Page 13 of While the Duke Was Sleeping (England’s Sweethearts #1)

Bloody hell. It had to be him. She looked down at the sketch in her hand. There was no telling if her racing heartbeat was due to what was drawn there or the fact that she was about to be sprung looking at it by the figure in question. She quickly folded it and shoved it into her pocket. There was no hiding the others that were spread across the desk. She neatened them and pivoted.

Rhett looked beaten down. Gone was the devil-may-care twinkle in his eye. His shoulders were slumped, and his tie was limp and creased, as though he’d been tugging at it. He looked like a man— Whose brother is on the brink of death, Adelaide. Is it such a surprise?

But beneath the exhaustion was something more concerning—suspicion. He was the one Montgomery sibling who still regarded her with wariness. As he should. She would, in his place.

She cast around for an excuse for her presence. There was no good reason for her to be snooping through the duke’s things. Her gaze landed on the wall-to-wall bookshelf next to her, stacked full. “Your brother was in the middle of a book. We were comparing notes. I thought perhaps I would read it to him while he slept.” A quick glance at the bookcase would reveal her lie. There were no novels there, only non-fiction.

“You’re looking for it on his desk and not his shelf?”

She shrugged. “I rarely put a book back on the bookshelf before I’ve finished reading it. It sits beside my bed, or on the coffee table beside the chair, or—”

“On your desk.” Rhett nodded. “Fair point.” He crossed to stand next to her, and a frisson of energy zinged across her shoulders, making her shiver.

“Was it here?”

“Was what here?”

“The book you and Peter were reading together.” Again, a tone of misgiving.

Bloody hell. She shook herself, trying to focus on the matter at hand and not the sensations coursing through her at his nearness, not the memory of those sketches or the memory of their kiss. Not his enormous… Her gaze drifted down. How had she not noticed it before? Had his dip in the Thames caused some shrinkage? Was it something about the light in this room? There was only the fire to cast a glow rather than the dozen lamps in the duke’s bedroom. Perhaps the way it created shadows down one length of the shaft…

“Hello? Della?” Rhett waved a hand in front of her face. “My eyes are up here.”

Good God, let the floor swallow you whole.

“What did you find?” he asked.

She opened the desk drawer, turning to block his view of it. “Nothing of interest,” she said, shoving the rest of the sketches to the bottom of the drawer beneath the notebooks. “Just the duke’s journals.” She took the topmost one and held it up.

“Well, that certainly is of interest.” Rhett snatched it from her hands. Unlike Adelaide, he seemed to have no problem spying on his brother’s thoughts. He flipped to the last page covered in writing, swallowing hard as he read, his lips pursing as though he’d been force-fed ouzo. What was written that caused such a reaction?

“My brother was excited to marry you,” Rhett said stiffly. “This was written yesterday.” He snapped the journal shut and tucked it under his armpit. “You really were betrothed.”

“You doubted it?” she asked, trying not to let on how hard her heart was beating or just how much he’d rattled her.

“How could I not? The family knew nothing of it, my brother is not the type to behave rashly, and you… are not what you seem.” He shook his head. “I need a drink.”

There was already a bottle of brandy and several glasses arranged neatly on the table that sat at the center of a semicircle of chairs. One for each sibling, she realized. The duke would welcome them here, into his personal space. One more reason Cordelia was a fool.

The nearby fire threw a warm glow against the dark leather. He took a seat, setting the journal down beside him, and leaned forward to grasp the decanter. “Drink?” he asked, holding a glass in her direction.

“No thank you. I should check on your brother.” The less time spent with Rhett, the better.

“You haven’t found the book.”

“I’m hardly going to find it sitting with you drinking, either.”

“True.” Rhett gazed into the flames, swirling his glass. He was hurting, that much was abundantly clear, and Adelaide had never been a person who could walk past someone in pain.

“Very well. One drink won’t hurt.” She took the seat opposite him and accepted the glass of brandy he offered. It was smooth and left a delightful burning trail down her throat. A little mewl escaped her. The duke’s stores were stocked well. Rarely had she the opportunity to enjoy such a decent spirit.

Rhett stared at her contemplatively. “Was it love at first sight? Was my steadfast, boring brother who has barely shown any interest in women suddenly overwhelmed by your beauty?”

“I am not beautiful.” Cordelia was. She had all the features of a classic stunner. Adelaide was a much plainer look-alike.

Rhett scowled. “You’ve a beauty that turns men’s minds to mush. You know that.”

“I… No. I did not know that.” She couldn’t help a little smile as his compliment tucked itself into a corner of her brain.

