“Ah? That is all you have to say?”
“I am waiting for you to tell me the rest, friend.” The duke flashed a grin.
Sidney tapped his foot on the polished floor. Where to begin?
“She said she wants to marry me,” he grumbled.
“Excellent news.” Northwich thumped him on the back.
“Decidedlynotexcellent news.”
“Seems excellent from where I stand,” his friend said easily. “You wanted to marry her two years ago, and she would not have you. Now she will have you. Your father is pressuring you into making a match. It stands to reason that marrying her is far preferable to marrying Lady Heloise.”
“Lady Hermione,” he corrected grimly.
“Er, yes. Forgive me. She is rather…”
“Forgettable,” Sidney finished, understanding completely.
Lady Hermione was bland. Her appearance was not unpleasant; it was merely unremarkable. However, it was not her physical attributes that inspired such apathy. Rather, it was her personality. In other words, she had none.
She was neither clever, nor amusing, and everything she said was a repetition of his words followed by a simper, as if she could not bear to offer her own opinion. The perfect wife for some. He knew she would allow him to carry on with life no different than as if he had been a bachelor. She would bring her dowry. Offer him an heir. Get his father off his arse.
It should have been perfect. And itwouldhave been, if not for the untimely return of Lady Julianna Somerset.
“Yes, forgettable is an excellent way to describe the lady in question,” Northwich agreed. “Problem solved, old chap. Marry the lady you love and forget about Lady Heloise.”
“Hermione,” he said out of sheer habit.
His friend made a dismissive gesture. “Precious little difference.”
There was a large difference between the two names, but Sidney was not in the mood to argue. Instead, he recalled the other, far more troubling part of what Northwich had said.
“I do not love Lady Julianna,” he bit out. Because the distinction was important.
He had certainly believed himself in love with her two years ago when he had asked her to marry him. She had more than cured him of that foolish notion, however. Drunken night swimming in the Serpentine aside.
“Love does not die,” Northwich told him.
It was not a belief he expected his friend to espouse, knowing him as Sidney did. “Yes, it does. It did. Mine for her, specifically, is dead.”
The duke shrugged. “It is a spirit, haunting you then, if it is dead. Why would you spend all night drinking yourself to oblivion and come here too distracted to offer me a proper match, otherwise?”
“I almost defeated you,” he defended, nettled.
Northwich’s words were not what he wanted to hear. And they were getting perilously close to the truth.
“I gave you an easy bout, and you know it,” Northwich countered.
Damnation.
“I would never marry her,” he snapped. “Not even if I had to do so. No one and nothing could induce me to accept her as my wife.”
He meant those words. Lord, how he meant them.
Northwich shrugged. “If you insist, old chum. What do you say about a change? The Black Souls?”
And more Sauternes? Despite the fact he had risen thinking he would never drink another drop, Sidney could not deny the allure of numbing himself and wiping Julianna from his mind entirely.
