CHAPTER TWO #3
That evening, after the children had been read to and sung to and, in Thistle’s case, firmly prevented from smuggling Brutus under her pillow, Mel sat at her desk and composed her first formal report for the mysterious benefactor.
She thought of Viola’s drawings appearing silently on her desk. Of Anna’s fierce dedication to the attendance register. Of Thistle’s small hand reaching up to take hers, offering trust like a gift she did not know how to refuse.
They require someone who will stay.
***
“Trevane, you are a scoundrel of the first water! To secure a third hand in such rapid succession is a feat as remarkable as it is suspicious.”
Rhys Langford, Duke of Trevane, gathered his winnings with smooth efficiency, every movement suggesting long history of practice.
The pile of coins and notes before him represented approximately three months’ wages for a skilled tradesman, won in less than two hours through a combination of skill, luck, and the happy circumstance that Lord Petersham is so utterly transparent that he could not carry off a ruse in a room where he was the only occupant.
“Luck favours the dissolute,” Rhys said, offering the table his most charming smile. It was a smile he had perfected over fifteen years of rakish living, a smile that promised mischief and delivered nothing of substance.
“Another round, gentlemen? Or have I emptied your pockets sufficiently for one evening?”
The card room at White’s was thick with smoke and the particular desperation of men who had more money than sense.
Rhys fit in perfectly, he always had. The Duke of Trevane was welcome everywhere and belonged nowhere, a walking scandal wrapped in excellent tailoring and charm so practiced it had ceased to feel like effort years ago.
Lord Petersham threw down his cards in disgust.
“I’m finished. My wife will have my head if I lose another shilling.”
“Then you should not have bet another shilling.”
“Easy for you to say. No wife to answer to.”
“A state I intend to maintain indefinitely.” Rhys signaled for another drink, though he’d barely touched the one before him. Appearances mattered. The Duke of Trevane was expected to drink, to gamble, to stay until the small hours surrounded by men who called him friend but knew nothing about him.
“Matrimony is for men with responsibilities.”
“You have responsibilities. You have an entire dukedom.”
“The dukedom runs itself. I merely sign papers and make occasional appearances in the Lords to remind them I exist.” He lifted his glass in a mock toast. “To irresponsibility. The only honest way to live.”
The table laughed as they always did. Rhys could say almost anything in that particular tone, the one that suggested he was letting them in on a private joke, and they would laugh and feel privileged to be included.
It was exhausting.
But it was also necessary, in ways that none of these men would ever understand.
The rake was a role he had built over years, a fortress of scandal and charm that kept the world at precisely the distance he required.
Inside the fortress, he was safe. Inside the fortress, no one asked questions he could not answer.
The evening continued as such evenings always did. Cards gave way to conversation, which gave way to the exodus toward whatever entertainments the night offered. There was a ball at the Marchioness of Thornbury’s, Rhys had been informed, and his presence was expected if not demanded.
He went because he always went, because the Duke of Trevane was expected to appear, to dance, to charm, to give the gossip sheets something to write about that wasn’t quite scandalous enough to require defending.
The ballroom was ablaze with candles and hummed with the particular energy of a successful crush. Rhys made his entrance with perfect timing, commanding attention without appearing to seek it, late enough to be noticed, early enough to seem as though he cared.
Within moments, he was surrounded.
“Your Grace, how delightful.” Lady Forsythe materialised at his elbow, her fan moving in the complex semaphore of a woman who considered herself a player in games she did not fully understand.
“We were just discussing your absence from Lady Hasington’s musicale last week.”
“I was indisposed.”
“So we heard. Indisposed at Mrs. Hartington’s card party, according to Lord Bexley.”
“Lord Bexley has a vivid imagination and very little discretion.” Rhys offered his arm smoothly, the gesture so fluid it appeared effortless.
“Shall we take a turn about the room? I find myself curious about the refreshments.”
