Chapter 13
The ride to London had done nothing for Philip’s mood, but it was nothing brandy and good company couldn’t remedy. The combination hadn’t failed him yet.
“Another one?” Philip asked above the cheerful noise of the gentlemen’s club, beyond the private room where he and his friend were seated.
Zachary knocked back what was left in his drink and nodded. “Not too many, mind you. I have things to do tomorrow, and not all of us can drink like a fish.”
“It takes practice.” Philip smirked and raised a hand to instruct the nearby waiter.
A man in starched livery gave him a nod and disappeared from the room. They knew Philip and Zachary well enough to know the order without bothering to interrupt.
“I have to say, I was surprised you summoned me tonight,” Zachary said, leaning back in his chair.
“Why so?”
“I assumed you would want to spend as much time with your betrothed as possible,” he replied. “Was that not the purpose of her staying with you before the wedding?”
Philip’s lip curled. “Can we talk about something else? I am weary of it already.”
“There’s nothing to discuss that is more interesting than your impending nuptials, Philip.”
“That can’t be true.” Philip wished his glass had been refilled already. “You must have some tales to tell. What important things do you have to do that will limit your brandy this evening?”
Zachary groaned. “Tiresome meetings. Nothing interesting.” He shrugged. “What can I say—London has gone quiet. All anyone talks about is you and Lady Selina.”
“They should find something else to gossip about,” Philip grumbled.
Had he really come all this way just to speak of Selina? The one person he was here to forget about. A gentlemen’s club was supposed to be safe territory where concerns and troubles couldn’t follow, but apparently, his betrothed had been permitted over the threshold.
“Answer me this, and we can talk about something else,” Zachary proposed.
Philip squinted his eyes in suspicion. He didn’t much care for blind bartering.
“You ask, I’ll decide if I answer,” he said coolly.
“Are you marrying her to get revenge on your father?”
“Didn’t you ask me that already?”
Zachary puffed out a breath. “Fine, let me be clearer. Are you marrying her to make your dead father angry by making the daughter of his sworn enemy part of your family?”
“I am marrying her because it is the honorable thing to do,” Philip replied.
He had no idea if he sounded convincing. He had had one too many glasses of brandy already, to be sure.
Zachary quirked an eyebrow, unconvinced. “Philip, I say this as your friend—you have to let go of the past. Focus less on revenge and more on the fact that you have gained yourself a beautiful bride. You will ruin her life otherwise; you won’t be able to help it.”
“I do not recall asking for your opinion.” Venom dripped from Philip’s lips.
He saw Zachary as a brother, but that did not give the man free rein to say what he liked without consequence. And calling Selina ‘beautiful’ with such enthusiasm was not the way to temper his mood, nor was bringing up his father.
“Someone has to give it,” Zachary countered. “It won’t come from your sister or your grandmother, which leaves me. You could be happy, Philip, but you will destroy any chance of that if you go into this out of revenge. Happiness cannot grow in scorched soil, old boy.”
The brandy glass shattered against the wall behind Zachary’s head, the last dregs trickling down to the wainscoting. Zachary hadn’t flinched. The look in his eyes was pitying—a look that would have sent another glass shattering against the wall if Philip had one nearby.
“It wasn’t your father who tortured you,” Philip hissed, hands clenched into fists. “It wasn’t your father who sent you to war as if you were disposable.”
An entire battalion would have cowered at the sound of his anger, but Zachary remained unaffected.
“No, but now you’re just torturing yourself,” Zachary said. “You’re doing his work for him, even after he is dead and buried.”
Philip was about to say that his friend knew nothing about it and should keep his opinions to himself when another sound drew his attention to the door. A shadow disappeared behind the frosted windows.
The waiter? No, he would have entered and lingered awkwardly on the threshold. Or he would have waited outside.
Kicking back his chair, Philip went to investigate.
He opened the door and looked out, squinting up and down the hallway. There was nothing but the laughter and chatter of other gentlemen in the other rooms. No creak of a door to signal where someone might have gone to, no residual movement of shadows.
Yet, he was almost certain that someone had been out here, eavesdropping.
“What are you doing?” Zachary asked.
“There was someone here.”
Shaking his head, Zachary got up. “You are not at war anymore, old boy.” He gathered his coat and hat. “There are no enemies hiding in the hallways of a gentlemen’s club.”
“You doubt me?” Philip bristled.
Am I seeing things? Hearing things?
He would not have been the first soldier to suffer such visions and hallucinations after returning from war. Truthfully, he had thought himself impervious, but perhaps the strain of this wedding business was causing some cracks to show.
