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“I -” Michael hesitated, the evens from the ball falling back over him quickly. Instantly, in the back of his mind, a foggy image of Cordelia’s face appeared, her gaze looking up at him through her thick, long lashes. “I spoke of my father.”

Rhys’s eyes widened drastically. “What about the old Duke?”

“Everything,” he muttered. “She had seen my back.”

“You told her? Or are you just trying to have a go at me?”

Michael glared. “Of course I told her.”

“Good heavens, Michael,” Rhys breathed, reaching over to clap a hand loudly across his shoulder, “You did a mighty good thing.”

Michael smacked his hand away. “What on earth are you talking about? What good thing could I have possibly done?”

“You managed to talk about your past to someone other than me,” Rhys explained.

“So what?”

Rhys shook his head. “You just never understood it, did you?”

“Now,” Michael muttered, standing from his seat and pacing around the room, “You are beginning to make no sense.”

“Holding in everything that once burdened you is no way to live,” Rhys said. “Finally you have been presented with the ability to change that, to move forward and open yourself up to another person. Why is that inherently a bad thing?”

Michael thrusted a finger towards him. “You know just as well as I that there is no future in which I can provide Cordelia the marriage she seeks.”

“No, Michael, I do not know such a thing! Just because it is what you decided long ago, does not mean it needs to be the inevitable truth.”

“You know little of which you speak,” Michael snapped, waving a hand dismissively in the air around him. “I made a mistake in telling her all that I did. Now, I can only imagine how bound she might feel, how she might be obliged to remain closer to me.”

Rhys sighed. “Once again, can you explain how this is a bad thing?”

“Do not mock me, Rhys.”

“In no way, shape or form do I intend to mock you,” Rhys said with an exasperated laugh. “Why did you come back in the first place?”

“I already told you,” Michael muttered. “To correct the rumors.”

“Couldn’t you have done that on your own?”

“The Ton needed to see us as an united front.”

“You are truly telling me that you couldn’t have scared the Ton into submission?” Rhys asked with a look of disbelief. “That you could have gone to every writer of the scandal column and given them exactly what they needed to report? Truly?”

Michael pressed his lips together. “I doubt that sort of strategy would have worked.”

“But wouldn’t you have done it?”

“Tell me your point, Rhys, before I grow tired of hearing you speak.”

Rhys sighed. “I believe you always wanted to go back to the estate, Michael.”

“I did not.”

“Have you told her why you left in the first place?”

Michael went tense, slowly turning to face his old friend. “No,” he snarled. “And I do not have any intention to.”

“Why not?”