“Forgive me for failing to consider your feelings in all this,” Alex snapped.
What could he say to his friends that would make them understand how the pain he felt was mostly embarrassment, not sadness? He wasn’t even certain he desired their understanding.
He was a duke. The holder of countless profitable estates and assets. A prime mover in Parliament. A frequent advisor to the Prince Regent—though the profligate fool almost never took Alex’s advice. Marriage to the Duke of Greyland would be considered a huge coup for any young lady of gentle birth. But Lady Emmeline had thrown away a chance to be a duchess . . . for love.
That’s what her note had said. “Forgive me, Your Grace. But I love him terribly, as he loves me. You deserve better than a wife whose heart belongs to another . . .”
“Ah, he’s well off without the feckless chit,” Ellingsworth insisted. “Had no backbone, that girl. She trembled like a willow whenever he spoke. A fearful lass can’t be very amusing in bed.”
“Don’t talk about Lady Emmeline that way,” Alex said, but there wasn’t much heat in his words.
He backed away from Ellingsworth and Langdon, thinking perhaps he could dodge around them. But they were clever, curse them, and Ellingsworth edged behind him, blocking him in.
Ah, damn and damn.
Alex scowled at his friends tormenting him in the depths of his ill humor. While he felt no loss of affection from the girl’s elopement with another man, pain lanced him at her desertion. Was there something about him . . . ? Something that made women flee from him? Was he truly that intimidating? Was he—was he unlovable?
But that word, that concept—love. He’d never felt it at home, though he’d heard it existed. He’d seen it in the way cottagers at the family estates acted with their children—the fond looks, the touches and smiles. Love was real, but it had been in short supply for the Duke of Greyland’s children.
His jilting brought back that same, gnawing question. If his own mother couldn’t show him affection, perhaps there was something about him that was fundamentally unworthy of love. An absence, a lack of a key inner component that would cause someone, anyone, to feel for him.
Lady Emmeline would have been a fine mother, raising sons and daughters in a way that befitted their station. She wouldn’t have loved him, but that wasn’t a requirement for marriage. They could have gotten along with mutual respect. If he felt a cold emptiness from this thought, he shouldered it aside. He’d gotten this far without love in his life. He could exist without it now.
Alex still smarted at her desertion but the greatest damage was sustained by his pride. At least neither Langdon nor Ellingsworth looked at him with sympathy.
“He’s definitely going home to sulk,” Langdon said disapprovingly.
Ellingsworth looked horrified. “I never spend a night at home, unless I’m too ill, and even with a scorching fever, I go to the theater.”
“I’ve had a meal out, and now I’m heading home to read a new translation of Euclid’s Elements.”
“You see, Langdon,” Ellingsworth noted. “He’s got a romping good time already planned. He’s no need of us.”
“Right about one thing.” Alex grabbed hold of Langdon’s shoulders and forcibly moved his friend aside. He stepped up into his carriage, but to his annoyance, Ellingsworth and Langdon followed, seating themselves opposite him. “I don’t have need of you.” He rapped on the roof of the carriage, and the vehicle began to merge into traffic.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Langdon grinned in the semidarkness of the carriage’s interior. He pulled a flask from inside his coat, then took a swig. “Stewing at home is for spinsters.”
“I’ve done my duty,” Alex said in a clipped voice. “Paraded my carcass on Bond Street so everyone could get a good eyeful of me, let them know that Lady Emmeline’s sudden marriage has not one speck of impact on me.”
Ellingsworth grabbed the flask from Langdon and took a drink. “You did right by that, old man.” He leaned over and jabbed his knuckles into Alex’s shoulder—as close to showing affection as Ellingsworth ever got. “But your night’s not finished.” He held the flask out to Alex.
But Alex didn’t take the flask, much as he craved a drink. “It is.” He swayed with the movement of the carriage. “I can’t stomach a ball tonight, and I’m not interested in going to the theater, or anywhere else I’ve got to show a good face in wake of—” He glanced out the window. “In wake of everything that’s happened.”
“We aren’t going anywhere respectable,” Langdon said with a wink. “The people there won’t give two figs if you were jilted by a goat.”
Alex curled his lip. “I’m not going slumming.”
Jabbing a finger toward Alex, Langdon said, “Nothing but the highest company tonight. The most stylish. The most esteemed. But they’ll be too busy calculating odds to worry about whether some girl dropped you.”
“Are you drunk already?” Alex demanded. “I don’t understand any of the gibberish flapping from your lips.”
“He means that we’re going to a new gaming hell,” Ellingsworth explained. “It’s so new and fashionable it doesn’t have a name. Langdon and I were there last night, after we heard about you at White’s. The hell’s been open for a fortnight. People queue up around the block to get in.” He leaned forward. “You have to go. It’s going to be open for just a month. Then it closes shop and disappears like a faerie kingdom.”
“Haven’t heard of any new gaming hell,” Alex muttered, crossing his arms over his chest.
Ellingsworth rolled his eyes. “You’ve been embroiled in le scandale de la Mademoiselle Emmeline. Doubtful that you’d know if St. Paul’s burned down. Which it hasn’t, by the by.”
“Come on, Greyland,” Langdon cajoled. “I guarantee that a night at London’s most à la mode gaming hell will raise your spirits. Wine. Cards and dice. An abundance of pretty ladies.” He said this as though the presence of lovely females was the ultimate trump card. “Join us there tonight, even if only for a few minutes.”
“What’s your alternative?” Ellingsworth added. “Geometry? Calculating the surface area of a sphere?” He feigned a yawn.
Indeed, what was Alex’s alternative? Home was huge and empty, a reminder that his attempt to fill it with a wife and children had been an utter failure. And it was in moments like this—quiet, introspective times—that thoughts of The Lost Queen couldn’t be held at bay. They flooded him like a monsoon in a tropical climate. If he didn’t keep moving, he’d drown.
He growled, “Give my driver the direction of this den of iniquity with its wine and dice.”
“And ladies,” Langdon added with a grin. He and Ellingsworth wore matching smiles of satisfaction. “You’ll have no cause to regret your decision.”
Regret. He’d done everything right. He always played by the rules, never forgetting the importance of his ducal role. He shouldn’t regret anything. But tonight, he’d loosen his grip on the reins of his ducal propriety. After all, what had being proper ever gotten him?
A spring drizzle settled over the streets, calling forth scents of wet stone and manure. The slick cobbles gleamed like onyx as pedestrians and horses picked their way over the uneven stones. London grew loud with the rain as people shouted to each other and hooves clattered.
The gaming hell was situated in a slightly raffish part of Piccadilly. It nestled between other stone-faced buildings, sporting a colonnade and the slightly overdressed look of a prosperous banker. Heavy velvet drapes concealed the windows. True to Ellingsworth’s word, well-dressed prospective guests were queued up on the curb, waiting for the doorman