‘Bowles.’ Fred spat out the name like a piece of rancid meat. ‘He had better behave himself or he will answer to me.’
Bowles had threatened to ruin Georgiana for her escapade at Vitium et Virtus unless she married him as her father wished.
Honourable Frederick married Georgiana instead, to rescue her from Bowles. And somehow Fred and Georgiana had fallen in love with each other.
What were the chances that marriage would remain blissful? Especially since Georgiana was so free-spirited.
And how long would Jacob remain besotted with Rose? He was a duke and she had been a maid here at Vitium et Virtus. How long before Jacob left Rose like Oliver’s father had left his mother?
‘You two should go home to your wives,’ Oliver said. His friends had better do right by those good women or they’d have to answer to him.
‘I was thinking the same thing,’ Fred said.
Jacob looked pensive. ‘I was thinking how lucky I am to have this happiness. And how much I wish Nicholas could share in it.’
‘Nick.’ Oliver’s voice rasped with pain.
He placed his hand palm up on the billiard table. Jacob and Frederick placed theirs on his. ‘In Vitium et Virtus,’ they recited together.
They’d been schoolboys when they first contrived this oath, resurrecting it after the night Nick vanished to remind them that they were still four. Nicholas was somewhere, Oliver insisted. And somehow he’d find his way back to them.
They broke apart, and Frederick poured more brandy. He lifted his glass in a toast. ‘To absent friends.’
Oliver and Jacob raised their glasses.
‘Be he in heaven or hell—’ Oliver continued, a refrain they’d repeated several times in the six years Nicholas had been gone.
‘Or somewhere in between—’ Fred added.
‘Know that we wish you well.’ Jake ended it.
If only words could magically bring Nick back.
They downed their brandy in silence.
* * *
After Oliver said goodbye to his friends, he made his way to the back door, the private entrance used only by him and his friends. The drizzle persisted, so he dashed across the garden and out the gate, through the alley and the garden of the town house on Bury Street adjacent to the club. Oliver’s town house. How lucky he’d been to be wealthy enough to buy a town house so conveniently located to Vitium et Virtus.
When his father became the Marquess of Amberford and inherited the property and riches to go with the title, he’d settled the fortune he’d acquired in India on Oliver, a fortune great enough that Oliver could live more than comfortably. He could afford many pleasures. Fast carriages, matched horses, beautiful women.
Funny that Oliver used to fear he’d be poor. When he was a boy, his father’s wife often threatened to put Oliver out on the streets. Eventually he learned about his fortune and that she could not touch it. When his father was not present, she was always nasty to Oliver. He’d absolutely believed he could be tossed out onto the streets like Cecilia’s street urchins—
Cecilia.
Again she popped into his mind unbidden. For the last three months the memory of her caught him at odd moments. Why should she inhabit his thoughts so often? He’d only known her one day.
Perhaps the brevity of their time together had enhanced the experience, made it grander, magical. It had seemed as if she’d appeared out of the mist and disappeared as quickly. No liaison of his had ever begun so unexpectedly and ended so abruptly.
He reached the garden door of his town house and went inside, brushing the raindrops off his coat and hair. He greeted his cook and housekeeper as he passed the kitchen and made his way up to the hall where his butler stopped him.
‘Sir, you have a caller,’ the butler said.
‘A caller?’ Oliver rarely had callers. He was not on society’s circuit of people whose favour one must court.
His butler, only a decade older than he, leaned closer. ‘A lady. She declined to give her name.’
Oliver’s brows rose. ‘You do not know her?’
Irwin typically had an excellent eye for faces and names, especially ladies’ names.
He shook his head. ‘She has been waiting over an hour.’
‘An hour?’ What lady would wait an hour for him? ‘Why did you not simply say I was out?’
Irwin appeared affronted. ‘I did say you were out. She insisted upon waiting.’
Oliver was always very careful that the ladies with whom he associated knew precisely the nature of the relationship. He did not want any of them to consider him so important they’d waste an hour waiting for him.
Irwin inclined his head towards the drawing room. ‘She waits in there.’
Oliver shrugged. He might as well discover who it was.
He opened the door, startling the woman who sat upon the sofa facing the fireplace. She stood and turned to him.
For a moment Oliver could not breathe.
‘Cecilia.’
Cecilia had forgotten how his presence affected her. His handsome face. His masculine grace. His riveting eyes. Unwillingly, her body flared in response to him. She’d not wished to seek him out, but what other choice did she have?
He hurried towards her. ‘But why are you here? How did you know—?’
‘Where to find you?’ She finished his question and felt somewhat embarrassed to admit to the answer. ‘I took one of your cards before I left. It gave your direction.’
She was wary of him, of how he would respond to her, of his reaction to what she must tell him.
To her surprise, he softened his voice. ‘I am delighted to see you, Cecilia. What is wrong? You seem distressed. Do you need my assistance?’
She had to turn away from him. From his kindness.
‘I never intended to come to you. I went first to my parents—my mother—’ Her voice cracked and she blinked away tears. The last thing she wanted was to weep in front of him. She wrestled her emotions back in control. ‘My mother and father refused to see me. I am dead to them, you see.’
She’d yearned for her mother. When everything fell so completely apart in Paris, she’d desperately yearned for her mother. She’d wanted to be enfolded in her mother’s arms and soothed and told everything would turn out all right. So many times after Duncan had beaten her she’d wished for her mother’s arms, but when Duncan was alive, it had been impossible. This time, though, with Duncan dead, she thought perhaps her parents would forgive her. She’d travelled first to their country house only to be told they were in London.
She then went to London, but they refused to see her.
You are dead to them, their butler, a man she’d known since childhood, had frostily told her.
So she came here. To Oliver.
She’d always known that her ruse as Madame Coquette would end some day. One night the man who’d paid for time did not fall for her excuses. He’d tried to take what he wanted. For a few frightening moments, it was as if her husband had returned from the dead to again force himself on her. Hercule had burst in and stopped him.