Chapter Seventeen
London looked so different.
Montague’s eyes widened as he rode slowly toward the Dulverton Club. The familiar trees looked different, the flowerbeds along the park altered. The front doors had been painted different colors from what he recalled. The Dulverton Club had received a new lick of paint.
All in all, not the reassuring welcome he had hoped for.
Montague dismounted from his horse with a heavy sigh, bones aching after such a long ride.
It had been a mistake. He should have stayed in Oxford. Not to see Sarah. He pushed that thought firmly from his mind as he walked his horse to the club to which only the finest gentlemen were permitted to be members.
No, nothing to do with Sarah. It was not as though her last words were echoing painfully in his mind with every heartbeat.
“I shouldn’t be a second thought. I don’t want to be far down the list. I should be your first want. Goodbye.”
A grimace tightened his jaw as he wordlessly offered the reins to the doorman, who bowed and started leading the horse to the stables.
And that, Montague thought ruefully, was what one paid for. It had been a challenge, keeping up his dues at the Dulverton Club, but he would rather have gone without food than lose his place.
Respectability came in many forms, but the easiest forms he had discovered were being a duke and being a member of Dulverton.
Another footman bowed as Montague entered. “Your Grace, we have missed you. A few of your connections are in the Blue Drawing Room, and you will find His Grace, the Duke of Sedley, in the smoking room. Shall I bring a bottle of your favorite port and two glasses?”
Montague nodded his thanks. That was one of the things he liked about this place. The servants were trained well, always able to suggest precisely what one needed. And in this moment, he needed port.
And friendship. Mostly friendship.
“Have a room prepared, will you?” he said lazily, slipping into the easy manner with which he ordered people about. He was a duke, after all. “I will be staying two nights in London before I am able to return to Caelfall Place. Cleaning.”
He added the last word as an explanation, suddenly remembering he had ensured no one knew the Caelfall duchy required extensive efforts to retrench—but it did not matter.
The footman was already nodding. “The Oriental Suite is available, Your Grace, and I will have someone sent up immediately with a selection of garments.”
Montague raised an eyebrow. “Is what I am wearing insufficient?”
It was partly a jest, really, but the footman smiled impassively. “It is more that I notice you bring with you no luggage, Your Grace.”
Montague stared. Now why the devil hadn’t he thought of that?
He was not doing much thinking these days, it seemed. After that awful fight with Sarah, he had been in a state of panic and delusion ever since.
He had made up his mind. He had come to London to do the honorable thing. He would present himself to the Council of War in a week, then onward, to France.
But in all his haste to leave Oxford without seeing Sarah, he had entirely forgotten to bring a single shirt with him.
“Thank you,” he said aloud. “The smoking room, did you say?”
The smoking room at the Dulverton Club had been redecorated. Montague blinked for a moment in the doorway, unsure if he had taken the correct turn. He could not have mistaken left for right, could he?
“Caelfall! Dear God, what are you doing here? We all thought you in France!”
A smile cracked Montague’s serious expression as he was hailed by a tall gentleman currently ensconced in a large leather armchair by the window.
“Sedley, you old dog,” he said jovially, pushing his sadness to the back of his mind as best he could. “I was told you would be here and that you required a great deal of port.”
Sedley grinned, sandy blond hair falling over his eyes. “Probably, though that suggests you have a story to tell. Sit and tell me all the gory details.”
Montague’s stomach swooped as he sat in an armchair to Sedley’s left. The idea of giving every detail…no, there were some things Sarah and he had shared…
“No, I…Montague, I could never put something that intimate about us in a poem. That’s just for us. You and me.”
His traitorous heart skipped a beat.
“It’s nothing, really,” he said as a footman brought over a bottle of Douro port and two glasses. “Ah, capital.”
“That usually means it is something very interesting and more than a little shameful,” Sedley said cheerfully, taking the port and sniffing the opened neck. “My word, Douro; you are treating me. It must be bad.”
Montague knew he should laugh the suggestion off, pretend he was mortally offended by his friend’s suggestion, tell him some gallant tale—false—about why he was here.
But as Sedley poured two hearty glasses of port and passed him one, Montague found he simply did not have it in him.
“Cheers,” said his companion, clinking the glasses together.
Montague nodded. Then he downed the entire glass in one gulp.
“Steady on there, old chap, you don’t want to go too hard!” said Sedley in alarm.
