“I’m not sleeping here,” he said, aghast. “I go to bed for slumber.”
“Then why have the servants not cleaned the fish bones and dirty plates from your desk?”
“Because I only go to sleep when I’m tired. Half past three or later. When I’m so tired I can scarcely make it up the stairs before I pass out. The maids are all abed. Then I wake before them.”
This explanation sounded perfectly reasonable to Aubrey. He was in a hell of his own making. He was miserable. He had broken Rhiannon’s sweet, good, innocent heart, and he deserved to be cast into the fiery bowels of Hades for his sins. He would never forgive himself.
“If you continue on this way, it shall be the death of you,” King warned grimly.
Yes, and he sure as bloody hell hoped so.
Aubrey didn’t answer that, just held his friend’s gaze. “Will you go and fetch me another bottle of gin?”
“No.”
“Brandy will suffice, if I’ve gone through all the gin,” he said conversationally.
“You don’t need any more poison. Good God, Richford.” King rummaged through the mess on his desk and produced a pile of fish bones on a plate, coughing as he did so. “I’ll just be removing this before we resume speaking.”
“No need to resume,” he called after his friend.
But King ignored him, returning momentarily without the plate. Even Aubrey had to admit the smell of his study had vastly improved in the absence of the bones.
“I thought I sent you for gin,” he grumbled as his friend seated himself at last.
“As I’m not your servant and I need not heed your whims, I ignored you,” King returned, grinning brightly.
The bastard. Aubrey pinned him with a glare.
“Are you going to tell me why you’veactuallypaid a call on me here? I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve visited Villiers House.”
“Since you’ve finished rummaging about for your gin like a pig rooting in the mud, I shall tell you.”
“I’m beginning to think I don’t like you very much, old chum,” he said, tapping his fingers on the edge of his desk.
“You will like me even less when I bring you the news.”
“I don’t give a damn about what is happening in the world.”
“I think you will care about this.”
Aubrey sighed. “Well, do cease being so bloody mysterious. Impart your news and be done with it.”
“Lady Rhiannon Northwick is marrying the Earl of Carnis,” King announced, his expression unreadable. “It is being said that the wedding will be held soon. Whitby has announced his intentions to marry the former Countess of Ammondale, and it sounds as if the duchess wishes to see her daughter settled before Whit makes a scandalous match.”
Everything within Aubrey seized.
He didn’t know why. This was what he expected to happen. What he had known would happen. Granting Rhiannon the marriage she deserved was the reason he had severed ties with her and left her free of him. She would make an excellent countess. She deserved contentedness and a life he could not offer her.
And yet…
Andyet.
Feeling raw and exposed, he struggled to keep his wildly vacillating reaction from his face.
“Why do you imagine I would care about something so trifling?” he asked King hoarsely.
King’s expression gentled, losing some of its customary hauteur and severity. “I know that Lady Rhiannon was at the house party at Wingfield Hall, and I know you were with her.”
