Page 8 of To Defend a Damaged Duke (Regency Rossingley #2)

NEEDING TO DISTANCE himself from endless internal gloom, Tommy called upon his friend, the earl. It provided the perfect distraction. Rossingley and his mistress were, as ever, charming company.

“Only minutes before you appeared, Tommy, I had mentioned to Catherine that I hadn’t seen you in a while.” The earl reached for a napkin, eyeing his visitor across the small table. “Fancy that. And now you’re here, my darling, which makes me much happier.”

“Yes.” Tommy shifted, uncomfortably aware he was being scrutinised.

“But it is clear you are not.”

“Ah…no.”

Of course, Mrs Catherine de Villiers never had been, and never would be, Rossingley’s actual mistress.

Not that she lacked appeal. Very few wealthy and handsome widows did.

Regardless, she was a useful and willing smokescreen, playing her part in public admirably and simply for the fun of it, as far as Tommy could tell.

She was also remarkably astute. “It’s high time I left you gentlemen to your own devices and hunted down Mr Angel,” Catherine declared, rising from the chaise. “I’m sure you have much news to catch up.”

Tommy and Rossingley rose also. “He’s waiting for you in the ballroom, my dear.” Embracing her, Rossingley planted a chaste kiss on her cheek. “Limbering up,” he added, wickedly. “Although, I found him to be already quite supple before breakfast.”

She laughed, rather more heartily than a well-to-do lady ought. Tommy harboured a sneaking suspicion her origins might be as murky as his own. “You are as incorrigible as ever, my lord.”

“And you are as divine as ever, my darling.”

As the soft swish of her skirts faded away, the two men took to the armchairs by the fire.

“Ballroom, Lordy?” queried Tommy.

The earl beamed. “Yes. The lady has taken it upon herself to advance my beloved Kit’s dancing skills. He and I share a bothersome tendency to both seek the lead.” At this, his pale eyes gleamed. “You know, turn and turnabout. And one quickly finds oneself becoming distracted.”

He poured them both fresh teas. “Under Catherine’s tutelage, Kit has become rather adept.

More importantly, after his lesson concludes, she takes her leave in a flurry of activity via the front door.

” There was a delicate pause. “With the glowing air of a woman who has been thoroughly exercised, allowing the ton to go back to gossiping about some other poor soul.” He sipped daintily. “Everyone is a winner, as they say.”

For a minute or so, Tommy supped his drink.

Tea with cream. Served in a bone china teacup and stirred with a silver spoon in an earl’s lavish drawing room as a guest of the earl.

He’d come a long way and endured a torrid journey to reach this point, if only to discover his past had kept him company.

“A rather funny thing happened recently, Lordy.”

Though Tommy’s tone was light and even, Rossingley was damned difficult to fool. His silvery gaze fixed immediately on his companion, no doubt assimilating his haggard appearance and affected breeziness and leaping to all the right conclusions.

“I thought it might. You’ve been avoiding me.”

“Yes. Possibly. I’ve been avoiding everyone, actually. You see, I…I… The devil of it is…I came across my…my lordling. Unexpectedly, after believing I never would. And I confess, considering how much time has elapsed, I found the encounter far more bruising than anticipated.”

Tommy examined his nails, letting this new information sink in.

After the duke’s strained departure, he’d opened a fresh bottle of port and drunk himself into oblivion.

When Sidney discovered him next morning, half-conscious and slumped over his desk, Tommy had cursed, cast up his accounts, then killed a second bottle as swiftly as he’d dispensed with the first.

Sickeningly, in the three weeks since, the sour stench of Ashington’s betrayal over a decade earlier had been supplanted by a far rosier fragrance, though no less welcome. The bittersweet scent of fresh heartbreak had reacquainted itself all over again. Bruising didn’t even begin to cover it.

“Is his intention to make life difficult for you?” the earl asked sharply. “For a second time?”

“God, no.” Tommy frowned. “I rather think not.”

What duke alive wished to destroy their family’s reputation in one foul stroke?

“We reached an unspoken impasse in that regard because I could rather throw him under the carriage wheels with me, couldn’t I?”

“Mmm.” Rossingley steepled his long, elegant fingers. “So, he’s a man of substance with much to lose. That’s something, at least.” He tilted his head to one side. “How did you expect this unforeseen encounter to play out? You must have imagined it might happen one day?”

“I always believed I’d want to kill him.”

