Page 251 of Dukes for Dessert

She arranged the balls in a new configuration. “Are their causes worthy?”

“Very.” He frowned at the new lineup. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

“When the red ball and your ivory are equidistant from the side, aim to hit here—” She touched a point exactly between them. “—and your cue ball will hit its mark.”

“Maybe,” he muttered, but did as she suggested.

His ivory barely whiffed the red ball, lacking enough force to properly pot it, but making the promised contact all the same. Adam’s eyes lit with surprise and triumph. “Can you add it to the journal?”

“With pleasure.”

While he realigned the balls to try again, she sketched several similar shots into his journal, careful to annotate each with angles and degrees. He might tease her about the geometry, but Adam was as analytical as she was. Just as he did in the House of Lords, Adam would soon be able to look at a billiard table and see the whole picture, as well as how to change it.

Her pencil faltered. Thinking of the House of Lords only reminded her that soon he would be gone. London claimed him more than half of each year. And Parliament wasn’t the only thing that called him. There were dinner soirées and cotillions and all the young ladies just waiting to be swept off their feet.

The hour spent painstakingly pinning and curling her hair now seemed trite and silly. She was not competing. She’d lost before she’d begun.

She closed the journal. “You’re going to do very well at your party. Well, you won’t beat the le Ducs, but nor will you embarrass yourself. That is, unless you use those horrid introductions.”

“I hope they’ll make me memorable and interesting. Right now, no one knows anything about me.” His eyes met hers. “Except you.”

“Which gives me the expertise to point out you’re already interesting.” Heaven knew, she could not cease thinking about him. “If you have to become something you’re not to attract the right person, then she’s not the right person.”

“My parents prided themselves on not bending an inch for anyone else, not even each other, and all they gained from selfish stubbornness was misery.” His eyes shuttered. “They missed their chance. I vowed I wouldn’t miss mine.”

She nodded in empathy. Her parents had been happy. Blissfully so. The misery hadn’t come until afterward. Her chest tightened with resolve. The best part of spinsterhood was never risking the pain of loss. “What will determine the right one?”

His jaw tightened. “To me, ‘duchess material’ means so much more than social connections and a vast dowry. Our personalities need to match, too. I don’t want a marriage where each one ‘wins’ but ‘loses.’”

Carole understood. She even agreed. So why did it feel like she was the one who would lose?

12

Adam could not wait to show Carole how he’d mastered her latest challenge.

When she’d first started spouting algebraic formulas such as, “If your ivory is three times as far from the rail as the red ball, aim for a point four-fifths of the distance to the red one,” he’d thought she’d lost her mind. It sounded like the sort of mathematics others had always hated: If two mail coaches leave London with odd numbers of horses, and each horse can travel at a maximum speed of…

But she was right. It had taken three long hours and two pots of tea to finally master, but he could now pot the red ball whenever its distance from the side was a calculable factor of his ivory’s distance to—

Adam chuckled and lined up another shot. Now even his thoughts sounded like Carole. It was as though the sight of a billiard table conjured her to mind.

Or, really, the sight of anything. Or nothing. Even when lying in bed with his eyes closed, she was still all he could think about. Which was good, because it meant there was no space left in his brain to think about how it would feel when she was no longer about.

As eager as he was to impress her with his latest billiard trick, she walked through the door looking so frazzled that he set down his cue and immediately rang for tea.

He lifted her hands in his. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She wrapped her arms about herself and shuddered. “My father.”

Dread encased Adam’s stomach as he reached for her. “Your father has fallen ill?”

“I don’t think so. Not physically. He suffers attacks of melancholy.” She leaned her cheek against Adam’s chest, her voice taut to the point of breaking. “Father spends all day shut away in his study, except when he can’t even do that.”

“Like today.” Adam stroked her hair.

She nodded and burrowed closer. “Father will be himself again in a few days; or, at least, what’s left of himself. But he’s not truly living. He hasn’t since my mother died.”

“It’s not your fault.” Adam tried to think of a solution. “Perhaps… perhaps what he needs is to meet someone new.”