“Hello, Your Grace,” she purred. “Another dram?” The voluptuous beauty drew the bottle of rum between the crevice of her breasts, drawing his gaze to brown areolas peaking above the fabric.
Impatient and too damned frustrated to bother with his usual charm, he held up his glass.
Obliging as he liked his women, the russet-haired courtesan arched her body forward as she poured, her show deliberate.
And as she’d sought with her display, Argyll considered her. He assessed her as he had all the paramours or potential paramours in his life. With big breasts, narrow waist, and generous arse, the newest girl possessed just the manner of buxom figure he hungered for. He waited for the familiar rush of lust—that did not come.
Ruined. In every way.
Only it doesn’t feel like ruin, a voice in his head gleefully pointed out.
Growling, he snatched the drink from her fingers and finished off another. “Leave the bottle.”And just bloody go. He bit back the rude order he really wished to give.
The woman, whose name he couldn’t even remember in this blasted minute, said, “Is there anything else I may entice you—?”
“No. Get back to the patrons,” he said dismissively, focused on the sizeable crowd that merited his complete attention. Since word of his marriage reached the newspapers and gossips, attendance had picked up once more. Patrons paid more attention to Argyll’s position on the floors than they did their hands.
Very good for business, that—albeit annoying, if one chose to acknowledge it at all.
Accustomed to being the room’s focus since his boyhood days, those stares merely glanced off him.
“…I don’t want to go alone…I want to be there with you...”
Argyll’s stomach tipped sharply.
His new wife, former wallflower, now duchess, who’d stared with a lonely little expression from the carriage window and lifted her fingers in a parting wave.
And I packed her off into a carriage. Like a lamb to the bloody slaughter.
Something heavy lodged in his chest and refused to ease.
“Oh, Christ,” he whispered.
“Argyll?”
Snapped to attention, Argyll found himself joined by DuMond. He exchanged brief greetings with his friend.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, sentries at the heart of the action. Only one of their gazes fully alert and fixed where it ought to be.
Damn it, focus man!
What a bloody arse. The blade of guilt kept sawing away at his chest.
DuMond’s gaze caught on one of the club’s men filtering among guests. Tall and spindly and brightly dressed as a dandy, no one would dare suspect the heavy weaponry strapped under the gentleman’s jacket or his skill in using them.
DuMond smoothed a hand over his cuff.Observe.
The gentleman at play shifted course and joined a pair of newer members standing for a game of vingt-et-un.
Clubs—where even the most powerful grew desperate and the doors were always opening and closing with new patrons—relied on a system of quick, discreet communication.
And still Argyll’s observation remained not in the present, but in the recent past.
“…You needn’t say it back. I’m only saying it because I love you.”
“Uh…” A flush hit his high, noble cheekbones, “Good evening.” He shut the door.
She spoke so clear and so true. As always, this time and always, she spoke what was immediate and real in her mind.
