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I don’t know how long I’d sat there in the bath. Time must have passed, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t understand how I’d got here.

Lilah should be with me.

I mean, not necessarily with me in the bath, though to be honest I wouldn’t say no to that. But with me, in my life. A part of me. A crucial part, that I couldn’t live without.

“Oh God, it was all about the wager, wasn’t it?”

After waving away my valet, I pulled on breeches, a shirt and my favorite waistcoat. It wasn’t like I was going to be leaving my place today, so it didn’t matter what I looked like. I’d been stewing in my home the last three days, and I still didn’t see any sign of that changing.

After all, what was the point?

Having a little more disposable income made it scarily easy to just hide yourself away from everything and everyone. Anything could be delivered. Anything. So what was the point in leaving the house?

My servants had been understanding. At least, I am sure they would have been, if I had bothered to explain the situation to them. All it took was the statement that I would not be going out and that absolutely no one was to be admitted, and none of them had asked what was going on.

Why would they?

I sank down onto my chair in my tiny study, opened up a ledger, and tried to focus on work. After an age, I glanced at the longcase clock.

I’d been working for less than three minutes.

How was that possible? It felt like an hour had passed. How could it only be three minutes?

My gaze flickered down to my letters, where three unread missives demanded my attention. One of them could safely be ignored: it was from the Anderley brothers. I’d have to let my servants know to restrict access from now on. I suppose I could kiss goodbye to my Norfolk membership.

The other two were sealed with the crest of the Gambling Dukes.

I opened the first one, from the Duke of Markham.

You absolute rogue. Never come anywhere near my friend again, or I swear to God, I will throw you out of a building.

Parry: you’re finished. Leave London.

Well, that was at least succinct, I thought darkly as I leaned back in my chair.

Lilah had never told me why she’d never introduced me to her friends. Now I was starting to see why.

It was with a little more trepidation that I opened up the second letter from the Gambling Dukes. Kineallen. That was the older duke, right? The leader of their club?

This couldn’t be good.

Dear Mr. Parry,

Please take this as formal notice of the cancellation of our informal acquaintanceship.

Upon hearing from my friend that you have in fact also been associating with the Anderley brothers throughout our interactions, it saddens me to discover we should never have renewed or begun an acquaintance with you in the first place.

Stay away from my friend.

Yours sincerely,

Alfred, Duke of Kineallen

I raised an eyebrow. Well, a little more polite than the first, but in essence? Not actually that different.

Perhaps the Duke of Kineallen was managing to be polite. Perhaps Lilah had been swift to reveal my betrayal—that one—to her friends.

Oh, I’d been such an idiot. I couldn’t even see the disaster I’d been setting up myself, but it had been there all along.

I should reply to these letters. They sat there in my in tray on my small desk, demanding responses.

But not today.

Ignoring the letters, I stood up and moved to my drawing room, pacing about, eventually ending up at the window. The gray, foggy day hadn’t brightened up. Sunshine wasn’t coming.

Looked like Lilah’s ship idea for the ball may not work after all.

Pain tightened around my chest at the thought of her disappointment. After working so hard, she was going to be devastated that the weather wouldn’t hold out for her .

And that was when it hit me.

I loved Lilah, the Dowager Duchess of Rotherwick.

I truly loved her. I had loved her before, but now that I looked back, it wasn’t quite the love I felt for her now.

When we’d first become lovers, I’d been excited about getting to know this woman who seemed effortless elegant, witty, and damned charming.

And I’d fallen in love with that.

But now I knew better. I knew Lilah better. I knew her fears, her frustrations, the way that so much of life irritated her but she attempted to look on the bright side. I knew how hard she had worked, how desperately afraid she was to fail.

I’d fallen in love with all of her. Not just the picture perfect Lilah, though those parts of her were still there.

All of her.

And I’d discovered that loving Lilah, really loving her, meant giving up my heart, my ego, my everything.

I’d thought I was worthy of her, but how could I be, if I just ran out at the first sign of difficulty?

Yes, it was a relatively serious disagreement. But was I really about to lose her just because I couldn’t face handling a challenging conversation? Was that really the man I wanted to be?

Mistakes had been made, and they were almost all mine. But if I was going to be the man I wanted to be, wasn’t it time to own up to them? Wasn’t it time, in fact, to prove myself to be better than Lilah, Dowager Duchess of Rotherwick thought I was?

I sighed heavily, leaning my forehead against the window as I looked out at the street below.

In a way, it was all so simple, what I needed to do to fix this. And yet at the same time, it was completely impossible.

But I had to do it. Do it, or risk never knowing what I could have had with the most beautiful, the most ridiculous woman in the world.

And that meant I had a letter to write.

My hands were shaking slightly as I returned to my desk and picked up a pen. Carefully sharpening the point caused my heart to race, and when the I dipped the nib into my ink, I accidentally wrote out the first thing on my mind.

I love ? —

Bother.

There was a moment of silence—a moment that seemed to elongate and stretch out before me. The tension in my chest was growing, every breath a challenge, and I knew that the next few minutes could change the rest of my life.

I had to get this right.

I smiled wearily, hoping that this was the right decision. It had to be. I couldn’t face losing Lilah for a third time.

Dear Mr. Lambert,

I believe, the last time we spoke, that you were still with Bernard, Barnard and Brice, the accountants to be found in Mayfair…