“Well, you do. I wouldn’t have thought Peter would be so susceptible to it, but here we are.”

Adelaide snorted. She didn’t know if the duke thought Cordelia pretty or not, but his reasons for marrying her had been driven by his brain and no other organ. “Your brother thought the marriage would be practical. It was ever-so convenient that we had arrived in Berwick, because he had no desire to spend next season courting a bride.”

Rhett coughed and spluttered, holding a fist to his lips. “You cannot be serious,” he said when the choking had eased. “Of course you are serious. My boneheaded brother would look at someone like you and see a solution to a problem rather than a blessing. And everyone considers him the good Montgomery brother.”

That was a strange phrasing. “Are you not a good person, Rhett?”

He sighed. “I am irresponsible and dissolute, feckless, a good-for-nothing, a rogue, according to society, and that was perfectly fine. No one expected anything else until now.”

“What’s changed?”

Rhett swirled his glass. “If my brother doesn’t wake, then I will be the duke. I am to step into his shoes despite being a fraction of the man he is. I will disappoint them all.”

“Are you so certain of that?” She couldn’t explain why she didn’t think it would be true. She didn’t know him, and everything his sisters had said about him supported his theory. But he’d treated her too kindly, too respectfully, for her to believe his words, even though he clearly didn’t trust her.

“Am I certain that I will disappoint? All the evidence points in that direction. Peter gave me a hefty sum to manage once. He was testing me, trying to determine if I could be trusted with one of the smaller estates.”

“And?”

“And I lost twenty thousand pounds in a year.” He threw down the drink he had and poured another.

She took a small sip of hers. “On women and booze?”

“On investments that didn’t pan out.”

Adelaide shrugged. “Investing is a risky business. Plenty of prospects don’t pan out.”

There was violence in the way he swirled his drink this time, brandy reaching the lip of the glass. “My judgment is poor, and I can’t manage finances properly. It was a good thing I didn’t have an estate full of people counting on me. Peter needs to wake. I have none of what is needed to do this job.”

Her heart hurt for him. It was awful to hang on to such regrets. “You care. That’s not nothing.”

He paused, glass halfway to his lips. “Pardon?”

“You don’t want to disappoint people. That means you care about doing right by those who will rely on you. That’s more than a lot of lords have going for them.”

Rhett shifted in his seat. “This is all far too maudlin. It presumes my brother is going to pass, and I assure you, he won’t. He won’t risk the dukedom by dying. Is there really no gin in this room at all?” He pushed out of his chair and strode to the shelf that was crammed full of bottles of all shapes and sizes.

She twisted in her seat so she could still see him.

Rhett was taking each bottle by its neck, reading the label, and then casting it aside on one of the nearby shelves. “Tell me a truth, Della.”

“What do you want to know?” she asked cautiously.

“Do you find my brother attractive? Is that why you plan to marry him?” Was that jealousy she heard in his voice? Rhett snatched a bottle and waved it at her. “Ah. Gin. Would you like to try some?”

Adelaide looked out the glass doors that opened into the back garden. The sun had set; the sky had turned blue-gray. It would be dark in a matter of minutes. “Sure.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” Rhett said as he poured clear liquid into two glasses.

Della pursed her lips. “He’s good-looking enough. More so than most men. Less so than others. He seems the responsible type and kind. He would be a sensible match for any woman.”

Rhett’s expression darkened and, with a drink in each hand, he returned to the fireplace. He stood scorchingly close to her and handed her a snifter. He smelled of bergamot and salt. It reminded her of a warm summer’s day on a Greek island. It would be so easy to reach up, to brush her hand against him.

When he took the seat next to her instead of the one opposite, she swallowed hard. There was a loud pop and crackle from the fireplace that had to be a coincidence, but it felt ominous regardless. “Yes, marriage to him would be sensible, and women have done many insensible things to ‘land’ him. Women have stooped to many levels to be the next Duchess of Strafford.”

There was too much pain in his voice; he stared too deeply into the clear liquid for his thoughts to be entirely with his brother.

“That must have been difficult for him,” Della said.

Rhett scoffed. “Sure, it’s been difficult for him .” He sighed and shook his head, bringing his attention back to the present moment. “That’s not fair. It has genuinely been difficult for him. He’s had very little to do with women since Lady Meredith.”

“Who was Lady Meredith?”

He grimaced. “I thought she was the love of my life, but her eyes were on my brother the entire time.”

“I’m sorry.” She wanted to reach out a hand to hold his, to show him he was not alone in having lost, but there was too much distance between them, so she settled for a condoling smile.

