Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
“Won’t you sit, good man?” Keaton Notley asked, swirling the brandy in his glass. “You make me feel like an old rejected maid, keeping your distance from me in such a fashion.”
He brought the glass to his lips.
Theodore watched from the sideboard, his own untouched, head fuzzy still from the laudanum he had taken before leaving the house.
The fire had been built up too high, and Thatcher’s den was filling steadily—peers and half-pay officers shedding their evenings into the smoke, gentlemen seeking reprieve from their titles.
Theodore had ensconced himself here for the better part of the hour, despite Keaton’s earlier attempts at dragging him back into the ballroom. This large cave was where he belonged, in the dark and the smoke, with the strains of Haydn struggling to penetrate the walls.
“Restless legs,” Theodore gave as an excuse, kicking his boot against the side of the sideboard and catching himself before he could stumble. Too great a dose, this time. He rubbed his brows. “You should understand. You have been in and out of London ceaselessly these last few months.”
“Oh, you know how Charlotte is. One moment she wants to be in town, the next she misses the sea in Brighton and all her instruments. And her horses. Lord! Who knew a girl of eight could be horse-mad? I shall have to find a most economical and serious husband for her when the time comes.”
Theodore allowed himself the faintest smile, recalling the last time he had seen Keaton’s daughter. She was the picture of her father. “You cannot seriously be contemplating her marriage already. Only yesterday the girl was in leading strings.”
“In what regards Lottie, I contemplate the maddest things, you would not believe.”
James, from the leather footrest by the grate, snorted into his cigar. “I shall vouch for that. He talked of nothing else from Mayfair to Kensington in the carriage.”
“You are seated, Hartwell, and shall keep your peace,” Keaton said, without looking at him. “The worry that descends upon a man when he has a daughter, the necessity of satisfying her every whim... I pray you are never unlucky enough to experience such obsession yourself, Blackthorne.”
“You and me both, old boy.”
“Young lads for you only.”
“Hm.”
“And while we are speaking of such things—”
“Now, let us be clear. You are speaking of such things,” Theodore corrected, anticipating the forthcoming turn in their conversation. “I was content discussing my goddaughter and her horses.”
“Ladida. Will you boys be staying through to supper?” James puffed, checking his pocket watch.
Theodore shook his head.
“General Thatcher will be gravely displeased if you do not,” Keaton pressed. “I swore to him I would convince you.”
“Then that was your mistake, not mine. Though it seems more likely to me that you have made up this story for your own benefit.”
He retrieved his brandy from the sideboard and warmed his hands against the glass. There was a streak of red under his thumbnail. Blood. He tucked it under his fingers.
“And so what if I have lied a little? You have not been seen in town for several months,” Keaton complained, tilting his head to the side.
“You should hear how the ladies agonize over your prolonged absence. I have received not one but three separate calls on your account. Daughters and their mothers with some far-off or otherwise long-forgotten relation to Kat, begging me to make introductions between you and them.”
Theodore examined Keaton, checking him for signs of deception. He would never have used Kat’s name in vain. He had loved his late wife, the former countess, too much to drag the memory of her into a lie.
“Unless it is that heart of yours,” Keaton put in, pausing mid-sip.
“His heart?” James perked up.
“My heart?”
“When I called two months ago, and we opened that bottle you received from Prinny for your war efforts — no great man, ha! — you mentioned something about your heart.”
Theodore frowned. There was nothing wrong with his heart in so far as he knew. Could Keaton have misinterpreted something?
Unless I spoke of Soldier’s Heart, he thought, scraping a hand over his mouth, the condition researchers believe I am afflicted with.
“Rest assured,” Theodore muttered, “that my heart is in working order.”
“Then I must be misremembering.”
He held Keaton’s gaze a moment longer than was strictly required, and Keaton, who had been a friend of twenty-two years, did not press the point in a room of strangers.
James, who had been carefully looking at the carpet, drew on his cigar. “Speaking of agonizing ladies—”
“Were we.”
“You were. I was waiting my turn.” He exhaled toward the ceiling. “I have matters yet to attend to here tonight, in fact. With your cousin.”
Theodore did not need to ask to know James meant Charles. His own meetings with Charles since his return had been few and far between, for reasons he didn’t want to contemplate here.
He forced disinterest. “What has he done now?”
“Nothing yet. But if all goes to plan...” James sighed loudly, suffocating the end of his cigar until it extinguished. It sizzled in the silence. “Have you met my sister, Blackthorne? Why, you must have. You came to the country with us a few times when we were young.”
Theodore looked into the hearth to summon her face. He found her there vaguely, a young girl of nine or ten with dark chestnut hair and a downturned mouth, as though always displeased about something but would not say what.
“Vaguely,” he mused aloud. “Years ago now. At your old home in Gloucester for a few summers.”
“Good Lord! Gloucester! What an age ago...” James rose to a stand, shaking his head. “I must acquaint the two of them tonight. My sister and your cousin. I promised as much to the Captain.”
Theodore started and leaned forward. “Charles is looking to marry?”
“Is that news to you?” Keaton asked.
“Should it not be?”
“Thought that was the reason he settled in London,” Keaton continued. “Is that not what he told you?”
Theodore remained silent, questions piling into a disordered mass in his mind. Admitting that he and Charles had barely spoken in years would only raise questions. He had not even known Charles had been invited by Thatcher this evening.
But in hindsight, it made sense. He should have known better.
James shrugged with a mischievous grin, said, “Do not run out on me before supper, Blackthorne, or I shall hunt you down,” and took his leave.
