Chapter 7
The right hook was sloppy.
Cassian stepped inside it, took the punch on his shoulder, pivoted, and drove his fist into Richard Sutton’s ribs. The Duke of Ronvale folded with a noise of pure outrage.
“Christ in heaven, Cassian.”
“You were dropping your guard.”
“I was breathing.”
“You were dropping your guard while breathing.”
Richard shuffled back with a gasp, raised his hands, and signaled for a moment. Cassian let him have it.
He flexed his shoulders. He had not slept.
He had ridden hard from Bruton Street to Langton House, changed, walked the half mile to Threadgill’s, and asked for a sparring partner because his head was full of green eyes and the slope of a young woman’s neck, and the only treatment he knew for that condition was thirty minutes in a ring.
It was not working.
“You are vicious this morning,” Richard noted.
“I am efficient.”
“You are vicious.”
“Boys.” The voice came from the bench at the side of the ring. Matthew Turner, the Viscount Greencliff, sat on it with his cane across his knees and the patch over his left eye angled slightly toward the action as always.
He had been a major when he had lost his eye.
He had been the youngest son of a baron when he had bought his commission, and the viscountcy he carried now was a borrowed thing, come to him late and unlooked-for.
But before all that, he had wanted to be a poet which only Cassian had ever heard him admit.
Now, in the long quiet years after Waterloo, he was the closest thing Cassian had to a father.
Cassian had stopped resenting that fact about four years ago.
“Boys,” Matthew called again, “a man who fights to forget a woman is a man who has not yet decided what he means by forgetting.”
Richard groaned. “Matthew. Please.”
“You may not like it, Richard, but there it is.”
“Matthew, I am being beaten by him because I am tired, not because I am thinking about a woman.”
“Mm. Cassian.”
“Yes.”
“What do you think about women?”
Cassian raised his guard and stepped back into the center. “Well, I am getting married.”
He had not meant to say it like that. He had meant to lead up to it. He had meant to make a pleasant ceremony of the announcement since both these men would be at the dinner this evening and the news would have to come out one way or another. He had not meant for it to come out as a punch.
Richard dropped his hands. He did not catch the right cross that followed. It hit him on the cheekbone and sent him stumbling back a full step. He raised one bare fist, pointed at Cassian with the wrong end of it, and said in a voice of pure outrage, “Cassian Arnolds.”
“Richard.”
“You absolute—To whom?”
“Lady Alice Lockwood.”
“But you hate Lady Alice.”
“I do not, in fact, hate her.”
“You have spent two years telling me you hate her.”
“I was wrong. Hate is a strong word.”
“Cassian.”
“Yes.”
“Are you well?”
“I have not slept. I am otherwise quite well. I am hosting a small dinner this evening to celebrate the betrothal, and I would be most obliged if you attend, both of you. You may bring whomever you like.”
Cassian briefly looked at Matthew, only to find the man watching him.
Matthew was always watching him. Since the year Cassian had inherited, he had been watching him as if he were waiting for him to be a person again. This morning, Cassian was not certain whether Matthew thought the moment had arrived.
“My boy,” Matthew said.
“Yes?”
“This is sudden.”
“It is.”
“And the lady?”
“The lady is—” Cassian paused.
With his sister in the carriage, he had given an honest answer. With her, he had been able to say the thing aloud. But at Threadgill’s, with Richard’s fist still raised in front of his face and his father figure looking at him from the bench, he could not say it again.
“I thought you had no interest in such things,” Richard said, more gently.
“I thought the same.”
“But…?”
“She is different.”
“Different how?”
“Richard.”
“Different how, Cassian? I will come over for dinner this evening. I should like to know what to expect.”
Cassian let his guard down at last.
“Different in that,” he said carefully, “it is not a love match. She knows as well as I do that it is a good one. You will see for yourself this evening. Eight o’clock. Langton House. Bring an appetite. Joanna has spent the entire morning instructing the cook.”
“I shall come,” Richard said, “purely for the entertainment of watching you survive it.”
“That is acceptable.” Cassian then turned to the Viscount. “Matthew.”
“I shall come,” the older man assured. “I shall come gladly. I shall observe, and I shall report my findings.”
Cassian eyed him. “Your findings?”
“On any matter that interests me.”
“Matthew.”
“My boy, you are getting married. I am an old man. Allow me my pleasures.”
Cassian sighed. He snatched the towel from the rope and wiped his brow. “Eight o’clock,” he said. “Do not be late.”
