Chapter 10
Next night
His feet a quick clip along Bennet Street, the collar of his greatcoat flipped to guard against a north wind holding more than a hint of northern chill, Rhys pulled his silver watch from his pocket.
He had exactly one hour until he was to meet Tilly on the corner of Piccadilly and St. James’s Street—and much to accomplish between now and then.
And though he should’ve been concentrating on the task before him, it was Tilly who claimed the entirety of his thoughts.
Oh, the woman was on his mind.
Well, her and their kiss.
The kiss…
He hadn’t been able not to touch her.
Then he hadn’t been able not to kiss her.
That was the thing—and it plagued his mind.
Those were excuses his old self would’ve made.
Tilly was temptation personified, and he’d never found much success in resisting that which tempted him.
Which was why this last year, he’d removed himself entirely from temptation’s path.
That, more than anything, was the secret of his reformation—to hold himself so far away from temptation that he couldn’t immediately act on any urge that entered his mind or pulsed through his body.
He hadn’t planned for Tilly, though.
Yet, as a temptation, she was different, too.
He was having difficulty explaining it to himself, even, for the woman was so incredibly desirable in all the purely superficial ways one could ask for—of face and figure…the sparkle in her eyes…her vivacity…the breezy trill of her giggle.
Oh, yes, she was a knocker of a woman, but she possessed other qualities that drew him in.
Qualities his unreformed self had given not one toss about.
Tilly had brains and goals…ambitions and dreams…the determination to see them through.
Tilly, in her fully revealed self, was irresistible.
There.
There was the difference between who he was now and the man he once was.
His former self wouldn’t consider Tilly fully revealed to him yet, for he hadn’t tupped her.
Perhaps he had grown beyond that person, the wastrel rake.
Which wasn’t to say he didn’t want to tup her.
But he didn’t only want to tup her, which he supposed was growth.
He rounded the corner from Bennet Street and onto St. James’s. White’s stood a block ahead across the street. It was there that Rhys would attempt to set in motion tonight’s second noble deed.
It was strange, but his way of thinking about Papa’s signet ring had shifted. While he was as determined as he’d ever been to return the ring to where it belonged, the urgency had diminished—for one reason alone.
The ring was in Tilly’s trustworthy hands.
Truly, the woman might’ve become an obsession.
He took the short set of stairs up to White’s front door two at a time, both a spring to his step and a tetchy energy shimmering through him. A year, it had been, since he’d walked through this door.
The doorman nodded as he stood aside, recognizing Rhys on sight. “Lord Rhys, it is a pleasure to see you.”
Rhys gave a nod and smile of greeting as he stepped into the entrance hall, where he declined to hand over his hat and coat to a footman. He shouldn’t be here long, if all went to plan.
He made an immediate left into the morning room with its famous bow window that overlooked St. James’s Street.
This was where the dandies liked to congregate during the day to watch and comment on the promenade of other dandies on the sidewalk.
Of course, at a quarter past ten in the evening, the dandies all had to make do with each other inside the club, as the street outside had gone dark.
Copious amounts of wine, whisky, brandy, and port helped them make do with circumstances.
Rhys scanned the room for his quarry—and encountered no luck.
He would have to venture deeper into the club.
His bad luck continued when a voice rang out, “Lord Rhys!”
A dozen soused smiles turned his way and eager hands waved him inside the room.
He’d known this would happen. That he would be invited for a night’s carousing.
And he’d known he would have to resist.
With a smile of apology, he spread his hands wide and backed away. “Apologies, gentlemen, but I have business to attend this evening.”
“Business?” came a shout, followed by an immediate roar of laughter. “What’s that?”
But it was all at Rhys’s back, for he was on the move, heading straight for the billiard room. Maybe he would encounter some luck in finding the man he sought there.
His string of rotten luck persisted, however, for instead of the man he sought, he found an altogether different man bent over his billiards cue—a man Rhys was most definitely not seeking.
His hope that he hadn’t been spotted was dashed when a firm, “Rhys!” met his retreating back. He stopped dead in his tracks, closed his eyes for a second and groaned.
He had no choice but to double back.
The man had straightened to his familiar height of six feet plus a few inches—precisely the same height as Rhys, in fact—and was regarding Rhys with the lift of a single black eyebrow.
“Brother,” said Rhys in greeting to his older brother, Lord Jasper Osborne.
Not the heir, but the spare.
