Fuck.
His boyhood bane, his childish infatuation, sharing the same breathing space for the first time in years. She’d looked different—yet not. Much to his dismay, he’d recognized her the instant he walked into the courtyard, cursing his brother for his misinformation that she no longer resided in Hampstead. Still circling the horses, her passion even back then, a mature rendering of the carefree girl he’d cherished. Her gown a brutal jest on fashion, her cheeks unsuitably sun-kissed, her hair a heavy, mahogany tangle atop her head.
He polished his hand across his chin, his breath quickening. Ah, he remembered that hair. The kind that made a man imagine wrapping it around his fist and tugging as he slid inside her. Gently but with purpose, until time dissolved like mist on the sea.
Her lips, regretfully, had been the exact ones from his memory, the most gorgeous mouth of any woman he’d met to this day. Pink and pouting when she’d looked at him back in the day, the bottom rolling over the top.
God, her sulks had sent him into an adolescent frenzy.
Throughout his childhood, she’d done her best, a notable job, actually, of ignoring the bloody hell out of him. When all he’d wanted was a word. A glance. A kiss. When she’d been his senior by enough years to count. Too many, he supposed, in fairness. Maturing into a woman while he’d been waiting for fur to sprout on his bollocks.
His brothers had often told him to pick on someone his own age.
At some point, he had.
Memories buffeted him despite his best effort to chuck them from his mind, proving he shouldn’t have consumed the second glass of champagne. The way she’d held her head at a slight angle when she was thinking. Her supremely agile seat atop a horse. Her smile, buttery soft for those held in her affection. Her laugh, deep but with a supple edge. He’d been attracted not only to her beauty, but also her wit, her intelligence.
Empathy had come later, when he’d observed her watching his family interact with her heart in her eyes. That bit drawing him in when he’d hardly known what he was about.
A mingled image tore through Cort. The girl from the past and the woman in the courtyard, her lush body sprawled beneath his, her lips parting, her words welcoming this time. Attraction tolled like a bell, a rusty, neglected emotion. He didn’t want to find this vision of her appealing when it held no chance of fulfillment. Not now, when he knew better.
About everything.
He was changed since Waterloo, the final scrap of innocence sliced away on a blood-stained battlefield. Though he was trying mightily to guide his boat into calmer waters and relieve his family and friends of the burden of unease. The sons and brothers returning from battle were cause for concern, as they had a blank emptiness behind their eyes they couldn’t hide, solve for, or remedy. He attended every function he was invited to, was an able brother to a duke, when he’d rather be in his set of rooms at the Albany working on his engine designs. A hobby society thought peculiar for a three-minutes-away-from-being-a-duke bloke.
When the simple truth was, Cort no longer belonged.
And there was only so much he was willing to do to pretend he did.
“If you don’t erase that scowl from your face, you’re going to forever wreck your charming reputation. Countess Rashford is waiting for you to make a move. She’s been watching us all night. If you’re the gentleman she’s chosen this month, consider yourself fortunate and ask her to dance.” As he was inclined to do, Cort’s twin, Knoxville, the Duke of Herschel, gave him a shove that knocked him out of the shadows and into the band of candlelight cast from the chandelier.
Stumbling into a footman’s path, Cort deftly snatched two flutes from a tray and forced one into his brother’s hand.
Taking a lingering sip, Knox hummed, a sign of forthcoming wisdom. “The countess is a tigress in bed, or so they say. Maybe a torrid affair could be the thing to pull you back. You would have jumped on this opportunity, quite literally, before. You’re getting too used to the ease of paid explorations when lightskirts should be reserved for desperate phases only.”
A tigress, Cort thought dispassionately, although he kept his indifference to himself. No man would admit, even to his brother, the weariness accompanying such a fantasy. It was true that courtesans were his current yet infrequent stratagem. He’d tried slipping back into society in a normal roguish manner upon his return—bored wives, ravenous widows—but he’d found he was no longer able to play the game competently enough to survive it.
If he’d been a wolf, he wasn’t one anymore. And marriage wasn’t a commitment he could imagine himself making in such uncertain times. “Pull me back from what?”
Knox’s fingers tightened around the flute’s stem hard enough to shatter crystal.
“I had to do something,” Cort whispered, telling himself it would be the last time they had this conversation. When it came up often. Too often. “Second sons mean little in our world, Knox. You know this. Cambridge wasn’t taking me back after the unpleasantness, although I honestly didn’t know the materials were combustible. I apologized profusely even as I was beating out the flames consuming my waistcoat. My belly was charred for weeks. It was a prank that went awry, and I wasn’t going to Father again. Not this time. He paid for the mirror in Eleby’s ballroom, you recall, when his daughter threw the vase at me. So I bought the commission with my own funds and sent back what I could until I paid for the damage.”
The rest he’d compensated for in ways money couldn’t buy.
“Second sons of dukes don’t go to war, Cort. They blow up university labs and are gently castigated for their transgressions. Then they return to a life of dissipation and delight.” He tossed back his champagne, laughing when he wasn’t amused. “I rather preferred your infamy for mischief. The boat you capsized on the Thames. The time you spent two days lost in the woods in Hampstead when we were boys. That calamity with the henhouse you erected that one summer. This soldiering mess…” He shrugged, running out of steam like a kettle taken off a burner. “I can’t grasp your decision, even now. It keeps me up at night envisioning it.”
Cort rubbed the back of his neck, which had suddenly gone hot. Regarding those poor chickens, he’d not realized foxes could tear through wire so easily. He’d cried when he’d seen the destruction. “I was good at it,” he explained when he didn’t need to explain a damned thing.
“At killing?”
Cort turned on his brother, as always, experiencing a jolt at seeing himself reflected back. They looked so much alike that they’d taken classes for each other at Eton with teachers none the wiser. Heeding rumors, upon entry to Cambridge, the administrators had forced them to attend classes together. When anyone who knew them understood Cort had Knox by a solid two inches in height. “At leading. I never had a chance to do that before. Dissipation doesn’t suit. I’m too restless to allow it.”
Knox’s shoulders slumped. “If I ever made you feel—”
“You didn’t. I don’t wish for a dukedom any more than you did. I merely had to grow up.” The memory of cannon fire rippled over him, along with the scent of gunpowder and the stinging odor of scorched earth. But he could live with those things, his life. “For all the event changed me, I did. Grow up. Allow me this in the manner in which I chose to do it. I certainly gave you the same opportunity.”
Knox fell silent, rubbing the rim of his flute over his lips.
