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Arthur said nothing.

Radnor shook his head.

“I was not there for the tragedy of your first love,” Radnor continued. “But I did know the young man who came to believe he must sacrifice his own happiness in the name of duty.”

His voice dropped lower still.

“I believed in you from the day you stood before me and asked for a place on that battlefield.”

“You asked me to overlook your title. You asked me to judge you as a man, not as a duke. You wanted nothing handed to you. You wanted the opportunity to prove that you were worthy of standing beside every other man in that regiment.”

A pained smile touched the corner of Arthur’s mouth as the memory returned to him. He had been younger then, standing before the Lieutenant Colonel with considerably more determination than sense, asking, near enough begging, to be permitted to serve beneath his command. To escape London. To escape the loss of Sophia.

Radnor had taken the chance on him.

“You never disappointed me.”

His expression hardened once more.

“So do not begin now.”

The words landed harder than any reprimand Radnor had ever delivered when Arthur had been under his command.

Arthur had assumed the hardness settling across the Colonel's features was directed towards him alone. Only when Radnor's attention shifted beyond his shoulder did he realise he was merely the lesser recipient of it.

Arthur turned.

Sophia stood before them.

The deep crimson of her gown distinguished her immediately from the sea of softer silks surrounding her. Flowers threaded through carefully arranged curls that had once been so familiar to him he could have recognised them in complete darkness. There had been a time when Sophia had captivated every room she entered without effort.

“Arty.”

The familiar nickname escaped her lips with the same effortless familiarity that had once undone every ounce of resolve he possessed.

Arthur did not smile in return.

Something inside him recoiled.

For weeks, he had told himself that what he was doing was an act of duty. That keeping Eliza at a distance was the honourable choice, however much it hurt them both. He had convinced himself that denying his own happiness was the price demanded of a man determined never to become his father.

Yet hearing that name upon Sophia’s lips now made the distinction he had so carefully constructed feel suddenly, sickeningly thin.

His father had possessed explanations for his mistresses too.

Duty. Expectation. A woman elsewhere who understood him better.

Arthur felt nausea rise sharply in his throat.

No.

He was not his father.

And yet here he stood, allowing another woman the familiarity of a name once spoken between lovers while his wife stood somewhere near, wounded by a distance he had deliberately placed between them.

Whatever he had intended, whatever noble purpose he had attached to it, the result was beginning to resemble the very thing he had spent his entire life determined never to become.

Arthur's eyes instinctively lifted beyond Sophia, sweeping the ballroom with the same measured precision he had once deployed on the Continent.