know his feelings until she was engaged to someone else.”
“If he has romantic feelings for her, perhaps an intervention is called for.”
“Oh, believe me, I’ve tried, and Fletcher is quite insistent he merely wants Louisa’s happiness. If she loves Rotherfeld, he will not intervene—”
“No, I mean… I do not believe Louisa would be happy with Rotherfeld.”
Lark regarded Anthony for a moment. Lark suspected he did not want an answer to his next question, but he said, “What makes you say that?”
Anthony sighed. “It’s been…years. Before I had so much as a conversation with you. But he and I…”
“Please say no more.”
Anthony nodded. “I haven’t spoken to him since we ended things, aside from niceties here and there as necessary, and the affair itself was brief. We never…that is, it was physical but not emotional, our involvement.”
Lark rubbed his chest. “I’d really prefer not to hear the details.”
Anthony gave him an appraising look. “My point was just that…I find the engagement curious. Louisa is an intelligent, beautiful woman, and Rotherfeld is…”
“Don’t call him handsome.”
“As always, your jealousy is unbecoming, Lark. And uncalled for, under the circumstances.”
Lark crossed his arms and scowled. Anthony knew perfectly well how Lark felt.
“I have always found Rotherfeld to be timid and prudish, if you must know,” said Anthony. “He’s uncomfortable with himself and his proclivities.”
“Do you think he offered for Louisa on false pretenses?”
Anthony frowned. “I found out about this engagement thirty seconds ago, and I can’t know what’s in Rotherfeld’s head.
Who knows why men do anything? Maybe he genuinely likes her.
The news just surprised me because Rotherfeld is younger than we are and no one would have batted an eyelash had he postponed the inevitable and sown a few more oats first.”
“All right.” Lark looked Anthony over. “But let us speculate.”
Anthony raised an eyebrow. “Very irresponsible of you.”
“Well, now I think Rotherfeld’s motives are not pure.
It hadn’t occurred to me to doubt his intentions until you shared this bit of information with me, but now I’m turning this over in my head.
If he’s ashamed of his own proclivities, he could be forcing himself to marry to prove something to himself. He could be marrying to save face.”
Anthony nodded. “Indeed. I imagine, like us all, he has chosen Louisa because he must marry and wanted an intellectual equal and one the ton wouldn’t see as surprising, although I suppose she is on the older side.”
“Not like us all. I am not marrying.”
“No?”
“Have we learned nothing? How could I pretend to love a woman when I am so obviously besotted with someone else.”
“Besotted?”
“Anthony.”
“You are too conspicuous with your besottedness. In the hour I’ve been here, do you know how many men have welcomed me back to the club and in the same breath mentioned how deeply you mourned my company, that you practically live in a bottle now because you are so miserable?
Fortunately, everyone is too naive to suspect the true nature of our relationship, and they seem to think you are sad because you’ve lost all your friends to matrimony, including me. ”
“I did lose you to matrimony.”
“You lost me because you left me,” Anthony whisper-shouted. There was a harsh note to his voice.
“I do not anticipate that you will forgive me, and what’s done is done, and I may have regrets and misery and all of it, but I cannot change it. And I have made you even more miserable than I could have anticipated, and I do regret that.”
Anthony looked into his glass.
The thing was, Anthony’s brightness had dimmed.
Anthony had always been this beacon, a man who reveled in his fortunes in life, someone always funny and clever and practically glowing.
It was one of the things that had attracted Lark to Anthony to begin with.
And although Anthony was starting to come out of mourning—he wore all black tonight, granted, but he didn’t seem as sad as he had been when Lark saw him a few weeks ago—much of that brightness was gone.
Lark had done that. Lark had pushed Anthony away and was thus the catalyst for all that had come after.
“I’m sorry,” Lark said. “This is… I should leave.”
“No, don’t.”
“It’s all my fault. What happened to you.”
Anthony shook his head.
“It is. And I can’t…that is…” Lark looked around.
No one was near them. The crowd was thin tonight.
“I am responsible for your…present state, and I have been miserable without you, so your unhappiness must be compounded, and I caused that, and I hate that I have made you so unhappy. And I’ve been wasting my time trying to drink away my memories, but I have made everything so much worse for you, and I…
I cannot believe how much I’ve buggered everything, and I just don’t… ”
“It’s all right, Lark.” Anthony’s tone was oddly comforting, and Lark hated it, because he should have been the one comforting Anthony.
“It isn’t. It never will be.”
Anthony frowned at him. “Did you have business here tonight?”
“I was hoping the gossip would distract me, but it’s all politics tonight. I cannot sit at home or I’ll drink.”
“So you came to a club where most people drink? Are you no longer drinking?”
“Turns out when you try to destroy your brain with alcohol, you behave abominably in public.”
“Lark.”
“I have not yet ordered my staff to empty my liquor cabinet, but I suppose I must consider it to remove the temptation.”
“I was about to say, if you have no business here tonight, come home with me, and I will keep you away from the liquor.”
“Anthony, we cannot—”
“I am not propositioning you. In my home, we can speak candidly, and I can remove temptation. I would invite myself to yours, but I feel an obligation to be near my son, even though the nurse is with him.”
“Your nurse will not grow suspicious that you have brought a friend home?”
“I find I am too tired to care. And before you lecture me, I am not bringing you home for an assignation, I am asking for your company and some conversation and nothing more. I will help keep you from the drink and you will keep me company for a few more hours, and then you will go home and not antagonize my nurse.”
Lark decided to take the offer for what it was—a rekindling of their friendship. “All right.”
“All right?”
“I shall keep you company for a few hours. We shall save ourselves from our worst impulses for a little while. Gossip more about the Rotherfeld-Louisa-Fletcher love triangle. Speculate wildly about men we do not know well.”
Anthony smiled. “Yes. That is my intent.”
“Then lead the way.”
* * *
Fletcher was at the desk in his study, staring at his ledgers and finding some comfort in the simple act of arithmetic when his butler announced the Earl of Waring.