“Into the fire with it, Hastings,” Northwich urged him.
More words met him.Time Long Past, of all the ironies.
A hope which is now forever past,
A love so sweet it could not last,
Was Time long past.
A loveso sweet it could not last.How terribly true those words rang. Like a death knell, it seemed. Before he had seen Tilly again, it had been easy to forget the feelings he’d had for her. To tamp them down, drown them out. But like the nightmares which had dragged him from slumber, never straying far from his mind, the love he had felt for Tilly was still there.
Still burning.
Damn her.
“Hastings, I grow impatient. The fire is getting quite low,” Northwich said.
Adrian snapped the book closed and then hurled it into the grate. The volume landed directly in the flames. Fire instantly licked at the pages, making them curl and become a conflagration. How quickly those beautiful words could be ruined, he thought.
Much like a life.
“Good fellow,” Northwich congratulated him, before hurling his empty brandy glass into the fire as well.
It smashed into hundreds of glittering bits.
The destruction was somehow calming, Adrian had to admit. There was a furious rush of freedom in the power to ruin. To crash about. To make noise and bring about the obliteration of perfectly good objects. He drained his brandy, and then he tossed his glass into the fire as well. It hit the bricks and exploded in the fashion of a bomb.
“That was bloody satisfying,” he told his host.
“You see? I am a sagacious healer of all which ails man.” Northwich made a self-deprecating flourish, his tone sardonic. “Damage is all we need; cause some exterior annihilation to distract us from the damage within.”
The logic seemed as sound as any. “Sagacious indeed.”
“What else shall we burn before I head off to bed, do you suppose?” the duke asked. “I never did particularly care for the curtains in here.”
* * *
Robin had returned.
Tilly’s hands shook as she awaited the arrival of her guest in the salon where she greeted visitors. No, he was not Robin, and she must cease thinking of him thus. He was Mr. Hastings, was he not?
A bitter, angry stranger.
As if procured from her fevered imaginings, there he stood at the threshold, every bit as handsome and harsh by the light of the afternoon as he had been the night before. His brown hair caught the rays of the sun drifting in the mullioned windows and gleamed.
For a moment, she thought of the summer in Derbyshire. That glorious day on the lake when he had lain beside her in the boat and kissed her breathless. How hot the sun had been. How potent the promise of his seduction.
With a jolt, she banished the memories. For they, just like every other minute she had spent in this man’s presence aside from last night, had been an utter lie.
“Why have you come?” she asked.
In answer, he haltingly crossed the threshold, then bowed. How elegant he was, dressed as well as any gentleman. She did not curtsy in return, for fear and concern held her immobile.
“You know why I have come.” He faced her, unsmiling.
Impossible to believe she had known those lips on hers, had felt them pass over her entire body.
“If you have come to make more demands of me, you may leave, Mr. Hastings.”
