Probably illegal as well.
If it wasn’t, then it should have been.
He’d make it a point to bring it up at the next Parliamentary session.
“Gin or Rosemary,” Weston had said in no uncertain terms. “You cannot have both. Our cousin will not be married to a wastrel drunkard.”
He had tried to bargain, as desperate men do. What if he cut back? A bottle of whiskey a day. He’d take gin right out of the equation. All right, all right. Half a bottle. A nip or seven on special occasions. Drinking only after twelve o’clock. Ten on Sundays. But all his wheedling had done was prompted them to say the ten words that he’d never, ever wanted to hear.
“No alcohol of any kind, Sterling. Henceforth, you are sober.”
Sober.
Him.
It was unthinkable. It was irrational. It was completely unnecessary. Yes, maybe over the past year or so he’d started to drink alittletoo much. But it wasn’t a problem. Other men drank, didn’t they? He’d never walked into an empty pub. Sometimes Weston and Kincaid had even accompanied him, the hypocritical bastards.
He would show them that he was perfectly capable of staying off the bottle for a few days, and then they’d see that their concern was utterly misplaced. If they wanted to help someone, they could take a trip to Seven Dials and pull some poor drunkard out of a ditch. He was the bloody Duke of Hanover, and if he wanted to have a damned scotch with his dinner then he’d have a damned scotch! He didn’t need it. He didn’t rely on it, like some sort of crutch. Which he’d prove by simply giving it up for a week. Whiskey, gin, wine, port. Everything.
So he’d watched, arms folded, while Weston and Kincaid carried every bottle, glass, and decanter out of the house. Then he had settled in for a quiet evening in his study going over dusty ledgers like a proper, responsible landowner.
By sunrise, he was drenched in sweat and was incapable of standing upright. His first indication that maybe the earl and the private detective were right, as much as he was loath to admit it. Maybe hedidhave a problem. A problem that was much larger and much more insidious than he’d let himself believe.
What was one bottle, until it turned into two?
What was one drink, until it turned into ten?
Somehow, someway, he’d lost control. Over his impulsions. Over his cravings. Over himself.
Gin or Rosemary.
On the third night of his sobriety, delirious with fever and hearing the voices of people who were no longer living, he reached for the silver flask he kept hidden underneath his desk. He unscrewed the top. He lifted it to his dry, cracked lips. He smelled the gin; wood and winter. He opened his mouth…and released a guttural bellow of rage and self-disgust as he threw the flask across his study where it smashed through the glass front of a curio cabinet.
Gin or Rosemary.
He rose on the fifth day feeling slightly better, although too weak to do much more than lay curled in a ball on the floor. It was the coolest part of the house, and with his face pressed flush against a wide pine board he let himself dream of blue-gray eyes and a wallflower’s sweet, shy smile.
Gin or Rosemary.
When the sun rose on the last day of his first hellish week without alcohol, he’d made it all the way onto the sofa. A small triumph marred by the arrival of an unwanted guest. Struggling to rise, he reached for the water he’d taken to keeping within arm’s distance at all times and guzzled straight from the pitcher. A few drops dribbled down his chin which he carelessly wiped away with the back of his hand. Still the knocking persisted, and with a grimace and a growl, he staggered to the front door and wrenched it open.
Gin or Rosemary.
“Rosemary,” he breathed, and suddenly the choice wasn’t a choice at all, but a forgone conclusion. And every second of hellish, indescribable agony was worth this one single moment of clarity. Because he’d never seen her when he was sober.
Less drunk was still drunk, like wearing spectacles in a light drizzle. But now the clouds had parted and his lenses were crystal clear, allowing him to see Rosemary as he never had before.
He saw her face, the roundness of her cheeks and the adorable tilt at the end of her nose and the freckle underneath her ear. He saw her hair, wisps of it blown free from her chignon to dance and curl around her jaw in ribbons of rich mahogany and tawny brown. He saw her eyes, the same soft morning fog framed with thick black lashes that he’d focused on in his dreams. And he didn’t know it then. Wouldn’t know it, for quite some time. But that was when he fell.
In the foyer of his Mayfair townhouse, on legs barely strong enough to hold him, in front of a woman with a squirrel peeking out of her pocket, the Duke of Hanover fell in love.
Completely.
Utterly.
Irrevocably.
“Sterling!” Those fog blue eyes went wide with alarm as Rosemary stepped past him into the foyer and spun around. “You look…”