They walked, and Lady Forsythe chattered, and Rhys listened with exactly enough attention to provide appropriate responses while his mind wandered to places it should not go.
To a house in Cornwall and three small faces he would see in two days’ time, if he could extract himself from London without raising questions.
The monthly visit was approaching. It always crept up on him like this, a growing tension beneath the performance, a clock counting down to the moment when he could shed the rake and become something closer to himself.
He danced with Lady Forsythe, then with Miss Carrington, then with the Thornbury girl whose name he immediately forgot but whose mother watched the proceedings like a woman mentally calculating asset values.
He said witty things. He smiled his practiced smile.
He was, by all accounts, the most entertaining man in the room.
By midnight, he had developed a headache that throbbed behind his eyes like a second heartbeat.
By one on the hour, he had made his excuses and departed.
The London streets at dawn were a different world than the London streets at midnight.
The carriages and crowds had thinned to nothing, leaving only the occasional lamplighter making his rounds and the distant clatter of delivery carts beginning the day’s work.
Rhys rode alone through the grey half-light, his horse’s hooves echoing on cobblestones still damp from an earlier rain.
The smile was gone now. There was no one to perform for, no audience requiring charm, no role demanding maintenance. In these quiet hours between the night’s end and the day’s beginning, Rhys allowed himself to simply exist without pretense.
He was one and thirty years old. He had a title, an estate, more money than any reasonable person could spend in a lifetime. He was handsome enough that women pursued him and charming enough that men forgave him his handsomeness. By every measure society applied, he was a success.
He was also the loneliest man in London, and he had no one to blame but himself.
The thought of Celeste came, as it always did in these quiet moments.
Celeste with her dark hair and her French accent and her laugh that had made him feel, for three brief years, like the man he might have been in a kinder world.
Celeste, who had cherished him enough to bear his children and too much to demand he take her as his wife.
Celeste, who had passed away from a fever when the girls were two, while he was in London playing at being a rake because he was too much a coward to build the life he actually wanted.
He had told himself it was for her protection. That entering into matrimony with an actress, even a retired one, would have destroyed them both. That the girls were better off hidden, raised quietly in the country where society could not touch them.
He had told himself many things in the years since her demise. Most of them had been lies designed to make the guilt bearable.
The truth was simpler and uglier: he had been afraid, afraid of what matrimony would cost him. He had been afraid of what the ton would say. Afraid of being the man who gave up everything for affection, only to discover that everything wasn’t enough.
And then she had passed away and he had learned what “not enough” really meant.
He reached his townhouse as the sun broke fully over the rooftops, painting the stone facade in shades of gold that felt like mockery.
His valet had left a lamp burning in the entrance hall.
His bed would be turned down, his nightclothes laid out, everything in perfect order for a master who rarely slept before sunrise.
Rhys climbed the stairs and did not go to bed. Instead, he went to his study, where a locked drawer in his desk held the letters.
Mrs. Kemp wrote monthly with updates on the household. Mr. Grieves wrote quarterly with financial reports. Between them, Rhys assembled a picture of his daughters’ lives that was detailed enough to ache and incomplete enough to torment him.
The children are well, Mrs. Kemp had written three weeks ago. The new governess arrives next Tuesday. Miss Grace comes highly recommended by Mr. Grieves. I pray she lasts longer than the others.
The new governess. The fourth one in eight months.
Rhys had stopped learning their names after the second, a pale young woman who had fled the premises claiming that Thistle had cursed at her in Latin.
Since Thistle did not know Latin, this seemed unlikely, but the governess had been unmoved by logic.
In two days, as planned, he would ride to Cornwall and spend three days being the father his daughters deserved, before returning to London to resume being the man they must never know existed.
He knew it was insufficient but he was at a loss to be a better father.
The ride to Cornwall took two days, changing horses at coaching inns where the Duke of Trevane was not expected and therefore not required to perform. Rhys made the journey in ordinary clothes, without his valet, letting the road strip away the layers of his London life with each mile that passed.