Lady Bowman’s smile faltered, her brows rising in genuine shock. “The Duke of Welton, turning down a midnight supper and some charades? Is the world ending, Your Grace?” She asked with notes of sarcasm shading her question.
“He has grown quite respectable, Lady Bowman,” Morgan remarked, his tone amused even as his eyes remained fixed upon Ambrose. “One cannot help but mourn the fall of such a formidable libertine.”
“Well, willyoujoin me, then, Your Grace?” Lady Bowman asked Morgan, batting her full eyelashes up at him and hugging her arms around her to hoist her cleavage to full view.
“Please do come and find me when you are about to leave, My Lady,” he said with a smirk. “I think I will be most honored to take Welton’s place.”
Once Sylvia had sauntered away, Morgan turned to his friend.
“You didn’t just turn down a night with the most sought-after widow in London because you want to play with a compass, did you? And offer her up to me on a silver platter no less, my dearest friend…”
Ambrose adjusted his cuffs; his gaze fixed on the exit. “I’m going home, Morgan.”
“Peace, my friend. I did not mean to press you. We still have business to attend to. You have not even spoken to our hosts, nor Lord Gibbons!”
“I’m going home,” he repeated. “The air in here is stale. There is nothing for me.”
As he strode toward the doors, ignoring the curious glances of theton, Ambrose realized he wasn’t just running away from the party.
He was running toward a drafty schoolroom and a woman who had somehow, without a single diamond or a drop of perfume, made every other lady in the room look like rubbish.
“Home,” he barked to the carriage driver with a huff, not giving him a chance to get up and open the door for him.
“At once, Your Grace!”
Ambrose practically threw himself into the dark interior of the waiting carriage, the door slamming shut with a finality that echoed his pulse.
As the vehicle lurched forward, the rhythmic clatter of hooves against the cobblestones began to drown out the muffled strains of the orchestra still playing inside the ballroom.
He continued to adjust his cuffs for something to do with his hands with sharp, agitated movements, his gaze fixed on the passing blur of London’s gaslight.
Stale.The air, the champagne, the conversation…I could not stand it one moment more.
He looked down at his hands, encased in spotless white gloves.
Tonight, he had stood in a room full of the most powerful men in England, men who spoke of grain prices and political alliances as if his carefully constructed world wasn’t crumbling at the edges. He had watched the debutantes flutter their fans, their eyes hungry for a title and a fortune, and he had felt a sudden revulsion.
He thought of the rakish man he was supposed to be. He closed his eyes and saw the man who stayed out until dawn, who gambled smartly with a bored yawn, and found nothing more tedious than his own home.
What a pathetic lie,he mused, leaning his head back against the leather upholstery.
His mind drifted, unbidden, to the drafty schoolroom at the top of his house. He could almost smell it, not the cloying perfume of a hundred overdressed ladies, but the scent of old paper, the sharp tang of ink, and the faint, lingering aroma that was uniquely her.
He saw Imogen’s face as it had been that evening, smudged with dust and glowing with a fierce, quiet intelligence. She had no diamonds. No silk flowers in her hair. No calculated tilt to her head, designed to catch the light of a chandelier just so.
And yet, she was the only thing in his life that felt vivid.
The carriage turned onto his street, the familiar silhouette of his townhouse rising to meet him. Usually, the sight brought a sense of suffocating weight, the burden of his station. But tonight, his heart hammered a different rhythm.
Go after her,Morgan had said.Perhaps he is right.
Ambrose didn’t wait for the footman to open the door, leaving the poor man in his wake.
He was out before the wheels had fully stopped, his cloak billowing behind him.
Chapter Ten
The golden glow of a single lamp illuminated the schoolroom, casting long, wavering shadows against the rows of books.
