One day, his home would feel cozy, he promised himself. If not this townhouse, then a cottage in the country. A place and a family to call his own. A wife just as delighted to see him day after day as he would be to see her.
If he ever managed to meet the elusive woman.
Not for the first time, he could not help but wonder if his insistence on a love match was merely prolonging the loneliness. Was he a fool to dream of more?
Thad traversed his empty bedchamber and stepped out to the small iron balcony facing the street. The narrow overhang was only one floor up and barely wide enough to fit a footstool, but Thad loved sitting in this nook with a pencil and his journals, or a good book to get lost in.
At the moment, he was in the midst of an enthralling biography on Edward Gibbon. The evening’s mad rush from soirée to soirée wouldn’t begin for several hours, making this the perfect opportunity to immerse himself in his book.
He settled on his stool with his ankles crossed before him and riffled the pages to find the scrap of paper he’d used to mark his place.
When his cousin Diana had discovered Thad’s love of biographies, she had encouraged him to start keeping a journal. Instead of writing about himself, Thad wrote about everyone else. No one but Diana knew his dream of becoming a biographer himself.
A wistful smile teased Thad’s lips. He would love to interview someone flashy like Wellington, or perhaps the musicians of Vauxhall, or even Sake Dean Mohamed, who had opened a Hindustani coffee house on George Street before moving back to Brighton. One day, Thad would write stories like theirs.
Until then, he would make do with books written by others.
“Sir? Sir? Sir?”
Thad jerked his head up with a start. He was so engrossed in his book, he’d failed to hear his butler until the poor man was practically shouting in his ear.
With reluctance, he marked his place and closed the book. “Yes, Shaw?”
“Her Grace, the Duchess of Colehaven is here, sir.”
His cousin Diana!
Thad brightened and leaped to his feet. “Is she downstairs in the parlor?”
“Of course I’m not downstairs in the parlor,” came a familiar voice as Diana barged into the room. “I used to live here, remember?”
“You lived in your chambers,” he scolded her, pleased to discover that becoming a duchess hadn’t changed his unconventional cousin one whit. “This is my private drawing room, to which you have not been invited.”
“Mmhmm,” she replied in a soothing tone that implied she’d barge in anywhere she pleased. Diana lifted her arm, from which hung a small basket. “Come along then, and see what I brought you.”
New journals, of course. Diana had never presented him with anything else. The timing was quite prescient, as he’d just started a new journal that morning.
Thad hurried after her down the stairs to the main parlor. “Is Colehaven with you?”
She shook her head. “He’s at the Wicked Duke, perfecting a new ale.”
From the glint in his cousin’s eyes, Thad suspected the ale in question was long perfected, and Diana had been the first to try it.
“What’s in the basket?” Perhaps it wasn’t journals after all, but a bottle of the newest beer.
Rather than answer, Diana settled into a comfortable chair and arched a brow. “How did your hunt go today?”
He rolled his eyes as he leaned back into a settee. “Don’t ask. English soil hasn’t seen a defeat so embarrassing since the Dutch torched the Royal Navy at Chatham.”
“Technically, that was the River Medway,” Diana pointed out helpfully. “Yours is still the worst on English soil.”
“Lovely,” he murmured. “I can’t believe I was just lamenting the silence of an empty house.”
“Were you?” With obvious delight, she bounded up from her chair and swung the basket onto his lap. “Open it, open it!”
Thad doubted very much that the basket contained new writing journals. He lifted the lid with trepidation.
The low sound of purring greeted him.
