Cort waited, understanding his brother’s need to work through a problem one cautious step at a time. They were vastly different in this way as Cort made decisions seconds after committing. A problem, according to his family. However, he was being honest with the one person he loved most in the world. He didn’t want the title. In fact, he’d thanked the heavens more times than he could count for arriving second. Those three minutes had given him freedom. Liberty that at one time had confounded him with its vastness but now seemed divine intervention.
Knox rocked back on his heels with a sigh. “I’d ask a favor of you, if I could. Parliament is in session for another month, and my time is limited. Damien is off working on some mysterious project, and I can’t ask him.”
Cort exhaled softly, staring at the bubbles riding his champagne. He knew this was the launch of a request he’d want to reject. Knox only brought up his duties in the House of Lords if he wished to guilt Cort into easy acceptance. “I’m scared to ask, but what?”
“I know you were out there earlier today, but I’ve scheduled repairs in Hampstead that need supervision. The north section of the roof, the scullery floor. You could work on your designs. It should take a week or so, at most. The village has enough entertainments to keep you busy. A willing widow or two that I recall.” He flicked his hand, his flute glittering in the candlelight. “You always loved it there more than anyone.”
Cort tossed back his drink, champagne hitting his brain in a rush and bringing a murky haze to his vision. Something about this request felt like foreshadowing when he wasn’t a man who believed in inevitability.
Knox saluted a passing group with his glass. “She doesn’t live there anymore. Moved away when she married, though Hampton Court is still in the family. Unentailed, if you can believe it.”
Cort made the pointless effort, a two-second action, to argue. Or laugh. Then he stopped himself with a whispered curse instead. Everyone had known about his fixation with Alexandra Mountbatten from the time he was ten years old. Except Alexandra Mountbatten. Why debate a moot bit of utterly substantiated history? “Amberly. She moved away when she married Viscount Amberly.” A few weeks, give or take, before he’d destroyed the Cambridge lab. He’d often questioned if the news of his neighbor’s betrothal to a reprobate of the first order had lit a reckless fire beneath him.
His fuse never took much to get it burning.
For weeks after, he hadn’t been able to get it—her—out of his mind. By that time, his dreams had been filled with lewd illustrations, each one bearing her likeness. Uncreative, perhaps, but her gorgeous lips wrapped around his cock had been the most prominent.
Not a boy’s cravings, these.
“It’s been ages since I last saw her. Sometime before we left for school,” Cort lied, glancing around for a footman. That damned kiss had occurred on a break from Eton. If they were going to discuss childhood obsessions, Cort needed another drink. A stronger one. Two, in fact. Or six. “Old news, Your Grace. I’m past that. A thousand tups past.”
His brother grinned and knocked him in the shoulder again, sending him skipping to the side. He hated it when Knox did that. “So you’ll do it? Go to Hampstead and supervise the repairs?”
If he closed his eyes, Cort could see the fields behind the stately manor they’d spent summers in while growing up, a gilded landscape racing to the horizon. Full vistas and star-lit skies. The air scented with grass or hay or hydrangea. The home had been his mother’s, a place of refuge and pleasure. She’d passed there, as had his father. Skinned knees and grimy feet, swimming in the lake behind the house, archery in the triangle of woodland between the estate and the postal road. Hampstead wasn’t far, a two-hour ride from London, but it’d been far enough as a lad to seem another world. Full of dreams and adventure.
Knox was right about one thing. Cort’s heart had always been in Hampstead.
Restless, he signaled a footman, needing liquid courage more than ever. “I’ll go. I’m due to show designs to McKinley in a month, so I can use the week in Hampstead to finalize my drawings.” Cort had a plan, a damn good one, to make his fortune through the invention of a high-pressure cylinder for steam engines, which was, he believed, the future of transportation. Engines that could take more of a beating were the only way to bring prices down and steer the industry away from its reliance on cheap, filthy coal. He had a mind for mechanics; there wasn’t a device he couldn’t take apart and put back together in minutes. The quietude of his work matched his amended personality, if it was changed, perfectly.
As did his fierce need to make his own way, a truth his twin didn’t understand as his path had been laid out for him since birth.
Three minutes that had drawn clear lines between them.
But Hampstead felt like a risky roll of the dice.
Because Cort still remembered the first time he’d seen Alexandra Mountbatten, now Alexandra Mountbatten Rashing, the widowed Viscountess Amberly. A girl he’d once called Alex. A tattered gown an inch too short batting her trim ankles, a wrinkled cap shoved on her head, her luscious hair a tangle beneath it. An earl’s daughter with dirt on her chin and ragged fingernails, a smile she unleashed without reservation, nothing like the guarded darlings in Mayfair. She’d fairly glowed with vigor, and he’d never forget the punch to his gut each time he’d seen her.
Not dissimilar from the sensation today when he’d realized who was helping Seamus shoe his mount.
Maybe he’d idolized her because she’d looked through him, over him, past him. Sons of dukes, even second sons, weren’t used to being disregarded. This afternoon, however, in a deserted stable courtyard, he’d felt the weight of awareness circling, a woman’s gaze hot upon him. A buzz he recognized.
Thankfully, he wasn’t that scrawny lad anymore.
After years of silent worship, he was due some luck with this chit, wasn’t he? If she were the one to pine, should they chance to meet again, that wouldn’t be the worst outcome, would it? He’d grab any slice of dominion given him. It would feel bloody wonderful to say no to her this time. Balm for his battered, youthful soul.
“You’re plotting, brother of mine, and I know to fear that look. It’s the one that occurs before laboratories are destroyed and boats sunk.”
Cort shook himself free of the sensation of being swept under by a woman he’d imagined he’d long forgotten. But no. An accidental meeting on a spring afternoon and here he was, dashed and debating his next move.
CHAPTER 2
WHERE OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS
Alex had done something she’d never done before.
She’d instituted a covert investigation into a man’s background for reasons she wasn’t fully willing to admit. Curiosity, possibly, and a burning need hidden layers deep. Dangerous any way she played it.
The morning after her chance encounter with Cortland DeWitt, she’d written to her friend, Claudine Grant, seeking information about him. Claudine’s husband had served at Waterloo, and it was common knowledge that the late Duke of Herschel’s second son had as well. She suspected her friend might know something of him. She and Claudine were part of the Widows’ League, a discreet group who discussed controversial topics related to their changed circumstances. They shared advice about navigating a future holding more freedom than most of them had experienced in their lives. When one lost one’s husband, situations shifted. Taking a discrete lover, for instance, was not looked upon as severely.
