Sterling sat back and grinned. Reaching for the coffee that a maid had brought in on a silver serving platter along with a smattering of breads still warm from the oven and various sides of jam, he raised a cup of the black brew to his mouth.
And nearly spat it out all over the antique Aubusson rug.
“Dear God,” he shuddered. “That’s terrible.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Joanna asked, red brows collecting over the bridge of her nose in concern. “I found mine quite lovely compared to the sludge that…ah…someone I know makes.”
“There’s no whiskey in it,” Sterling said, scowling at his cup as he returned it to the platter. “There’s supposed to be whiskey.”
“It’s half past nine in the morning,” she said blankly.
“Your point being?”
“Maybe it would be best to hold off on the liquor until you hear what we’ve recently discovered,” Kincaid cut in. Sitting beside his wife, he slanted her a sideways glance out of the corners of his spectacles and frowned. “My coffee isn’tthatbad, is it?”
“The worst I’ve ever tasted.” She patted his knee. “But that’s neither here nor there, as I didn’t marry you for your culinary skills.”
As he watched the newlyweds, Sterling felt an unexpected pang in his heart. At least, where his heartwouldhave been if he still had one.
Love was never something he aspired to. Not since he had lost Sebastian, at any rate. Any traces of genuine feeling he had left in him these days was reserved strictly for Sarah. He didn’t plan to take a wife. Mayhap not even another mistress, given what had happened to Eloise. Of course, he wasn’t going to give up a good rutting now and again. He was dead inside, not insane. But there was a marked difference between blindly fucking for the sake of pleasure and the sweet, subtle affection that Kincaid and Joanna so clearly shared.
Unbidden, his mind conjured a picture of Rosemary. As sharp and vivid as if she were sitting right next to him withherhand onhisknee. In her adorably oversized clothes and ugly bonnet, her blue-gray eyes filled with warmth and adoration and the tiniest inkling of exasperation.
They were both smiling. Laughing over a private joke that only the two of them understood. And he knew, as surely as he knew his own name, that he loved her. Helovedher, and she loved him, and they were happy.
Annoyed by the sudden and unwanted direction his thoughts had taken, Sterling picked up his whiskeyless coffee and drained it to the dregs in an attempt to clear his head of useless, fanciful imaginings.
Because evenifhe wanted to fall in love (which he didn’t), and evenifhe wanted to get married (which he wouldn’t), it wouldneverbe to the likes of Miss Rosemary Stanhope.
She deserved the moon and every bloody star in the sky. While he…he was a comet hurtling towards earth, burning everything in its path on the way down.
“Well?” he snapped, more forcefully than he’d intended, but who the devil cared? It was all meaningless, anyways. Even if his name was cleared, he wouldn’t be any further ahead than he’d been before. Sebastian would still be dead. His life would still be a crack all pile of shite. And his future…his future would be as empty tomorrow as it was today. “What have you come here at the crack of dawn to tell me? What is it you’ve discovered? Something large, I hope, given the inordinate sum I’ve paid you thus far.”
A smaller man prone to intimidation might have cringed, or stuttered, or even gotten up and left. But Kincaid was neither small, nor easily intimidated, and even though his lack of a title put him far below Sterling in the all-important British social hierarchy, he met the duke’s harsh gaze without so much as a flinch.
“Youcame tomefor help. Or have you forgotten?”
Shame collected in a ball of red heat at the nape of Sterling’s neck. Unable to meet Kincaid’s cool stare, he glanced to the side as his hands curled into fists and he wondered, not for the first time, how he’d gotten here. To this place of bleakness and rage and hopelessness. When he wasn’t sloshed, he was angry. When he wasn’t angry, he was…he was nothing. Nothing but a shell of a man pretending to be something he wasn’t for the sake of people who didn’t give a fuck about him. And those few who did–Sarah, Kincaid, even Rosemary–he pushed away. For surely it was better for them to hate him than to see what he’d really become.
“I’ve not forgotten,” he said stiffly. “Nor did I come back to London on some heedless whim. My sister encouraged my return, as she maintains the naïve belief that my reputation can be salvaged.”
“Interestingly, your sister is why we’ve come here today.”
Everything inside of Sterling went hot and then freezing cold. He gripped the curved armrest of the divan with such strength that his nails punctured the velvet, and would have leapt to his feet if there was anywhere for him to go. “What’s wrong? Has she been taken again? Why didn’t you–”
“Lady Sarah is fine,” Joanna interrupted. “Perfectly fine. I spoke with her just yesterday. We had an enjoyable conversation over the mostdelightfulpastries filled with cream and–”
“I don’t think the duke cares about the pastries, my love,” said Kincaid, his gaze on Sterling, who had sagged limply into his seat as the blood began to once again pump through his veins. “Joanna set up a meeting with your sister because we think there may be a connection to her kidnapping and Eloise’s disappearance.”
A connection? The two incidents had occurred years apart. He still remembered the fear that had sliced through him when he received word that Sarah’s carriage had been besieged by highwaymen. Reading that ransom note had cut him to the bone. The fear. The horror. The bloody unfairness of it all. How much was one family expected to endure? First their parents, then Sebastian, and now Sarah. Pure, innocent, adorable Sarah. Theoneperson in the world he’d been charged with to keep safe. And he’d held a crudely written letter threatening her life in his hands.
The bastards had demanded a hundred pounds for her safe return.
Sterling would have given them ten thousand.
Ten thousand and his own life, if it came to that.
It hadn’t. The three days they’d held her were a blur, even now. He had paid them at once and then paced a hole through the rug in this very parlor as he waited for them to uphold their side of the bargain. Except they hadn’t, and when the clock ticked half past midnight, he’d gone straight to Scotland Yard where he had met a constable with wire-rimmed spectacles and a serious air about him that had reassured Sterling despite the panic clawing at his insides.
