Of course, Dagenham would have been itching to get to a card table as soon as he was back in London. And also eager to cadge as many drinks as possible.
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Direct as always. Never any false excuses. But I can make up my own. You’re tired. Your trousers have some Hampshire mud on them. You hate Christmas. Maybe next time?”
“No.”
Burchester guffawed and bowed, and Kittredge sat again. It was a long-standing pattern. A joke of some kind, he supposed. Burchester would invite him to join his party of bachelors and Kittredge would say no and Burchester would laugh.
And blast, Burchester was right. The cleanest pair of trousers from his trunk were still none-too-clean. Kittredge would have to send someone to the town house tomorrow to fetch more clothes.
But he had no intention of staying at his own house. It was one thing to fend for himself while in the hunting box, but quite another thing to do so in London. The empty town house would be so cold and what would he eat?
And he would be alone. Much better to stay here in the club where he would at least see a recognizable face every day. Even if it was Burchester’s.
If only he had found out where Franny was staying. He might have taken her . . . where would he take her? To a pantomime where he could listen to her laugh for hours. Or to an inn outside of the city where no one would recognize him. To an inn with a room where he could hold her face in his hands and kiss her over and over again until she whimpered and clung to him, dazed with desire.
Strange. He’d never kissed a woman any more than he had to in order to get her to lift her skirts. Why did he think he would enjoy that now?
And could he manage an hour of appropriate behavior while he seduced his Scheherazade? He’d barely scraped by with other women in the past. He’d always inevitably gone silent or said something rude or done something odd. And eventually, despite his title and his what-he-had-been-told-was-a-largish cock and his extravagant gifts of jewelry, there had been slammed doors and recriminations and hurled epithets that years later he could still recall perfectly.
Arsehole. Boor. Clodpole. Arsehole. Lout. Ninnyhammer. Arsehole.
Yes,arseholewas far and away the most popular verdict amongst his previous mistresses, the most recent of whom had seized the book he had been reading while lying on his side in her bed and bashed him about the head with it. Apparently, she had been raging at him for the previous quarter of an hour because he had suddenly left off fornicating and picked up the book instead.
But it had been Cuvier’s essay on fossils. So much more interesting than the actress who had been underneath him.
Following that assault to his skull, he had successfully sworn off carnal relations. His supposition was as follows: if he did not indulge in coitus, he would eventually be led by his animal urges to pursue a woman in marriage. His cock would force him to overcome his aversion to courtship.
This theory had not yet been borne out, obviously. And now his abstinence had stretched from Lent of 1815 into Advent of 1817. Almost three years.
And if not for the societal and maternal expectations he produce an heir, he suspected he would be able to stay chaste forever. He had an imagination and a hand. What did he need a real woman for?
Because you’re miserable, you lonely wretch of an arsehole.
“It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make,” his father had said to him before he had died. “Choosing your duchess.”
But how could Ambrose Hugh Charles James Pembroke, Duke of Kittredge, choose a duchess when women couldn’t abide him?
He couldn’t.
And so, at the age of thirty-one, he was that rarest of objects—a wealthy, tall, very-much-unmarried duke. To the consternation of his mother.
But despite knowing he was insufferable, he had always thought of himself as a good son. He had told his mother he would attend the Christmas house party with her. No Bevel or Dagenham, warned his mother. No colossus, no rapscallion wastrel.
He had agreed. Perhaps there would be a minor Christmas miracle and he’d find the wherewithal to seek the favor of a future wife.
No. Not this Christmas. An hour after his hired post-chaise had left him at the coaching inn where he was to meet his valet in order to be cleaned up for his arrival at the house party, Kittredge had realized he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. A Christmas house party would be torment. Hideous. Ritualized suffering. He did not have whatever it took to woo a well-bred young lady on this, or any other, Christmas. He would spend the entire house party silent, apart, staring at the floor, trying to avoid ballrooms, sleigh rides, games of Snapdragon, mistletoe, and the countless other things that provoked his arseholery.
One last seat had been available on a stage coach going to London so he’d scribbled a note for his valet, snatched up his one trunk, and sprinted to catch the coach.
And then he had heard the remarkable laugh.
Franny’s laugh.
The shouted toasts at the other end of the club’s dining room—the gentlemen far too hearty, too hale, too happy, just too damn merry, for fuck’s sake—broke into Kittredge’s wistful memories of that laugh.
The men should drink up and leave. Grant him some peace. But it was Burchester’s set: Danforth and Pike and Longridge and even Sir Matthew Elliot. They’d be here all night. Especially once Dagenham showed up. And look, Daventry and Drake just came stumbling in, likely straight from Madame Flora’s. It was going to be a raucous night downstairs in the club. The only thing that could make it worse would be an appearance by his cousin, Rhys Vaughan.