Alice did not want to wear the blue gown.
As her maid pinned the sash, she told herself that she was wearing it because it had been laid out, because the green one was creased, because the pink one was at the laundress, and because the cream one made her sallow.
She told herself she was wearing it because it was, by any measure, the most appropriate gown in her wardrobe for an intimate dinner at the home of a duke.
As her maid styled her hair, she told herself that she was not wearing the blue gown because Cassian Arnolds had asked for it. As she pinned her grandmother’s pearls at her throat, she told herself that she was certainly not wearing it to please him.
She glanced at herself in the mirror. The blue gown did not displease her.
That, she thought ruefully, was as much as she was willing to admit.
“You look stunning,” Daphne said from the doorway.
“I look adequate.”
“Stunning.”
“I look like a girl who is going to dinner at her betrothed’s house and will be thoroughly observed by her betrothed’s friends, and who would very much like to be allowed to disappear into a wall.”
“Stunning.”
Alice turned around. “Stop saying that this instant.”
“You want to impress your betrothed.”
There was a slight edge to Daphne’s voice. Not unkind but not entirely teasing either.
Alice looked at her sister, who was leaning tall and thin against the doorframe with her arms folded. The needling intelligence in her eyes was the precise expression she had worn last night when she had asked whether the Duke of Langton was in love with Alice or merely doing his duty.
“Of course.” Alice turned back to the mirror. “Why else would I worry?”
“Hmm.”
“Daphne.”
“I said nothing.”
“You hummed.”
“It was a small hum.”
“Daphne.”
The butler appeared in the corridor to announce that the carriage was ready, and their parents were waiting for them downstairs. Their mother’s voice was already pitched high with anticipation, and their father’s voice was already weary.
Alice took a last look at herself in the mirror before walking out of her room.
Langton House was exactly as she remembered it.
She had only been there once, and that was two years ago in the dark with a fistful of pebbles. At the time, she had not taken in the front. It was tall, pale, and respectable. The entrance hall, when the butler led them in, smelled of beeswax and very old wood and faintly of orange peel.
She fixed her sash then again. She had fixed her sash four times in the carriage, twice on the steps, and once before the butler had finished bowing. Her hand was now on her grandmother’s pearls, twisting them at her throat, before she had given herself permission to put it there.
“Stop fidgeting,” Daphne murmured behind her shoulder. “He has not even looked at you yet, Alice. Save some for when he does.”
“I am not fidgeting.”
“You are.”
“I am admiring the entrance hall.”
“You are fumbling with your jewelry.”
Alice put her hand down.
Joanna was at the door of the drawing room. “Welcome.” She kissed Alice on both cheeks. “You look so beautiful, Alice. What is happening?”
“Joanna.”
“What?”
“Be quiet.”
“I am being quiet. I am being beautifully quiet.”
“Joanna.”
“Welcome.” The voice came from behind them.
Alice turned to see the Duke standing in the hall behind them.
He had changed for the evening. He was in black with a pale waistcoat she could not assess from this distance and a cravat tied in a way she did not recognize.
He had shaved, and his hair was damp at the temples.
He looked, to her absolute fury, more handsome than he had any right to look at this hour of the evening.
How could I have missed that for two years? How could I?
“Must be the scowl,” she muttered to her gloves.
“What was that, My Lady?”
She froze. She had not meant for him to hear it. She had said it under her breath, intending it for her own ears. Evidently, she had not been quiet enough.
“Nothing,” she said too quickly.
His eyebrow rose, but he did not speak. He waited.
She declined to fill the silence.
He waited longer. She continued to decline.
“Nothing at all, My Lady?”
“Nothing at all, Your Grace.”
“Hmm.”
He offered her his hand, and she took it.
It was a perfectly proper gesture. He held it out for her to lay her gloved fingers on in the precise correct fashion, and she lay them there, and then he led her into the drawing room. The distance was perhaps fifteen feet. In her opinion, it was considerably longer.
The pressure of his fingers, even through her glove, sent gooseflesh up the back of her hand, up her arm, and up the side of her neck. She did not understand it, and she did not like it, and she could not, just at this moment, look at him.
“Lady Alice.”
“Your Grace.”
“You are wearing blue.”
“It was laid out. It does not mean anything.”
“Of course.”
She could hear the smile in his voice.
She did not turn her head.
The dining table was set for eight.
Cassian made the introductions like a man who had hosted many dinners.