Theodore kept his eyes on the door of the den, feigned interest, and hoped Keaton did not notice the tremor in his hand.
A lively quadrille was underway by the time Theodore was dragged back into the ballroom.
The air was stifling—a miasma of perfumes, and the smells of bodies moving, breathing, dancing.
A footman passed by. Theodore barely caught him in time to rip a goblet of punch from his silver tray, then brought it up to his lips and downed it.
It was offensively sweet.
He grimaced as Keaton led him to where General Thatcher stood speaking with other military personnel. He took note of the nearest exit and approached as was his duty.
“Your Grace!” Thatcher greeted, a smile decorating his face. He sported his uniform, medals pinned over his breast, gleaming in the light of the room. “How strange it feels not to call you Colonel.”
The title came down on Theodore like hard rain. He forced a smile. Or what he hoped was one.
Keaton was unusually quiet as the conversation progressed, likely contemplating when he could leave and return home to his daughter, but Theodore wanted to leave for his own reasons.
Alas, he had to remain long enough to make a point about his being there—and to find Charles.
For a time, his cousin was nowhere to be seen.
“Look there,” Keaton said privately, pointing discreetly across the ballroom. “Do you see what I see?”
Theodore nodded mutely. Charles had appeared at last through the entranceway. And on his arm was a woman.
Theodore half-expected to find Miss Lilian Hartwell hanging off him, already trapped and beyond saving. But the woman who entered beside his cousin was much more familiar to him.
“Olga,” he whispered, eyes widening.
Lady Olga, Lady Biancfort now, had not aged a day since Theodore had last seen her. She laughed politely at something Charles said, a brilliant smile bringing color to her cheeks, her hand stroking Charles’s arm like they were old friends.
Something about the sight of them together—the collision of two memories, two mistakes—made Theodore’s heart clench. It was not jealousy. He did not wish to be walking with Olga any more than he wished to be Charles. It was something darker and unnameable. Something that made him want to run.
But where?
He moved automatically toward the exit he had spied earlier, just as Charles spotted him. His eyes trained on Theodore’s retreating form, stopping him in his tracks.
He would not give his cousin the benefit of watching him flee.
Pinching his lips, Theodore slowed his breathing and waited for Charles and Olga to descend upon him. They exchanged a whisper. Whispers. About what? That much was not for him to know. When they arrived before him, they smiled.
“Rumor had it you were here tonight,” Charles said, grinning. When had he grown the moustache, and for what? It made him look absurd. “But I said to the Lady Biancfort, no, there must have been a mistake, for you have not been seen in months. Yet here you are, and I have been proven wrong!”
“Here he is,” Olga purred, releasing Charles’s arm and taking Theodore’s instead like nothing had happened between them that had not been happy.
“Oh, Your Grace... Seeing you has made my evening. I tried to call, you know. But you are always so, so busy. Shall we not find a private corner and talk for a while, like old times?” She looked at Charles. “The three of us?”
“A reunion? No. Charles has other business to attend,” Theodore muttered before he could stop himself.
He felt his control loosening. Olga’s grip on him was too tight and constricting. Had it not been for the entertained eyes fixing on them from all around, he would have acted on impulse and cast her off.
Olga blinked, batting her long, pale lashes. “Other business? The business of men, or...?”
“From what I have heard, it is the business of a man and a woman.” Theodore examined his cousin carefully. His expression gave nothing away. Not about the perversity of their three-way reunion. Not about the secrets he had been keeping. “A wife for you, then?”
Charles glanced around as though making sure no one was close enough to hear them. He could not have been that far in his negotiations with James if that were the case.
Small mercies.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Charles looked like he wanted to laugh.
“What of it either way to you, Your Grace?” He spoke the title with poorly concealed acerbity.
“We are both, you and I, returned from war. Had you condescended to answer my calls, I would have told you in person how I intend to progress in my life now that the battles are behind us.”
The battles were not behind for both of them.
Did Charles know it?
The War Offices were rumor mills, and Charles had prided himself on always knowing the business of others. Of their immediate family, only the two of them remained. He had likely tried to call, and when that had failed, had pried into Theodore’s life in other ways. Like through Olga.
No, I am overthinking things now. Olga is not my enemy—.
“The two of you are impossible!” Olga said, cutting through the dark, disordered train of Theodore’s thoughts.
She laughed—a sound so familiar and light it almost made him want to leave—and patted his arm again.
“Was it always like this? The bickering? Even when you were boys? But it must have been. Come, please, let us go and talk!”
“We are talking now,” he muttered, slipping his hand free from Olga when she released him slightly in her surprise. “I have no time for private intercourses at the moment. I was just taking my leave.”
“No?” Olga whined, clutching her chest. “Then we must arrange another meeting at once, Your Grace! I will not take no for an answer. Come to me for tea. I want to hear all about your travels. Charles has already told me a little, but I want to hear the stories from you.”
“Told you what?” Theodore held his breath, staring at Charles rather than Olga. “About the travels? About what precisely?”
“Oh, just his war stories. You feature in them, of course. But I should like to hear from you, because...” Here, she paused and looked at her feet.
What was she hiding? Or was this just a ploy of hers?
That saccharine tone of concern... “Well, I really do think it would be nice if you were to call, that is all, to know intimately how things are with you.”
Theodore swallowed. Charles smirked. It was all he could do not to strike him then and rid him of that grin. He balled his fist, looked him square in the face—
Except, he did not hit him but turned instead.
A woman cried out. A glass shattered.
And then there was blood.
And he did not know if it was real or imagined this time.