The dark, rich flavors of the port sparked something in Montague that he had not expected. Defiance. But not against Sarah, nor his friend. Against himself.
“There’s this woman,” he began.
Sedley groaned. “Oh dear God, not you too! Have you heard old Dulverton—yes, he that gave the place his family name. He’s only gone and married a blacksmith!”
Montague blinked. Perhaps the port was a great deal stronger than he suspected. He thought, for a moment there, his friend had said—
“A lady blacksmith,” Sedley corrected with a grin. “Still, scandalous, isn’t it? I was hoping to commiserate with you about all these chaps being daft enough to find solace and monotony in the arms of a woman, but here you are, about to do the same!”
“Oh, she’s not so stupid to accept me. Not after what I—” He caught himself just in time. It would not do to spill all those secrets.
Sedley raised an eyebrow that told him, however, it was not just in time in the slightest. “I think you had better tell me all about it.”
And so Montague did. At least, most of it. Some—sufficient to understand just what a horrible tangle he had managed to get himself into. When he laid it all out, it was difficult not to notice Sarah’s sweetness, her slightly unusual obsession with poetry, but mostly her decency.
And his own reckless stupidity.
When Montague finally came to the end of his tale, Sedley whistled. “Dear God. And I thought you the sort of man who would never bend to that sort of thing.”
“You don’t know Sarah Lockwood,” Montague said. “There goes a woman who could sweet talk a nail into being a butterfly.”
Now where on earth had that come from? Dear God, was poetry catching?
Sedley shook his head. “You know, this reminds me of the gang I’ve been investigating. The Glasshand Gang, have you heard of them?”
Montague blinked. He was not sure where he had gone wrong in telling the story of the last few weeks, but evidently he had made a grave error if Sedley believed that there was anything in common between them and Sarah.
“I beg your pardon?”
Sedley leaned forward conspiratorially, though they were alone in the smoking room. There was also, Montague suddenly noticed, not much port either.
“The Glasshand Gang,” he said in a low voice. “Absolutely awful, they are. They specialize in attacking coaches—yes, like the highwaymen of old! The worst of it all is they have no compunction in attacking those within said coaches, even ladies—”
“I think we’ve managed to meander off topic here,” Montague interrupted, his heart yearning to return to Sarah. “You’ve forgotten Sarah!”
But Sedley waved away his words. “You’re the one who’s forgotten Sarah. As I was saying, the Glasshand Gang—”
“I have forgotten her?” Montague said in astonishment.
He had never heard anything so foolish in his life! Forgetting Sarah wasn’t the problem; it was all he could do to stop thinking about her.
She was appearing in his dreams, too. Not as Sarah, the argumentative, passionate woman who had declared she wanted to be desired by him, as she had stood in the pouring rain—a very intriguing prospect, too. No, the Sarah in his dreams was far less clothed…
“Caelfall? Caelfall!”
Montague started. Sedley was snapping his fingers before his eyes.
“Lost you there for a moment.”
“You think I’ve forgotten Sarah?” Montague repeated, unable to move past the insult.
Sedley raised an eyebrow. “Well, you certainly seem to have forgotten all the parts of her that moved you to fall in love with her.”
There was no appropriate response for that save to scoff. “In love with her?”
He did not—well, he had thought for a time…but if she could not support him in the most important thing he had ever worked toward, what was the point of his affection?
Besides, it was not as though she had ever revealed her affections for him, Montague thought doggedly. Except asking, begging him to bed her. Damn.
Sedley was nodding sagely, as though he were an expert in these matters. Montague almost snorted. The man had never seduced a woman in his life!
“Thing is,” said Sedley, “you place too much weight on the misunderstanding—”
“Argument!”
“Fine, disagreement, are you happy?” Sedley glared and Montague did not have the bad manners to interrupt again. His friend poured them both more port. “As I say, this disagreement with Sarah is just one blip, it sounds, on a connection that was giving you both a great deal of happiness.”
Montague hesitated. Well, when put like that, it was just a small misunderstanding. The rest of their acquaintance had been so very different. Caring. Loving. Passionate.
“Did you bed her?”
“Don’t be a cad, Sedley,” Montague snapped.
His friend raised his hands in mock surrender. “It was only a question!”
“Sarah Lockwood is under my protection,” Montague said, only realizing the truth of his words as he said them. “And anyone questioning her honor will have to answer to me.”