CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Trevane! You’re alive after all. We were beginning to think the Cornish cliffs had swallowed you whole.”
Lord Petersham’s voice cut across the card room at White’s with barely suppressed satisfaction. Rhys paused in the doorway, feeling the familiar weight of London settle onto his shoulders like a coat he had forgotten how to wear.
He had been back in the city for three days.
Three days of estate meetings and solicitor consultations and the particular tedium of ducal responsibilities that could not, despite his best efforts, be managed from Cornwall as Mr. Grieves had been insistent.
The matters were urgent and his presence was required.
And so he had left.
He had said goodbye to the children at breakfast, promising to return within the week.
Anna had recorded his departure time in her register.
Viola had held his hand and whispered a request that he bring her new drawing pencils.
Thistle had demanded that he find her a London beetle to add to her collection, preferably one with impressive mandibles.
And Mel had stood in the doorway of the schoolroom, her expression carefully neutral, and wished him safe travels in a voice that gave nothing away.
He had wanted to say something, to show some form of acknowledgment of what had passed between them in the kitchen, of the look they had shared over Viola’s sleeping head, of the impossible thing they were both refusing to name.
But there had been no words that were safe to speak, and so he had said nothing, and he had climbed into the carriage and watched Hartfell disappear behind him, and he had felt the loss of it like a physical ache in his chest.
Now he was back in London, back in the world he had built for fifteen years, and the world was welcoming him with open arms and empty champagne glasses.
“The cliffs were remarkably well-behaved,” he said, moving toward the card table where his usual companions had gathered.
“They made no attempt to swallow me whatsoever.”
“Pity. It would have made an excellent story.” Lord Ashton dealt him into the game without asking.
“What were you doing down there for so long? Estate business doesn’t take five weeks.”
“I found the scenery refreshing.”
“The scenery in Cornwall is grey rocks and greyer water. What could possibly be refreshing about that?”
“Perhaps I’ve developed an appreciation for monochrome landscapes.”
The cards were familiar in his hands. The rhythm of betting and bluffing and calculating odds came back to him easily, from long practice. This was the duke, the rake, the man he had been before Mel Grace had looked at him in a moonlit garden and told him he was hiding behind his worst self.
She was right, of course. She was always right. And here he was, proving it.
The evening proceeded as such evenings always did. Cards gave way to brandy, brandy gave way to the inevitable exodus toward whatever entertainment the night offered. There was a ball at Lady Dearborn’s, someone mentioned, and the Duke of Trevane’s presence would certainly be noted if he attended.
Thus, he attended.
The ballroom was exactly as he remembered every ballroom in London: glittering, crowded, thick with the scent of hothouse flowers and expensive perfume. Rhys made his entrance at the optimal moment and allowed himself to be absorbed into the familiar machinery of social performance.
Lady Forsythe found him within moments, as she always did.
But tonight there was someone else as well, a widow named Mrs. Hartington whose husband had passed the previous year and who had been making it abundantly clear, through every means available to a woman of her position, that she found the Duke of Trevane interesting.
“Your Grace.” Her smile was warm and knowing.
“We have missed you dreadfully. London has been quite dull without its most notorious rake.”
“I doubt London noticed my absence.”
“I noticed.” She laid her hand on his arm as though she knew exactly what she was doing.
“I notice everything about you.”
He should have stepped back. He should have extracted himself with some polite excuse and found a corner of the ballroom where he could be alone with his thoughts and his regrets.
Instead, he accepted a glass of champagne from a passing footman and allowed Mrs. Hartington to lead him toward the dancing.
The champagne was cold and dry and familiar. The music was the same music that had played at a hundred balls before this one. Mrs. Hartington was beautiful and available and entirely uncomplicated, a woman who wanted nothing from him except the temporary pleasure of his attention.
It would be so easy, so comfortable. The duke did not have to think about governess he could not have. The rake did not have to face the man he was failing to become.
He drank too much. He knew he was drinking too much, could feel the familiar loosening in his limbs and the dulling of his thoughts, but he did not stop. The champagne kept appearing in his hand, and he kept emptying his glass, and the ballroom grew hazier and more distant with each passing hour.