Jasper handed his cue to a waiting footman and came around the table. His brother didn’t speak again until he’d stopped a few feet away and given Rhys a thorough up-and-down. “Papa has this strange notion about you.”
Jasper wasn’t known for his small talk.
“Oh?”
“That you’ve left off being a waster.”
Even as he experienced a sliver of annoyance at that glint of doubt in his brother’s eyes, something warmed inside Rhys.
Papa actually believed that of him?
Which was why he said more boldly than he felt, “I have.”
Jasper’s head cocked to the side. “Then what are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story.”
Jasper looked disinclined to relent. “I have time.”
He was calling Rhys’s bluff.
Brothers could do that with one another.
Except Rhys wasn’t bluffing—and he didn’t have time.
In less than an hour, Tilly would be on that street corner—waiting for him.
“Some other time,” he said, his feet itching to be on the move.
His brother, of course, wouldn’t believe him.
Well, if he were Jasper, he wouldn’t believe him, either.
In his nine-and-twenty years, Rhys had done little-to-nothing to inspire belief.
But that was changing.
“You’ll want to avoid the dining room,” said Jasper, holding out a hand for the footman to return his billiards cue to him.
“Oh?”
“Benedict is there.”
Benedict.
Their eldest brother—the heir—who hadn’t had a smile for Rhys in, at least, fifteen years.
Rhys nodded his thanks and pivoted on his heel.
Best he avoided the dining room.
As he made his way up the staircase to the first floor, he decided there would be no more distractions. He reached the landing, turned a sharp right, and headed directly for the room where he knew deep in his gut he would find the man he sought—the gaming room.
At the wide doorway, a slick of perspiration coated his palms. Every cell in his body both demanded he turn around and abandon his plan and demanded he enter and assume his rightful place at the tables—and give in to what was only natural.
So, it was the sharp edge of a razor blade he navigated as he stepped into the room and became both part of its lively milieu and apart from it at once.
The man he sought sat at neither the Faro nor the Whist tables. But then, Rhys hadn’t expected him there. Deeper into the room he moved until, at last, Rhys spotted him standing at a Hazard table.
Whitty.
Rhys had first met the Right Honorable Viscount Bartram Whitmore at Eton College, where they’d both been sent to board at the ripe old age of thirteen.
As Whitty had been a viscount before he could walk, he’d been assured of his place in the hierarchy of the world and what his title and wealth bought him, which was everything.
It had even bought him more than a few friends.
But not Rhys.
From the start, their kinship had been fundamentally rooted in an aligned goal—to have fun at any and all costs.
And how they’d succeeded.
With Whitty’s wealth and recklessness, and Rhys’s looks and charm, they’d cut a wide swath through, first, school—where admittedly the stakes had been low—then on through society where the stakes seemed to rise higher each passing year.
Whitty even had a pet phrase: Can’t be arsed a whit.
Whitty thought it the wittiest cant ever coined, and Rhys hadn’t reckoned it was his place to disabuse his friend of the notion, even as Whitty said—or shouted, depending on his state of inebriation—the phrase on at least a dozen occasions on any given night, particularly after midnight.
So, here was Rhys in White’s intending to speak to his oldest friend—his oldest comrade in dissolution.
“Can’t be arsed a whit!” cut through the din.
Rhys’s feet gathered pace as he edged through the crowd, dodging and returning greetings as he went. In the general sense, Lord Rhys Osborne was liked by all—with the exception of a few husbands.
At last, he reached the Hazard table and took quick measure of Whitty.
It had been several months since he’d last laid eyes on his old friend.
That intervening time hadn’t been kind to Whitty, who’d gained a good stone about the middle and dark circles beneath his eyes.
In truth, he looked closer to fifty than thirty.
Which gave Rhys a measure of confidence in what he was about to attempt.
It wouldn’t only be noble deed number two.
He would be helping Whitty, and wasn’t that what friends did for each other?
Whitty’s enlivened gaze lifted from the green baize of the Hazard table. As he registered Rhys’s approach, a broad smile broke across his sweat-sheened face. “As I live and breathe, if it ain’t Lord Rhys Osborne,” he exclaimed in that jolly way of his.
Rhys returned his smile, genuinely glad to see his old friend. “Whitty.”
“Come over here, old chap.” Whitty clapped Rhys on the back once he’d crowded next to him at the table. “Now,” he said, holding out his open palm whereupon perched two dice, “blow on my dice. I’ve been on a bad run.”