Rhett downed the rest of his drink. “I’m not sorry. I rode the wave of my brother’s pity all the way to Rome, then Amsterdam, Minsk, Zagreb, Budapest, Moscow. It was a full year before he started back up with his “you need employment” spiel. By that time, I was far enough from England to ignore him.”

“You were running.”

He shook his head, closing one eye to look through the empty glass. “I wasn’t running. Not at all. I was exploring. I was like Columbus, but I was looking for… I don’t know. I thought I’d know when it presented itself, but maybe it has been and gone, and I didn’t even recognize it.”

She shifted in her seat, swinging her legs over the arm of the chair and leaning her head into the soft, worn leather. “What would it have felt like, this thing you were searching for?”

“Like the right key in the right lock. Or maybe as though I’d just had a good meal. Can the soul be hungry, do you think?”

She’d never thought of it in those words, but it was absolutely the sensation she felt. “Yes, it can. The soul can be starved.”

He cocked his head, staring at her as if he was trying to see beyond what she was. “Tell me, Della. What is your soul starved for?”

It was a question she would not normally answer truthfully. She would obfuscate or straight-out lie, but her normal shield seemed to give way when Rhett looked at her. He had so easily showed her his vulnerability; was it so wrong to show hers?

“Stability. I’ve had none for as long as I can remember, not in people or places. I’m tired of floating on the tides. I want to be still. I want to build myself a lighthouse.”

He took a sip of his drink. “A lighthouse sounds lonely.”

“So is floating.” It was her turn to feel uncomfortable at the serious turn of the conversation. She’d already revealed more of herself than she should have. She put aside the gin and locked her defenses back into place.

“Tell me about one of your adventures, Rhett.”

“Something true?”

“Of course.” No doubt his genuine stories were as entertaining as fiction.

There was a long pause, and he wrinkled his nose. “I am searching my memories for a story that is suitable for a young lady of the ton .”

Adelaide laughed. “Don’t censure anything on my account,” she said. “I can handle a story with questionable behavior.” She snuggled into the armchair, rolling the brandy snifter full of gin between her hands.

“Are you certain you won’t swoon?”

She furrowed her brows in mock outrage. “I’ve never swooned in my life.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Well then, let me tell you about a fortune teller I met in Athens.”

Bloody hell, that is so inconvenient , she thought as she closed the door on the duke’s study. It was bad enough that her skin sang in Rhett’s presence; she didn’t need to like him too.

Their time together at the docks had not been an aberration. He was as cheeky and amusing today as he had been then. For an hour, he’d regaled her with tales from his travels, all ones that might have shocked and horrified proper ladies of the ton but that, in truth, Adelaide found hilarious. She, too, had swam naked in the sea at ?lesund during the winter solstice. How could one not?

Adelaide smiled at the memory as she strolled down the hallway, her feet silent on the thick carpet. She desperately wanted a place to settle. The trials of a nomadic existence were always top of mind, but Rhett’s stories had reminded her of the joy travel had brought her over the years. She’d experienced things most other women wouldn’t. And when Rhett repeated the phrase, “you really had to be there…” with a thread of disappointment in his voice, she understood that too. Sometimes, she’d really needed someone else to be there so they could reminisce together.

Perhaps once she had leased her home and finally settled in one place long enough to purchase something large and heavy, she would return to the continent occasionally. It wasn’t something she’d considered before. For years, all she’d dreamed about was becoming as still and stable as a Brittany lighthouse. But perhaps she could be a lighthouse and still float upon the canals of Venice during Carnival.

She nodded at the footman who stood in the foyer’s corner. Having anyone bow to her felt uncomfortable, but if she was going to maintain her cover, smiling as though it was her due was imperative. On the long sideboard were two salvers. The braided silver twisted into an intricate Celtic knot on each side, at the center of which was a stone—jade for the incoming post and moonstone for the outgoing.

Her heart leaped at the site of several missives waiting to be taken to the general store for posting. She probably looked like a snoop, picking up the pile and reading through the addresses, but it was a necessary evil. Jacqueline had over half a dozen letters waiting to be sent, three of them to a single recipient, but there was nothing in the duke’s pretty hand. The sudden sense of relief she’d felt dissipated. Damn it.

Taking a deep breath and pretending that she wasn’t about to ask a completely impertinent question, she turned to the footman. “Is this your usual posting?” If the footman’s role was to wait in the foyer until a member of the family needed help, then surely he would have seen if the duke had dropped a letter off to be posted. “Before his… incident, the duke spoke of sending our betrothal announcement to London. Do you know if that occurred?”

