Dorian nodded with pleasure, thinking of Rose’s recent initiatives in rearranging several of the public rooms for better function or more modern taste. She had even been engaging with Mrs. Jennings on household menus and introducing unusual new foods and exotic fruits for them both to try. In less than two weeks, it would be Christmas and he looked forward to the surprises Rose had promised.
“Rose is the Duchess of Ravenhill,” Dorian said with a shrug and a touch of pride in his wife. “My household is safe in her hands, I believe. Even more importantly, Rose is very good company.”
“I gather that you have not kept yourself from her bed after all,” the Duke of Ashbourne put in bluntly now.
At first, Dorian only smiled and remained silent but then he sighed.
“Rose came to my bed first,” he admitted. “It was not what I planned but I have no regrets and it is probably for the best. After all, Rose does want a child…”
Dorian’s voice trailed off and he shook his head.
“No, I deceive myself if I claim to have acted solely out of duty in the bedroom. I am a hot-blooded man, Rose is a very lovely and healthy young woman, and she is my wife. That is the simple truth. We were hardly going to live together in chastity forever, were we?”
“It seemed unlikely” agreed Cassius equably and they rode on together in silence for a few minutes before he added a short but disturbing question. “Do you love Rose? I know that Josephine will ask me that.”
“Love?!” Dorian answered swiftly with a deliberately urbane laugh. “Jane asked me the same question when I last visited. As I told her, I believe it is better that I do not love Rose. Duty,care and friendship, and even desire, are all more easily handled when love does not come into the matter.”
“You always talk as though life can be arranged by will, with clever thinking and a good grasp of the rules, as though you were moving pieces on a chess board,” complained Cassius with equal humor.
“It can and it should,” averred Dorian. “If I loved Rose, or she loved me, how miserable we could become. Love turns so swiftly to hate, and hate which came from love seems so much more powerful than other kinds.”
“I have never found that myself,” his friend demurred.
“You never had the misfortune to meet my parents,” Dorian told Cassius with dark humor. “One day screaming, the next embracing, the next away with other lovers, the next spent in recrimination, the next in repentance, then forgiveness, back to love and the whole cycle begins again. Then think what love has done to Jane Chatham, and her mother before her. No, thank you. Love is not for me.”
“That is not the kind of love I have known,” Cassius started to point out but Dorian did not want to hear. “Nor do I believe Jane regrets anything of love, from what you have said.”
“I am happy for you and your Josephine, truly,” Dorian assured the Duke of Ashbourne. “I am glad that Jane’s life is without great regret. But for Rose and I, in our very different situation, itis better my way. We have understanding, desire and friendship. Love need not get in our way.”
Even as he spoke the words, the levity in Dorian’s voice rang false to his own ears and he felt a pang of misgiving. Cassius’ next question turned the pang into something more painful again.
“What if Rose loves you, Dorian? You’re handsome, experienced, brave enough to do your duty, and you’re the only lover she’s ever had. It would take no great leap of imagination to think that a young woman in her situation, with her temperament, might easily fall for such a rescuer.”
“Rose has told me herself that she would rather have what we have than what is in her old romance books,” said Dorian, the words sounding like an attempt to convince himself. “She enjoys my company and knows I will take care of her and any child. I am a better husband than many, with or without declarations of love.”
Cassius sighed, as though giving up on something.
“I will not tax you further, old friend,” he said. “I only wish you to know that falling in love need not be the end of the world, for either of you.”
“Tell me more about your friend Levi,” Dorian put in, changing the subject completely to one they had touched on in their recent correspondence. “You wrote that he would be in London in January and that you would be grateful if I met him.”
“Ah, yes, indeed. Levi Collins is the new Duke of Hawcrest, through a chain of unfortunate events far more tenuous than your own accession. It was a second cousin of his who recently died without issue and his inheritance is proving both a boon and a burden.”
“How so?” asked Dorian, only glad to move on from examining his own life.
“Levi has always been a man of business and the surviving relatives of the previous duke have not made the transition to the Hawcrest estate easy for him,” explained Cassius. “I believe it would do him good to meet more reasonable and less conventional members of the ton.”
“Ah, the traditional English upper-class respect for merit and sense of fair play,” Dorian commented sarcastically, a smile of understanding spreading on his features. “Yes, I would be happy to meet Levi Collins.”
“I shall write and tell him. Which direction?”
The path in the road forked here and Cassius looked to his friend for guidance.
“The weather grows cold, let us ride hard for home,” declared Dorian, urging his horse into a canter and then a gallop on the lower path, their pace immediately copied by the Duke of Ashbourne.
In truth, it was not the cold that drove the Duke of Ravenhill back. His whole temper and mind felt out of sorts after being forced to talk of love. It was a subject and an emotion he had spent his whole life avoiding.
Now, Dorian longed only to be home with Rose and to bury himself in her soft, welcoming warmth. Whenever he could do that, nothing else seemed to matter, past, present or future.