Tommy’s smart accent lapsed under stress, and it failed him now, betraying traces of his humble origins. “I’m not saying I’d have gone through with it, of course. I’m no murderer. But I must own to all sorts of unseemly dark fantasies. I also expected to be rather more…in control.”

The earl’s brow creased in concentration as his gaze left Tommy to survey the array of delicate candied fruits and jellies spread out before him. “Yet when you found yourself facing him once more?”

“I…I don’t exactly know,” Tommy admitted. “I still don’t. It was such a shock, you see. I assumed he must no longer reside in London or even England. Have travelled abroad, perhaps. Or even…be dead.”

He shuddered. Whatever his jumbled mess of feelings were regarding the duke, none of them included a wish for that. He grimaced. “I wanted to shake him by his aristocratic neck until his teeth rattled. I’ll say that much.”

“ Shake him, darling?” Rossingley paused as he selected a glazed gooseberry, giving it a neat lick with the pink tip of his tongue before popping it in his mouth. “Or do something else to him as equally and vigorously satisfying?”

Tommy groaned . Trust bloody Rossingley to spear the heart of the matter within seconds.

Ever since the wretched duke with his damned raven hair and his oh-so-serious heart-shaped tease of a mouth had presented himself in Tommy’s study, he’d frigged himself more times than he could count until he was shrivelled and sore and utterly despised himself.

And blasted Rossingley, the only person he ever dared open his soul to, sensed it.

“Something else, damn you.”

If angry, frustrated tears didn’t drown him first, then a crimson flush threatened to swallow Tommy whole. He snatched at one of the sugared candies and tossed it into his mouth. A very poor substitute for alcohol. The temptation to continue pickling his bones in port wine was as strong as ever.

“Oh, Tommy.” The earl heaved a sigh. “I know you’ve tried your damnedest to turn it to granite, but you always were a tart with a heart. And I always feared it might be your downfall.”

Another candy went the way of the first. “That is singularly unhelpful, my friend. But yes, me and my bleeding soft heart.”

Rossingley threw him an affectionate look. His own heart was softer than he let on too. “The walls separating love and hate are so very paper thin, aren’t they?”

“Extraordinarily so,” Tommy agreed tightly. “Even when more than a decade splits the two.”

Rossingley carefully picked out another fruit, this time a syrupy sliver of apricot, and hummed his appreciation. Tommy was yet to meet a sweet dessert the earl couldn’t defeat.

“Your lordling,” Rossingley ventured. “Is now a young man in his prime. Is he hale and hearty?”

That the earl didn’t speculate upon the man’s identity was commendable. And a relief. Whilst he’d a desperate need to unload, Tommy couldn’t be sure his mouth would form the name.

“He’s both healthy and wealthy. And remains a bachelor.”

“Ah.” They exchanged a glance requiring no words. “And now that you have this knowledge, Tommy, regarding this individual, may I be so bold as to enquire what you plan to do with it?”

“Certainly,” said Tommy with a rueful smile. “I shall cast it to the back of my mind in the hope it withers and dies there.”

“A lesser man than I would wish you heaps of luck with that, darling.” After a final rummage through the jellies, the earl pushed the plate away.

“But I think we can both agree”—he unwrapped the sweet as if it was priceless porcelain—“that in the grand scheme of excellent plans, you’ve conjured a truly abominable one.

If I’m not mistaken, you’ve attempted the amnesia strategy for the past decade.

And failed.” Another sweet fancy disappeared down his gullet.

“What on earth makes you think it will work now? Unless he’s turned into a festering gout-ridden toad? ”

If only. Eyes screwed closed proved no shield against unhelpful images of His Grace’s handsome, yet utterly miserable, face popping into his head. Tommy groaned again.

“I assume that is a no,” said the earl.

“Far from it, unfortunately.”

“Hmm.” Sitting back, Rossingley patted his whippet-thin belly contentedly.

“To recap—you loathe him, you still lust after him, and you have purged more words about him in the last three minutes than you have about another mortal in the last ten years. Darling, I haven’t seen you this animated since you rushed through your performance of Petruchio at the Theatre Royal.

And that was only because Lady Horsham offered you a gold guinea to pleasure her during the interval. ”

Tommy reply was short, non-verbal, and vulgar.

“Precisely,” agreed the earl, not missing a beat. “The delectable Lord Horsham, on the other hand…”