“No. Yes. No.” Matthew drew a hand through his hair. “I don’t know.”
Robert wrinkled his brow as he turned toward Matthew. “Only you could make a stolen moment so complicated. Great God, man, so you liked a woman. A very beautiful woman, even with her face half-hidden by a mask. You forgot your melancholy for five minutes. What’s the harm?”
Matthew turned away from. “Sod off and find your pleasure,” he snapped, far more harshly than he meant. Perhaps more than Robert deserved.
But his friend was undeterred. He clapped Matthew on the back. “I love you. That may be the drinks talking, but I do. You’re my brother, just like all the rest of them. It’s proven by the way you put up with me despite your disapproval.”
Matthew looked at him. Beneath the jovial mask, beneath the slightly drunken sway, Robert was serious. “I don’t—” he began, then stopped himself. “Very well, I suppose Idodisapprove of you sometimes. But more for your own good than what I fear you do to others. And I care for you too.”
Robert smiled. “I just don’t want to see you drown in misery forever.”
Matthew bent his head. “I know. I know.”
“If a moment with this lady you danced with, you kissed—”
“Youwerewatching,” Matthew breathed.
“Of course. I thought I might have to extend my backroom privileges to you and I was ecstatic.” Robert shrugged. “Mostly because I hoped that you might find a little light if you gave in.”
Matthew sighed. “To be honest, there was light. I have not been drawn to a woman like that since…since Angelica. It was unexpected and powerful, and I think had she not run I might have done exactly as you hoped. So perhaps you are right not to give up on me.”
“I’d never give up on you,” Robert said. “Now come on, I’ll go introduce you to Marcus Rivers.”
Matthew followed as his friend took him back inside. “The owner?” he asked. “Why?”
“So you can interview for a membership, of course,” Robert tossed back over his shoulder as he moved toward the back corner of the room and a man stationed at the foot of a set of stairs.
Matthew couldn’t help but laugh. “You are persistent.”
“I must be. I’m the only one of our group with any sense at all,” Robert said as he stopped in front of the man at the stairs. “We’d like to see Mr. Rivers, to inquire about membership for my friend.”
The young man bobbed his head and disappeared up the stairs. Matthew knew he should put a stop to this, but he didn’t. In the end, perhaps Robert really was right. Maybe it was time to go toward the light.
And maybe if he came here regularly, he’d bump into the lady he’d met earlier. The one who’d reminded him that there was light left in this world after all.
Chapter Three
Isabel sat at the table in her uncle’s breakfast room, but she hadn’t touched the plate of eggs and sausage placed before her. She couldn’t do it—her stomach was still aflutter from last night.
From what she’d done on a public dancefloor with a stranger, a man who had no name and only half a face. It was entirely wanton and wrong.
And she desperately wanted to do it all again.
“Eat,” her uncle snapped, and she jumped at the sudden sharpness of his tone.
“I could suggest the same to you, Uncle Fenton,” she said carefully, using the first words they’d spoken to each other that morning to gauge his moods.
That was always the worst part of her day, when she didn’t know what his emotions were. Fenton Winter could be kind and gentlemanly, talking to her of books or music or old family stories that made them both smile. Or he could be withdrawn and dark, drowning in a grief that had pulled him under over and over again for three long, desperate years.
He smashed the paper he’d been reading down on the table, and she flinched. A bad mood, it seemed, if his dark expression was any indication.
“Something in the paper trouble you?” she asked softly as she speared her eggs and began to eat them. They tasted like nothing at all in her current state.
“Society is agog over that bastard Tyndale, that is all.” Her uncle slammed a fist against the table, and the dishes shivered with the force of his anger. “The paper goes on and on about him, what an eligible bachelor he is.”
Isabel took a sip of tea and took the moment both to gather herself and to observe her uncle. He was a riddle. He could be so decent, so loving. He’d been kind to her as a child and that kindness had extended to her after the death of her husband, when she’d been left with so little. Uncle Fenton had taken her in without hesitation and provided a small allowance that kept her from scraping and begging.
But beneath that kindness lurked something more. His grief. His anger. His hatred for the Duke of Tyndale, the man he currently railed against.