At some point, Benedict appeared at his elbow.
“You are a trifle elevated,” Benedict observed, with the particular tone of a friend who had seen this performance many times before.
“I’m refreshed.”
“You are half-seas over and Mrs. Hartington is circling you like a shark that’s scented blood.”
“Mrs. Hartington is a delightful woman with excellent taste in company.”
“Mrs. Hartington is a social climber who would happily compromise you in the garden if it meant becoming the next Duchess of Trevane.”
“There will not be a next Duchess of Trevane.” The words came out more forcefully than Rhys intended.
“There will not be any Duchess of Trevane. I have made my position on matrimony abundantly clear.”
“Your position on matrimony was made when you were five and twenty and heartbroken. You are one and thirty now, and from what little you’ve told me, your circumstances have changed considerably.”
“My circumstances have not changed.”
“You’ve spent five weeks in Cornwall. You’ve been present for your daughters in ways you never were before. You’ve been writing letters and making plans and talking about the future as though it matters.” Benedict’s voice softened slightly.
“Something happened down there. Something that made you different. And now you’re back in London, getting drunk at a ball and allowing Mrs. Hartington to paw at you and I don’t understand why.”
Rhys stared at his champagne glass. It was empty again. He could not remember drinking it.
“Nothing happened,” he said.
“That is a complete flam!”
“It’s a simplification.”
“Tell me.”
But he could not tell Benedict. Could not explain the garden and the almost-kiss and the way Mel had looked at him when she said he was afraid to be real.
Could not describe the midnight kitchen and the way his heart had cracked open when he saw her holding his daughter, singing lullabies, being everything he had never managed to be.
He could not bring himself to confess an attachment to a lady who remained resolutely indifferent to the dictates of the heart.
“I need more champagne,” he said, and walked away before Benedict could stop him.
The rest of the evening blurred together.
The champagne flowed freely with more dancing and Mrs. Hartington’s hand remained firmly on his arm with her perfume in his nostrils and her laughter ringing in his ear.
At some point, the ball drew to a close and he found himself in the entrance hall, waiting for his carriage, with Mrs. Hartington beside him and the certain knowledge that he was about to commit a most egregious folly.
“My carriage is this way,” she said, her voice low and inviting.
“Shall I give you a ride home?”
He should say no. He knew he should say no. But the champagne had dulled his better judgment, and the loneliness had sharpened his need for connection, and Mrs. Hartington was here and willing and entirely uncomplicated.
“I’ll escort you to your carriage,” he heard himself say.
“It would be ungentlemanly to let a lady walk alone.”
They walked out together, his arm around her waist, her body pressed against his side. The night air was cold, and she leaned into him for warmth, and he could feel the eyes of the departing guests tracking their progress across the courtyard.
This would be in the gossip sheets tomorrow. The Duke of Trevane, seen leaving Lady Dearborn’s ball in the company of the beautiful widow Hartington. The implications would be clear. The scandal would be delicious.
He helped her into her carriage with exaggerated courtesy. She looked up at him from the seat, her eyes bright with invitation.
“Won’t you join me?”
“I have my own carriage.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He looked at her. She was beautiful and available. She would welcome him without questions or complications or the devastating honesty that made Mel Grace impossible to forget.
But, she was not Mel.
“Good night, Mrs. Hartington.”
He stepped back from the carriage door and signaled to her driver. She stared at him for a moment as a shadow of surprise played for a moment upon her features and then the carriage pulled away and she was gone.
Rhys stood in the cold courtyard and watched her go. Left to his own reflections, he could not but acknowledge that his conduct had been principled. He had escaped the worst dictates of his passion, and such a triumph over himself surely merited a degree of satisfaction
Instead, he felt nothing but the aching awareness that the gossip sheets would not report what had actually happened. They would report what had appeared to happen: the duke and the widow, leaving together, their intentions obvious.
And Mel would read it, somewhere in Cornwall, in the house where he should have stayed, she would read the gossip sheets and see exactly what she had warned him about.
A man who hides behind his worst self.