A grin spread across Hugo’s face. “You kissed the matchmaker. The woman you claimed to despise.” Hugo’s grin widened. “Thisis delicious. Tell me everything. Where did it happen? How did it happen? Did she slap you?”
“No.” Edward’s jaw tightened. “She kissed me back.”
Hugo let out a low whistle. “Well, well, well. The plot thickens. And then what? Did you confess your undying devotion? Propose marriage on the spot? Carry her off to Gretna Green like your brother?”
“Enough.” Edward slammed his glass on the table. Whiskey sloshed over the rim. “It was a mistake. It can’t happen again.”
Hugo’s smile faded. He studied Edward with the shrewd gaze that lurked beneath his frivolous exterior. “Why not?”
“Because I am supposed to be finding a wife. A proper wife. Not tangling myself up with the woman who is helping me find one.” Edward dragged a hand through his hair. “It complicates everything. The arrangement. The search. Oliver.”
“Or perhaps it simplifies everything.” Hugo poured himself another drink. “Lady Sophia already knows Oliver. The boy adores her. She meets every requirement you listed. And apparently, there is heat enough between the two of you to set a ballroom on fire.”
“She isn’t suitable.”
“Why? Because she challenges you? Because she refuses to simper and flatter you like every other woman in the ton?” Hugo snorted. “Those sound like points in her favor, not against.”
Edward stared at the table. He could not explain the actual reasons. He couldn’t tell Hugo about the secret work, the printing office, the predawn visits to places no lady should venture. He couldn’t admit that Lady Sophia lived a double life, and that knowledge felt like a weapon he did not want to use.
“It doesn’t matter.” He pushed back from the table. “The kiss was a moment of weakness. It willnotbe repeated.”
“Edward.” Hugo’s voice softened. “You are allowed some pleasure in this life. You aren’t a monk. You are a man with needs, and there is no shame in pursuing them.”
“My needs are irrelevant.” Edward pulled on his coat. “What matters is finding someone to care for Oliver. Someone stable. Someone without complications.”
“Someone you don’t actually want.”
Edward paused, his hand on the back of the chair. The words landed like a blow, precise and painful.
“‘Want’ has nothing to do with it.”
“Doesn’t it?” Hugo rose and clapped him on the shoulder. “You can lie to yourself all you like, my friend. But I have known youfor years. I have never seen you look at a woman the way you look at Lady Sophia. And I have certainly never seen you kiss one on a moonlit balcony in the middle of a ball.”
“I didn’t say it was a balcony.”
Hugo grinned. “You didn’t have to. Moonlit balconies are the only acceptable venue for dramatic romantic encounters. Everyone knows that.”
Edward stared at him. Then, despite everything, despite the guilt and the confusion and the ache that had settled beneath his ribs, he laughed.
It emerged rough and rusty, as if his body had forgotten how to produce the sound. But it was real.
“You are insufferable.”
“And you are in love.” Hugo’s grin softened into something warmer. “Or at least on your way there. And before you protest, I will say only this. Your brother found happiness by following his heart. Perhaps you should consider doing the same.”
The laughter died in Edward’s throat. Leonard’s face flashed through his mind. Bright with joy on the night he announced his engagement, defiant as their father raged, and then gone. Vanished into the night with Jane on his arm and nothing but the clothes on his back and the coins Edward had given him.
Leonard and Jane had built a life together, had a son, and found the happiness their father swore they never would. And then the carriage accident had taken it all away. Edward had destroyed enough men with his fists to know what such violence did to flesh and bone. He tried not to imagine it done to Leonard. To Jane.
“My brother followed his heart, and it killed him.”
Hugo’s smile vanished. “Edward?—”
“Goodnight, Hugo.”
He walked out of the cellar and into the night, leaving behind his friend, his whiskey, and the ghost of a kiss.
CHAPTER 13