“I think you are still adjusting to ordinary life,” Zachary replied, patting his shoulder. “I’ll take my leave now.”
He walked by Philip and did not offer another word.
Apparently, Philip was getting rather good at chasing people away.
“Isn’t that better?” Lizzy reclined on the settee, her arm draped over her stomach.
On the low table between the settees in the drawing room lay the remnants of an evening feast: sweetmeats, cakes, anything and everything with an inordinate amount of sugar and butter. Plenty of tea—and a sneaky glass of port each—to wash it all down.
“It cannot be good for a person to indulge like that,” Melody groaned. “How is it that even though I have eaten a hearty dinner, I still have room in my stomach for sweet things? I shall have to study that phenomenon.”
Selina, too, was struggling. “I never want to see another cake again.”
“The house is so much more peaceful when my brother isn’t in it,” Lizzy said. “Fun is permitted again. This manor has never been pleasant when there are men in it.”
A fleeting hardness in her voice drew Selina’s curiosity. Lizzy could and would talk at length about everything and nothing, yet when it came to life before her brother returned home, she was unusually tight-lipped. She never spoke about her father, the man whom Selina’s father despised so much.
“You must have spent most of your time with your grandmother?” Selina prodded a little.
“At the dower house.” Lizzy sighed. “It was nicer there.”
“We should have invited your grandmother to join us.” Selina hadn’t seen anything of the lively, grey-haired woman today.
She had assumed that Lizzy’s grandmother lived in the manor—it was certainly large enough—but she supposed it made sense that the old woman would have a home of her own. A home that one day Selina herself might end up in.
Lizzy turned her head and flashed a smile. “That would have been lovely, but she wouldn’t have accepted. She retires to bed at seven o’clock.”
Twisting to look at the carriage clock on the wall, Selina gasped at the time. How could it possibly be almost midnight? It seemed they had only been at the lake two minutes ago.
Will Philip be gone until tomorrow?
She did not know how she felt about being in the manor without the Duke present. Maybe there was something to be said about a protective demeanor in a mate, especially out here in the countryside.
Clearly, she had read too many books about highwaymen and brigands and robbers. Rugged devils with handkerchiefs tied around their lower faces, hiding their identities, demanding a kiss from the young lady traveling alone in the carriage.
Selina bit her lip, remembering a favorite story of a highwayman and a princess in disguise.
Just then, a loud thud echoed through the manor. All three ladies straightened up in alarm, their wide eyes turned toward the drawing room door. Maybe they had all been thinking of similar novels and were half-hoping, half-dreading that a terribly handsome brute might be about to burst in.
One did, windswept and dripping with the rain that had begun to patter outside the windows.
Lizzy pulled a face. “You frightened us half to death, Brother!”
Philip’s eyes settled on the crumbs. “You would not have noticed if you had been in your beds, where you are supposed to be. Ladies shouldn’t be awake at such an hour, ransacking the kitchens like a horde of mice.” His gaze flickered to Melody. “Who are you?”
“This is Melody.” Lizzy grinned.
“Ah, the mysterious third,” Philip said with a stiff nod.
Selina couldn’t get herself to say a word.
Did he have to be so annoyingly handsome?
The slick of rainwater and the tousling effect of the wind had elevated him to the stuff of her wildest dreams. Her cheeks burned just staring at him, imagining what it would be like to run her hands through that damp hair, to feel the chill of his skin against the warmth of hers.
Now, she understood what Lizzy had meant about the house being more pleasant when there were no men in it. More comfortable, anyway.
His very presence had changed the atmosphere in the room, though perhaps Selina was the only one who could feel it.
“She is here for the house party,” Lizzy said, a smirk tugging at her lips.
Philip’s eyes hardened. “What house party?”
“To celebrate your nuptials, of course.” Lizzy tilted her head to the side. “I did tell you, Brother.”
“Did you, now?”
“Would I lie to you?”
“As often as you are able,” Philip replied with a sigh.
His gaze finally turned to Selina. Her neck jolted with the speed at which she turned her face away from his scrutiny. Why couldn’t he have stayed away until tomorrow?
“Lady Selina, I would like a word with you,” he said sternly and turned with the obvious expectation that wherever he went, she would follow.
I am going nowhere with you.
It was obvious he wanted to discuss something she was not willing to talk about. What else could his reason be for needing to speak to her alone?
She folded her arms and sat back. Just like his rules, she would not be obeying his commands either.