“It’s Thursday,” said Rory, clearly itching to remove himself from the tavern Archie had chosen for their night’s carouse. “Don’t you want to see what’s happening at the Five Graces?”
Archie grunted into his beer. The dank and slightly murderous environs of The Toad’s Hole suited his mood perfectly.
He’d only agreed to this night out with Rory because his friend was beginning his journey up to Scotland tomorrow. His father, the Earl of Carrick, had gifted his son with a Highland estate to run in preparation for his inevitable ascent to the earldom someday, and Rory had suddenly become quite serious about his lairding duties.
Rory consulted his gold pocket watch. “If we leg it right now, we could catch the chap with the monkey who?—”
“Notthe Five Graces,” Archie all but growled. He hadn’t been able to return to the Five Graces, not sincesheleft.
In fact, he’d been keeping away from everything that reminded him of her. The Five Graces. His piano. Even his bed, choosing to sleep in a guest room. Everything that had once provided happiness, now only brought misery.
“You’re gloomier than a Highland sky in January,” groused Rory.
Again, Archie grunted. Of course, those other miseries were nothing to what he’d learned today. “She has a patron,” he said.
“Who is it?”
It was telling that Rory didn’t need to inquire as to the identity ofshe.
“Ravensworth.” Archie could hardly get the name out of his mouth.
Rory’s eyebrows drew together. “We’re speaking of Miss Hart, correct?”
Archie gulped half his beer. “Aye,” he said, swiping foam off his upper lip.
“He’s patron to two opera singers now?” Rory shook his head, baffled. “Too much has never been enough for Ravensworth,” he added with no small amount of admiration.
Archie had never before felt the compulsion to plant a facer on his good friend the Viscount Kilmuir, but the urge was itching in his right fist at this very moment. An urge he would resist. “Just the one that I’ve heard,” he said.
Rory cocked his head. “Did Miss Hart change her name?”
“Possibly.”
“To Fräulein Elsa Vogel?”
Now it was Archie’s eyebrows drawing together. Valentina could hardly pull off the role of Italian contessa. A German fräulein? Doubtful.
Relief washed through him. “She didn’t accept Ravensworth’s patronage,” he said, needing to speak the words aloud—needing them to be true.
Rory narrowed his gaze. People looked at Rory and saw little more than a hulking, handsome Scotsman who skimmed through life on the surfaces. But Rory possessed depths, and at this moment, his friend was peering at him from them. “Can I ask you a question, Archie?”
“Of course.” He wouldn’t like the question. He knew that much.
“What are you doing at The Toad’s Hole with me?”
Archie held up his mug of beer. “Drinking to your safe journey.”
Rory’s eyebrows lifted in disbelief. That made two of them whoknew Archie was lying. “Why aren’t you with her?”
And there it was. The question he’d been avoiding asking himself this last fortnight. “I botched it,” he said. It was only the truth.
“Seems to me you did a great service for her and her family.”
“That’s a separate matter.”
Rory shrugged and shook his head. “What do I know about love, anyway? I wrote Miss Dalhousie quite the epic poem and still couldn’t convince her to marry me.” He clapped Archie on the back. “At least you tried.”
In the spirit of honesty, Archie realized he needed to clear up a misconception. “I didn’t ask Valentina to marry me.”
