Strange to think that Uncle Algy was now Oliver’s heir.
He would have stayed talking to his uncle if he could, but the musicians were picking up their instruments again and the next aspiring duchess awaited him. Regretfully, Oliver bade his uncle goodbye. A dozen more steps and he hove to in front of Miss Buxton.
Miss Buxton’s main ploy for hunting dukes was a simper. Oliver didn’t like simpers. Every time Miss Buxton simpered, he deducted one point. Her score rapidly sank below zero. By the time the musicians played the final notes, she had reached minus eighty. Tonight’s lowest score.
One more dance to go and he could call it a night.
It was while he was heading towards his final partner that Oliver encountered the second of his two surviving relatives: Uncle Algernon’s son.
“Ninian.” Oliver looked his cousin up and down. “You look very, uh . . .” Pretty was the word that sprang to mind.
Their Uncle Reginald, the eighth duke, had been in his grave for more than a year. The time for mourning was long past, but Ninian was lingering in shades of lilac and lavender.
Lilac and lavender were colors Oliver would never willingly wear, but there was no denying that they suited Ninian’s golden hair and blue eyes. He looked beautiful. But Ninian always looked beautiful.
“Do you like it?” Ninian said. His gaze was bright and hopeful, and he might be a fribble and a fop, but he was also Uncle Algy’s son and Oliver’s only cousin.
Oliver strove for a compliment. “Very pretty coat. What color do you call it?”
“Periwinkle,” Ninian said, beaming.
“Suits you,” Oliver said, and then, “Excuse me, Ninian; I’m claimed for the next dance.”
His last partner for the night achieved a respectable one hundred and twenty-eight points, not because of her bosom, but because she had a very pretty pair of dimples. Oliver liked dimples, and in another time and place he might have tried to coax a kiss from Miss Norton. But he was no longer a devil-may-care dragoon captain, he was a prudent duke, and so he escorted Miss Norton back to her mother, unkissed.
Oliver was aware of young ladies hopefully eyeing him. He made for the door, not pausing long enough for anyone to catch him.
A flight of stairs beckoned him downwards. He breathed a sigh of relief and descended to the vestibule. A footman fetched his hat for him. Oliver stepped outside. It wasn’t completely dark under the portico—flambeaux burned, keeping the night at bay—but it was blessedly cool and quiet after the ballroom.
A dozen marble steps led down to the street, gleaming in the light from the flaming torches. Oliver stood for a moment on the topmost step. Funny that one could feel lonely in a city as large as London, but he did feel lonely at this moment, had in fact felt lonely rather often in the month he’d been back on English soil.
If this were India, he’d have Ned Lovelock at one shoulder and Tubby Hedgecomb at the other, and they’d be laughing together, enjoying being young and alive.
But this wasn’t India.
Oliver put his hat on, tilted the brim until it sat just right, and promised himself that he’d call on Rhodes Garland tomorrow. A few hours in Rhodes’s company would make him feel less alone.
His ears caught the faint scuff of a shoe behind him—and then someone shoved him violently between the shoulder blades.
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