“Yes.” Lord Brocklehurst coughed delicately. “A nasty business, Kent. You have my sympathy.”
Lord Thomas shrugged. “I am not sure the sedentary life would have suited me after all,” he said. “Or the married life. Too confining by half. Are the ladies as lovely as they used to be, Bradshaw? And as willing? I must say I am starved for an English beauty or two—or twenty.”
“And just as expensive as they ever were,” Lord Brocklehurst said, “if not more so. You are going home?”
“To Willoughby?” The other laughed aloud. “I think that would be the unwisest move of my life, considering some of the things that were said when I left. It can’t be a comfortable thing to have someone who once wore your title breathing down your neck, I suppose—and someone who was once betrothed to your wife. Though it might be worth everything just to see the look on Ridgeway’s face.”
“Old wounds heal fast,” Lord Brocklehurst said, “especially within families. He would probably be delighted to see you.”
“The prodigal’s return and the fatted calf?” Lord Thomas said. “I think not. I’m deuced hungry and hate eating at hotels. Is White’s still standing where it used to stand?”
“I’ll be delighted to buy you luncheon there,” Lord Brocklehurst said.
“Will you?” Lord Thomas laughed again. “The Heron property is good to you, Bradshaw? I can remember the time when neither one of us had a feather to fly with. Luncheon it is, then, and perhaps tonight we can go in search of wine, women, and cards together, though I might be persuaded to dispense with the cards. Let my man pour you a drink while I dress.”
Lord Brocklehurst sipped on his drink a few minutes later and stared thoughtfully at the door through which Lord Thomas had disappeared.
SIXTEEN GUESTS ARRIVED TO STAYat Willoughby Hall, all on the same day. The Duke of Ridgeway stood beside his wife in the great hall to receive them and circulated among them during tea in the saloon late in the afternoon.
They were not quite the crowd he would have chosen to consort with, given the choice, he reflected, but Sybil was happy and looking quite glowingly lovely, and he supposed she was entitled to some happiness. Indeed, he was glad to see her enjoying herself. It seemed to have been beyond his power to give her any enjoyment since their marriage.
And he was getting mortally tired of sharing a dining table with her, one at the head, the other at the foot, making labored conversation across its empty length.
“Good hunting do you have here, Ridgeway?” Sir Ambrose Marvell asked him as they sipped on their tea.
“My gamekeeper tells me that the deer are increasing at an interesting rate,” he replied.
“And the fishing?” Mr. Morley Treadwell asked.
It was easy to see already whom Sybil had invited as hercher ami—there would have to be someone, of course, as there always was on such occasions. Sir Philip Shaw, he had heard, scarcely needed to keep a home of his own, spending all his time moving about among the homes of his numerous flirts and mistresses. And the current joke had it that one need not assign a guest bedchamber to Shaw—he would cheerfully share with one of the ladies, usually his hostess.
His indolent, almost effeminate manner and graceful person and permanently sleepy eyes were apparently irresistible to the ladies. And Sybil was already sparkling up at him, one slim white hand on his arm. Where the devil had she met him? But of course she sometimes took herself off on visits without him—she never asked, and he never resented not being asked. Most recently she had spent two weeks at her sister’s, apparently in company with other select guests.
The duke sighed inwardly. He hoped he was not going to have to go through that ridiculous farce again of playing the icy husband guarding his conjugal rights. It was so very tedious—and not a little humiliating. And of course it forever enhanced her image of him as humorless tyrant. Perhaps he was just that. He was coming almost to believe it himself.
When could he decently escape? he wondered. And where could he escape to? The lessons abovestairs were doubtless finished for the day. He was glad at least that Miss Hamilton had done her practicing early that morning, when he had been able to listen to her at his leisure. He had opened the door between the library and the music room and sat at his desk and listened. But he had made sure that she saw him. He did not wish to give the impression that he was spying on her.
She really did have talent. Music that he had only ever been able to produce with competence she brought alive and warm and flowing. The hour he had spent listening to her had soothed him far more than the ride he had planned.
He had not entered the room at all, or stood in the doorway to watch her. He would have had to be blind not to have noticed the deep revulsion in her eyes whenever she looked at him. But it did not matter. He was not looking for any sort of relationship with her. He merely hoped she would be good for Pamela. And he liked her music.
“Adam, my dear man.” The voice was low, the perfume seductive. Lady Victoria Underwood, widow, who had decided during the Season the year before that they were close enough friends that they could drop the cumbersome formality of using titles, smiled up at him from beneath artfully darkened eyelashes. “What a very splendid home you have. Why have you not invited me here before?”
She was leaning slightly toward him. For some reason she had never found his scar repulsive.
“It makes you quite the most attractive man of my acquaintance,”she said to him the year before on one of the many nights when she had failed to entice him into her bed.
He often wondered why he had never given in. She was not beautiful, but there was a seductive sexuality about her. Coupling with her would have been a somewhat more sensual experience than the one he had had with Fleur Hamilton.
But he wished he had not had that thought. He had been unconsciously trying to divorce in his mind the Miss Hamilton who wanted to teach and care for Pamela and who made of Mozart and Beethoven haunting experiences of the soul from the thin and pale and lusterless prostitute he had taken with such quick lust in a cheap tavern room a month before.
“I thought you did not like to leave London, Lady Underwood,” he said, smiling.
“Victoria,” she said, looking down to his lips. “I believe I would accept an invitation to the Hebrides, my dear Adam, if I knew you were to be there.”
“I never would be,” he said. “It sounds too cold for me.”
“But what a delicious excuse,” she said, “to huddle under a blanket for warmth—with the right company, of course.”
