Page 41 of Duke of Wickedness (Regency Gods #4)

“ S o,” Phoebe said. “I would like it observed that I have tried very hard to be respectful and patient .” She said the two words like they were oaths. “But I simply cannot wait any longer.”

Ariadne put aside her embroidery, which only had half her attention anyway.

She was—damn her eyes—thinking about David again.

In the month since she’d left his house, she’d snapped back and forth between anger and sorrow at the way things had ended between them. She was furious that he had just decided that things were over when he said so. She missed him.

She daydreamed about kicking him in the shins in front of half the ton , making him fall in a way that made him—somehow; she wasn’t clear on the details—look stupid and her look heroic. She kept thinking of things she wanted to tell him.

Back and forth and back and forth. It was relentless .

Phoebe, however, had provided a wonderful distraction alongside her unyielding friendship—even when, as Ariadne recognized perfectly well, she had not been her most delightful of late.

Phoebe making such a declaration, Ariadne knew, promised entertainment.

In the past few weeks, Phoebe had offered opinions on matters as far ranging as suffrage for women (unsurprisingly, she was in favor), the most comfortable way to stitch a seam on a chemise (French seams), and why she did not trust anyone who favored lilies in their floral arrangements (they apparently were poisonous to cats).

“Go on,” Ariadne said, folding her hands attentively in her lap.

“It’s about him ,” Phoebe said.

Ariadne picked her embroidery up again.

“No, thank you,” she said primly.

Phoebe made a frustrated, whining sound.

“I told you, I have been so patient,” she protested. “But there is gossip . I know gossip . I never know gossip, Ariadne; you know this. Please. Please, please. Please, please, please?—”

“Oh, fine,” Ariadne said, both because secretly, she did want to know and because she felt confident that she would be subject to an unending litany of please s until she agreed, anyway. “Tell me.”

“He has—” Phoebe made a dramatic flourish, looking very pleased with herself. “—disappeared.”

“ What ?” Ariadne yelped, alarmed. “What do you mean disappeared ? Is he?—”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Phoebe amended hastily. “Not ‘off the face of the earth’ disappeared. He’s just not attending events, or at least not very much. Sometimes he puts in an appearance and then leaves, or so I’ve heard. But he doesn’t really talk to anyone. Or do anything. Or go anywhere.”

Ariadne pressed a hand to her heart, which—she hated to admit it—was racing.

“For goodness’ sake, Phoebe,” she said admonishingly.

Phoebe winced. “Sorry,” she said. “I just meant… It seems that he’s sad.”

The rapid emotions of the past minute had left Ariadne feeling a little numb. She stared down at her embroidery. She was doing a very poor job of putting these flowers into bouquets. They looked more like lumpy leaves.

“That’s too bad,” she said.

“Is it?” Phoebe asked, tone incredulous. “By my reckoning, he deserves it.”

“Well, that’s because you’re a good and loyal friend,” Ariadne posited, which made Phoebe preen with praise. “But I don’t want him to suffer.”

And today at least, that was true. The answer might be different tomorrow if she flipped back into fury.

“That’s very noble,” Phoebe said, grimacing. “Exceedingly boring, but noble.”

“I just…” Ariadne sighed, giving up on the embroidery entirely and chucking it aside.

“I feel rather foolish, I suppose. When we…ended things, he said that everything had gone according to plan. And that’s true.

It all happened as we said it would. He helped me learn about things I wanted to know, and then we parted ways. ”

“But?” Phoebe prodded.

“But,” Ariadne managed, “I still feel sad. Except, of course, for when I’m blisteringly furious. And that makes me feel as though I am an idiot—if not now, for feeling these things, then at the beginning, for thinking I might feel them.”

“You are not an idiot,” Phoebe said firmly.

“From what you’ve told me, the two of you weren’t only involved in a physical sense.

You were, at the very least, also friends.

And I would contend that it’s very normal to be sad and angry when a friend sends you away.

I would be very sad and angry if you sent me away, and I haven’t even touched your bosoms.”

Ariadne choked out a laugh at this last bit.

She wasn’t certain that she would describe the closeness that she’d built with David as friendship —as Phoebe had so delicately phrased it, she did not make a habit of letting her friends touch her bosoms—but it had been more than physical. That much was true.

She thought of the way he’d seemed genuinely pleased at her questions about his collection of salacious texts, about how he’d been twice as happy when she’d asked about the history as when she’d blushed over the contents. She thought of his admission about his father.

And she thought, with a pang, of that feeling she would sometimes get when they looked at one another, that feeling like she could really see him, like he could see all of her, too. Like he knew her and liked her still. Like he knew her and still wanted more.

There was a long beat of silence. Ariadne realized that she was gnawing anxiously on her thumbnail and snatched her hand away from her mouth. She hadn’t done that in years .

“What do you need?” Phoebe asked simply, and Ariadne felt a rush of gratitude for her new friend. Even if this whole mess with David was making her miserable half the time these days, meeting Phoebe was one thing that had, without a doubt, made the entire adventure worth it.

“Oh, just a distraction, I suppose,” Ariadne said, not bothering to hide the moroseness in her tone. “I shall stop being so miserable about this eventually, but in the meantime, the best I can do is pay attention to something that isn’t my own pathetic self.”

“I take umbrage with the term pathetic , but I agree with you on the rest,” Phoebe said. “Why don’t we go to Lady Cutter’s ball tomorrow night? I was invited, and I know you had to have been.”

This was likely true—one of the dubious benefits of the Lightholder name was that Ariadne got invited to just about every Society event, though she hadn’t been paying especially close attention to her invitations.

She’d been worried that she would see David on the arm of some other woman, so she’d stuck to family events and smaller soirees.

And she’d spent quite a lot of time with Phoebe.

But Ariadne had to return to the splendor of the Season eventually. If she didn’t, Catherine would ask her what had changed, and Ariadne didn’t trust herself not to burst into tears like some missish waif out of a melodrama.

“We certainly can,” she allowed, then blinked as her brain caught up with her. This was Phoebe . “But why do you want to go?” she asked, suspicious. “Is it just for my sake? Because you needn’t accompany me, if so.”

Phoebe generally did everything she could to avoid going to balls, so her offering was odd, to say the least.

But her friend’s eyes lit up in a very Phoebe-esque way.

“I heard,” she said, practically vibrating with delight, “that Lord Cutter collects antique vermin traps .” She said this in tones of rapturous delight.

“Antique vermin traps?” Ariadne echoed in a much more skeptical tone. “Really?”

“That’s the rumor. And obviously, I have to see such a thing.”

This was not obvious to Ariadne—or indeed, she suspected, to anyone whose name was not Phoebe Turner.

“But…why?” she asked.

Phoebe grinned that too-wide grin that reminded everyone who saw it that this was no shrinking violet, no matter how angelic she might look at first glance.

“Because it’s so very strange,” she said happily. “The world is full of so many strange and wonderful things, and I intend to see as many of them as possible. Who knows what I’ll miss out on if I don’t?”

Later, after promising to meet with Phoebe the following evening for the ball, Ariadne reflected on these words.

What was she missing out on by letting herself get so brutally beaten down by her sadness?

What might she experience if she gathered her courage and went out into the world again?

It was, after all, precisely that logic that had led her to her bargain with David in the first place—and that had been worth it, no matter how she was feeling now.

Tomorrow, she decided, she would be courageous again. Because there was a world full of things to see.

She would find happiness again. She would, even if she did not quite yet understand how such a thing was possible.