“I couldn’t say, my lady.”

“Was yesterday’s post mailed, or was that missed in all the excitement?”

“I don’t believe there was mail sent yesterday, my lady.”

Then the announcement was likely still in the house. That’s if it existed in the first place and Cordelia hadn’t been confused amid all the chaos. She crossed to where the footman stood, noting the tiny sharpening of his posture.

“It would be tasteless for such an announcement to take place under the circumstances, don’t you think?” she asked. “If you or any of the household staff run across it, please deliver it to me for safekeeping until His Grace recovers. I will remember your support.”

Perhaps it was underhanded to use her supposed future role as the man’s employer to her advantage, but two dozen eyes keeping watch for the announcement would be better than hers alone. “I’ll be with the duke, if anyone should find it.”

The duke remained as silent and still as he had that morning. Her attempt to get his blood pumping had been futile. He was losing color in his face, and his lips were pinched and dry. Of course they’re dry, Adelaide. He’s had naught to drink in a day.

A man could last three days without water; she’d read that somewhere. As long as he wasn’t exposed to the elements, he could last three days. One of those days was already up, with no sign of change. Adelaide rang for a footman.

“Fetch a bucket of ice chips. Snow, if you’ve no ice on hand.”

“What are you doing?” Margaret asked as she passed the footman and came to sit by her brother’s side. She enveloped his hand in both of hers and raised it to her lips. Rhett’s was a close family. They cared about each other a great deal. What a blessing it must be to be part of something like that.

“Your brother needs liquid. It’s been at least a day since he drank anything.”

A crease formed between Margaret’s brows. “Of course. I hadn’t thought of that at all. He must be parched.”

Adelaide moved to the other side of the bed. “Help me sit him up. The footman will be back with ice shortly. If we give it to him lying down, it’s just as likely to go down his windpipe as it is his throat.”

Together, with much grunting and a little Gaelic cursing, the two women had him in a seated position.

“Here,” Margaret said. “Let’s prop him up with pillows; it will be easier than dragging him backward.” They gathered the pillows that had been stacked neatly against the wall and shoved them behind his back.

By this time, the footman had reappeared with a silver bucket full of ice and tongs.

“Thank you.” Adelaide scrambled off of the bed and took the bucket from him.

The duke’s head hung forward, his jaw slack. “You hold him,” she instructed.

Margaret did as she was told, sinking her fingers into her brother’s hair and pulling back until his head was level. “My family can be a lot to contend with,” she said as Adelaide took an ice chip from the bucket and placed it in the duke’s mouth. “I hope we aren’t scaring you off.”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Not for the reason Margaret thought. She was here until the duke woke, then she would leave. Adelaide eased her pressure on the duke’s jaw, allowing his mouth to drop open. The ice that had melted in his mouth dribbled over his lips and onto his bed shirt.

“Merde.”

“Poor Peter. He’d be horrified to see this. I’m going to have to swear my siblings to absolutely secrecy about this whole ordeal.”

“Let’s try tipping his head further back.” Adelaide popped a few more ice chips in the duke’s mouth and closed his jaw. “None of your siblings seem the type to keep this under wraps.”

Margaret sighed. “That is so true. Jacqueline might be prevailed upon, but Edwina would probably just blurt it out unconsciously. And Rhett…”

Adelaide’s heart hiccuped weirdly at the sound of his name. “Rhett would…?”

“I don’t know. He and Peter aren’t close. There’s a rift there that doesn’t seem to be mendable.”

“Closeness requires a willingness to be vulnerable. I can understand a reluctance to do that. I’ve never mastered the art, personally.” Though Rhett had been remarkably open with her. Was she the exception, or was it Peter?

There was a long pause before Margaret said, “Well, I do hope you’ll let us close. We are to be family, after all.”

It was strange, the ease with which the Montgomery siblings threw that word around. How quickly they were willing to accept a stranger into their family showed some kind of hereditary madness, surely. To avoid answering, Adelaide opened the duke’s mouth just a fraction to see if the ice had melted. Then she prodded at the sides of his throat. She had no evidence that she could force a man to swallow by doing so, but it seemed to be the most likely way.

After a moment, the duke’s throat bobbed.

“Yes!” Adelaide pumped a fist into the air. Margaret whooped. The two opened his mouth again, and it was empty. “Right, now we have to do that enough times to hydrate him,” Adelaide said. Mission one might have been to convince the duke to keep quiet about his failed proposal, but Adelaide had to keep him alive long enough to do so.