“Thank you, Your Grace,” said the Duchess of Burghly.
“Yes,” her new husband agreed. “Thank you, brother.”
Only Bridget knew that their gratitude would be short-lived. That the joy and love surrounding them was transient. That nothing good was ever meant to last. Of course it wasn’t. Not for the quality any more than it was for those who toiled in their service. For people like Bridget. Lord knew she had never known joy a day in her life. It was the coin of the wealthy, reserved for those with the time and leisure to pursue life beyond the ugly necessities of survival.
Bridget had been born the bastard child of a hideously wealthy American and her Irish mother, a tavern wench who got lucky—or unlucky, depending upon whom one asked—and tupped a rich man one evening. The unlucky part had been that the wealthy American didn’t give a goddamn about the babe he left in a tavern whore’s belly in Ireland. He had returned home to New York, to his life of wealth and privilege, and forgot all about Bridget. She had lived her entire life scrabbling for everything—every scrap of fabric she wore, every bit of meat and bread in her belly.
A servant delivered her a fresh goblet and poured another generous portion of wine into its waiting maw. Bridget reached for the stem, fingers clamping on it in a tight, painful grip. She raised the glass to her lips and drank. Then drank some more. For the remainder of the meal, she studiously avoided the probing, searing gaze of the Duke of Carlisle.
The evening wasdark, which suited Leo’s mood as he stalked through Harlton Hall’s gardens alone, holding the neck of a fresh whisky bottle. He had fled the company, the merrymaking, unable to stomach another moment of felicitations, smiles, and lovelorn glances between not only Clay and his bride but the other couples in attendance as well.
His brother was married. Married and in love. In hideous, soul-draining fashion. So in love, he could not speak without grinning. Could not go half a minute without gazing adoringly at his bride or surreptitiously touching her when he thought no one else was watching.
Leo had been watching. He watched everyone. More than he ought to, likely, but being observant was one of his many curses, along with possessing a bedeviled mind which betrayed him when he could least afford it.
Instances such as these, when he was in charge of more covert agents than ever before, when his Special League had just absorbed an entire branch of the Home Office dedicated specially to the Fenian menace. When two public figures had been slashed to death only months before in a Dublin park. When shadows lurked at every corner, and men threatened the lives of innocent women and children.
He pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, pinching to stave off the headache threatening to claim him. Now was not the time to allow the inner beasts of his nature to roam free. The moon was full overhead, drowning out hundreds of stars glittering from the midnight depths of the sky. Most nights, even though sleep eluded him, he forgot to look, or they were blotted out by the pernicious London fog, forgotten as the dead.
Tonight, he saw them, fighting against the silver-white moon, struggling to be seen, and they reminded him of the fragility of life. Of how cruel and fleeting it was.
Do not drink the poison, said a voice inside him.One night was enough. Sleep another day.
Caution and the voice could both go to hell and dwell there with the devil until Leo was ready to join them. He opened the bottle, held it to his lips for a long, steady pull. It burned a path to his gut.
In the otherworldly sheen of the moon, Harlton Hall’s gardens appeared manicured enough. He walked a gravel path until he came upon an obelisk rising imperiously from the center, then lowered himself to the dirt like the animal he was and began to drink in truth.
He drank away the day. Drank away his worries and cares. Memories. Guilt. Darkness. Shame. Fear. Responsibility. The whisky was a benediction, anointing his gullet with its velvet promise of momentary amnesia.
The nuptials nonsense had been more difficult to endure than he had imagined it would be, and not because he was bitter about the wedding day he had been denied—that was old, unwanted news. But because he was an observer. He prided himself on his ability to watch others, to study them and make inferences from what he saw, to predict and dissect and understand.
And yet no part of him could comprehend a man falling so helplessly in love with a woman he would bind himself to her eternally. Irrevocably. It was loathsome. Horrid. Terrifying. Everything he stood against. Everything he had learned was impossible.
Thank you, Jane, for the schooling.
He would never forget.
Even so, Leo had done his duty. He had been coherent and present, happy for his brother, happy for his new wife, thrilled to have a nephew—in truth, he adored the lad. It was something new for him, he had to admit, enjoying the presence of a child. But the young duke—Clay’s son, though he had not been aware of his true parentage until recently—affected Leo. He slipped past his wizened, cynical skin, straight to his tender marrow.
Yes, the lad was intelligent and kind, brave and funny, quick-witted and unafraid to challenge Leo as he had done at the wedding breakfast. He could only silently applaud him. The dark-haired scamp, with his awkward body and his shy mannerisms, had instantly won Leo’s heart. He resembled Clay so much, it was uncanny, and Leo could not look upon him without recalling all the scrapes he and his brother had managed to get into during their youths.
Though Clay was his half brother by nature, the only son between Leo’s father and his mistress Lily Ludlow, Leo had never been closer to another. Not even to Jane, and he supposed it was just as well, for he had not been close to Jane after all, had he? No indeed.
Oh, Christ. Stop thinking of bloody Lady Jane Reeves.
Leo lifted the bottle of his brother’s whisky to his lips. He was well on his way to becoming soused once more. This made two nights in a row. This meant…
Well, fuck.
The quiet night laden with its brilliant moon and shy stars seemed to mock him, for they reminded him of a different Jane entirely.
A dark-haired beauty who neither looked nor sounded anything like the flaxen-haired Lady Jane. Strangely, when he thought of the lady who had once owned his heart, all he could see was blue eyes flecked with gray, fringed by long, ebony lashes.
Why did he keep thinking about the haunting eyes of the governess? Why did he keep recalling she tasted so sweetly of bergamot, that she made a delicious, breathy sound when he kissed her? That her body had been so pliant and curved against his, so soft in all the ways a woman was meant to be? That her mouth was not only kissable, but fuckable, the kind of mouth he wanted to slide his cock inside?
“Hell,” Leo bit into the oddly illuminated darkness. “Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody hell. Bloody fucking, goddamn hell.”
He could not seem to utter enough epithets to rectify the burning, forbidden need inside him. He could not swallow enough whisky to make thoughts of her disperse, though he aimed to try. He could not will away the stiffness of his cock, even now, knowing how wrong it was. The woman was his nephew’s governess. She was a glorified domestic. Untouchable.
