Page 4 of For The Love Of A Widow

The gold-and-green-garbed servant held Daniel’s jacket out, ready for him to slip his arms into the sleeves; as if he were a child needing an adult to keep him from falling ill for going out in the elements without proper attire. He wasn’t a lad, hadn’t been in too many years to count, but manners prevented him from saying as much to the footman.

“Leaving so soon, Danny Boy?” Phineas—Lord Gable—shouted across the room. “The morning is early yet, there’s plenty of time to rush home for Christmas breakfast with your family.”

There it was, confirmation the night had passed into the wee hours of Christmas morning.

“I really sh…ould be going.” Dizziness coursed through Daniel when he turned to face his friend. “I need to be…” Daniel swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. “Going.”

“Aw, well.” Phineas inclined his head. “Give your family my best regards and wishes for the new year.”

“Will do.” Daniel slipped his arms into his waiting coat. Calling Phineas a friend was a stretch of their association. The man obviously didn’t know Daniel well enough, nor cared to know him well enough, to know Daniel had no family. That he would return to his deserted townhouse to spend the holiday alone. Same as it had been since his father passed away seven years before. “Tell your family the same.”

“Will do, Danny Boy.”

Daniel cringed at the moniker. He’d hated it since the day Phineas had dubbed him with it at Cordell’s, a gaming hell they’d both frequented several years before—the place they’d met. However, he’d never had the drive to tell the man he despised the name. That would signify Phineas meant something to him. The truth was, Daniel barely knew the man. They were not close, and they simply used one another for the same purpose: to keep away the loneliness and reinforce their miserable, self-serving lives. Nothing more significant lay outside their extravagant lifestyle of drinking, gambling, and women.

With swift fingers, certainly much more under control than they should be after the dozen tumblers of scotch he’d ingested, Daniel buttoned his coat. Female laughter filled the room when Phineas pulled a scantily clad woman onto his knee and tugged the front of her crimson gown down to reveal her heavy, rounded breasts.

It was something Daniel would commonly chuckle over, but the garish extravagance of the night had lost its appeal and he felt the draw to flee the scene.

Daniel flipped the collar of his jacket up and shoved his hands deep into his pockets as he pivoted and strode from the room, loud with drunken men and buxom women hoping to garner large amounts of coin when their night was done and their services no longer needed.

That it was Christmas mattered naught. Their nights were much the same, whether it be August or December.

“Your carriage will be brought round, your grace.” Daniel nodded to the attentive butler posted in the foyer, noting that the servant didn’t quite meet his eyes when he spoke. “You may want to wait here.”

Another servant thinking Daniel needed someone to instruct him on what to do every moment. Was this how Phineas chose to live? Ordered about by compensated servants?

He clenched his teeth to suppress his irritation.

He was bloody tired—no, exhausted—and in need of his bed before the raging headache and hangover certain to follow his night of drinking arrived. “I will wait outside.”

With a nod, the butler pulled the door open for him to depart.

Daniel did not pause to address the sympathetic look the servant bestowed on him.

The freezing early-morning air could only help clear his alcohol-addled mind and banish the pity he’d seen in the butler’s stare.

Stepping out into the early morning, Daniel breathed in deeply, allowing the frigid air to reach his lungs—holding it there for longer than was normal—before exhaling. His breath swooshed from him, visible in the dark, yet several hours before the sun crested above the horizon to expel the intense chill.

“Good evening, your grace.” The door closed on the butler’s departing farewell.

A resounding, solid, final thud.

Daniel stepped off the stoop and into the open drive, no longer protected from the wind. A gust blew, chilling him to the bone, straight through his heavy woolen jacket. Maybe he should have listened and waited for his coachman in the warmth of the foyer. Though, Daniel already felt his mind clear, the breeze pushing the haze away much like the late-morning wind pushed the fog from the harbor. Daniel tilted his head back and closed his eyes. His head immediately swam, and he stumbled, but he refused to open his lids as he fought to regain his balance.

“You, there!” a man shouted.

Daniel sighed and turned toward the call. Who in the bloody hell was shouting for him? The twang of a coming headache pulsed behind his eyes.

“Stop!” Feet pounded against the hard-packed alley along Phineas’s townhouse from the stables behind as a boy—no more than ten and two—came barreling around the corner, a livery servant close on his tail. “Thief! I said halt, before I sound the alarm!”

The child was almost upon Daniel where he stood in the shadows of the stoop, awaiting his carriage.

Quickly—far too swiftly for a man who’d drunk as much as Daniel—he reached out and snagged the boy’s collar.

With a yelp, the child swung under Daniel’s hold as his feet left the ground. It halted him, though he continued to pull and tug in protest.

“Let me go, ye tosser.” The boy squirmed and kicked, trying to connect with Daniel’s shin.