“Well, only think, Your Grace. If this were a game of blindman’s buff, they’d find me in no time as the river is not more than, oh, fifty yards from where we stand now.”
Behind her, her best audience, Mr. Delacorte, chuckled softly. Bless him.
“Ah. So you’re saying what happened was a game to you?”
His tone was mild, curious. His voice was baritone silk.
His eyes were mercilessly negating.
She could imagine the testicles of a thousand enemy soldiers shriveling at the tone.
She would be damned if she would give him the satisfaction of watching her prostrate herself for his absolution. She’d done nothing wrong.
If only she truly believed this, in her heart of hearts.
If only she knew for certain there was nothing she could have done differently.
“No doubt a man of your stature seldom has time for games, so perhaps you’ve forgotten the meaning of the word, Your Grace,” she soothed. “You ought to play a few games with us.” She raised her voice a little. “But I must warn you, Mrs. Pariseau is to spillikins what Gentleman Jackson is to boxing.”
Mrs. Pariseau, who did like her and could be charmed, laughed. “And Miss Wylde will win your estate in Faro, Your Grace, if you aren’t careful.” She winked.
Mariana froze. Oh, for God’s sake.
“I shall always be careful around Miss Wylde,” the duke said, and winked back at Mrs. Pariseau, winning her devotion for life.
He settled in with a pen and a sheet of foolscap, and, Mariana was certain, forgot her promptly.
The duke didn’t forget Mariana.
Or rather, one would have to be first remembered to be forgotten. She’d simply disappeared from his thoughts, the way the tables and chairs in the parlor had now that he was no longer in it.
She was right. To him, she did not signify.
He’d gone with some relief to the smoking room after about an hour of sitting in the drawing room, per the rules. And now he was thinking about his late wife, Eliza. Sometime during the seventeenth century, well before he’d bought his London townhouse to please her, the twenty-foot-high ceilings had been painted with blue skies and clouds, among which cherubs swathed in gossamer scarves cavorted. If one must have cherubs in the house, the ceiling was the best place for them, he’d thought grimly. He did not often look up. He’d always thought painting a sky on a ceiling confusingly suggested one would rather be outside. Which, for him, was generally true, so that’s where he went.
Metaphorically speaking, he’d been the smoking room in his marriage, and his wife had been the parlor just outside. They’d lived adjacent lives, with an invisible impermeable wall between.
His taste in art was more prosaic: he favored good paintings of horses and dogs and ships, preferably hung where he could see them, at eye-level. And quality in all things, damn the expense, and he’d been able to damn expenses for nigh on a decade. He’d slept rough on muddy ground as an ensign and on the finest four-poster beds in rooms so vast and marbled-clad one could hear the soft “tick” of a dropped crumb. He appreciated comfort. He preferred comfort.
But he frankly thought he might still love small, smoky rooms the best.
This one was kitted out in all the colors of a snug den: various shades of browns and mahoganies and creams, heavy curtains and a good rug scrolled in stain-hiding colors, on the premise that men are essentially animals once let out of sight of women, and it was of no use to fight it.
Big, sturdy chairs, a battered table perfect for propping up booted feet. Brandy in the snifter and cigars in the humidor. A cloud of smoke, and three other men leaning against the walls, in that reverie caused by the first suck on a good cheroot. He knew and liked and, more importantly, profoundly respected Hardy. He’d heard of Bolt, because everybody had. Hardy had attempted to describe Mr. Delacorte to him but, apparently at a loss for words, stopped himself. “You’ll see,” was all he’d said.
Mr. Delacorte was the first to break the silence. “We had an earl here some weeks ago,” he volunteered, hopefully. “His whole family. They felt right at home.”
“That’s a relief to know, Mr. Delacorte,” he said gravely, ironically. “Thank you.”
“Right nice bloke,” Mr. Delacorte added.
There was a little silence.
“. . . for an earl?” the duke suggested mildly.
This was, in fact, true. But Mr. Delacorte, who at the best of times was often a bit like an exuberant pet struggling to remain on its best behavior, was nobody’s fool. His smile was tentative. He was not willing to believe the duke was funny yet, lest his hopes be crushed.
“Put your trousers on one leg at a time, though, Your Grace, like the rest of us blokes, I imagine. Ha.”
The duke exhaled smoke. “I’ve a staff of a dozen who gently lift me with a series of pulleys and then lower me into them, lest I’m abraded unduly.”
“HA!” Delacorte bellowed happily and slapped his own thigh.
The duke gave a start.
From within their individual veils of smoke, Hardy and Bolt suppressed smiles.
“Some mornings I need to do a little dance to get into mine,” Delacorte said.
“I’ve gathered we’re fed well here. As dancing is not one of my talents, I shall have to exercise restraint at the dinner table,” the duke said.
Delacorte smiled broadly, as if the duke just kept exceeding his expectations. “They mend us well, here, too.” Delacorte gave a pat to the egg-like curve of his belly. “Shirts, waistcoats. Should you find things need letting out or fastening back on.”
“Very good to know.” He had an expensive tailor now and a fastidious, underutilized valet. He knew how to sew his own buttons, mend his clothes, black his boots, and knit, thanks to the army. He didn’t particularly want to do any of that anymore, but at forty-three years old, there was almost nothing he could not only survive, but shape into a triumph.
Except for his bloody book.
He looked across at Lucien Durand, Viscount Bolt, another former denizen of the gossip columns. No youth had been wilder or angrier. He’d been assumed drowned after a night at gaming hells a decade ago. Precisely the sort of man the duke had raised his own son not to be. Bolt had allegedly returned from the dead harder, wiser, and much reformed, so reformed that Hardy had gone into business with him.
Much more like the man Valkirk wished his son would become.
Sometimes Valkirk thought it was the only way anyone could transform: a death, metaphorical or otherwise.
“I’m acquainted with your father, Bolt.”
“I imagine your paths would have crossed,” Bolt said idly. “Given that there are only a handful of dukes in the world, the temptation to congregate must stir now and again.”
“Brexford,” the duke mused. “He’s a bit . . .”
There was a small, fraught silence.
“. . . of a bastard?” Lucien supplied. Ironically, given that he was a literal bastard.
The duke blew a languid smoke ring. “I was going to say he’s not very interesting, is he?”
It was such a scathingly perfect indictment of the man who had cut Lucien so callously out of his life that everyone else in the room went motionless with awe.
Brexford was dull, wealthy, shallow, smug, and content. He possessed no qualities a man like Valkirk could catch hold of or relate to.