Chapter 2

God save me from dry champagne," Romeo muttered, swirling the champagne flute in his hand with an irritated look as if the glass itself had offended him. His mouth was pinched, his brow set, and he had the look of a man who would rather be anywhere but where he was.

Even if where he was happened to be one of the finest sitting rooms in all of England.

Corin tried not to frown in return at his brother and didn't succeed. It was hard to keep a neutral expression when Romeo was in one of his moods. Especially when one of his moods had seen him out of the country and in France for the past fortnight while his wife pined away at home, and Corin was left to take care of her.

"No one told you that you needed to drink any," Corin said placidly, biting back all of his more acerbic remarks.

"It's all that our aunt has put out yet," Romeo sighed, falling down gracelessly into an armchair and splaying himself out upon it. "No whiskey, no brandy…Just…champagne drier than my wife's nether regions."

At that tactless remark, Corin didn't bother to hide his severe frown.

"Perhaps you should remember that she is your wife," he bit out, fighting the urge to stand and shake his brother. It was an urge he had been fighting for more than half of his life and one that he feared was only becoming more prominent with age.

"Perhaps you should remind her of such," Romeo responded off-handedly, clearly unbothered by his brother's ire. "She's not let me back home yet, you know."

Corin did know. Unfortunately, he knew in great detail more than he ever cared to. Sybille wasn't allowing Romeo back home, because once again, Romeo had been caught in flagrante with one of his many, many mistresses. Or, to hear Romeo tell it, framed—but they all knew the truth of the matter, no matter what protestations Romeo put up. At twenty-two, he was unchanged from his sixteenth year, and Corin had long given up the hope that that might change.

So he didn't comment.

Not even when he caught his brother eying him speculatively.

He knew what was coming. Romeo was nothing if not predictable.

"Perhaps you might talk with her," Romeo pressed, his voice dropping to try and be convincing.

Corin grimaced, also wishing that his aunt had set out something stronger than champagne, in that moment.

"I'm not asking you to make her forgive me, you know," Romeo continued with a long-suffering sigh. "Just for you to talk her into letting me back into the house. And to let me plead my own case. You know that I love her."

Corin bit down on the inside of his cheek.

He did know that. Romeo loved Sybille beyond reason. It just didn't seem to be enough for him to change his womanizing ways.

"Corin…"

"I'll talk to her!" Corin snapped, standing and snatching Romeo's champagne flute from his hand. He downed the last of it in one swift drink. "But at some point, you're going to have to learn to settle things with her on your own."

Or else Corin might perish from an ulcer from the stress of it all.

"Settle what with who?" a delicately feminine voice asked from the doorway.

If Corin had been sure his aunt wasn't lurking behind the corner, he might have cursed. Charlotte, despite being far gentler and kinder than her mother, had the older countess's impeccable timing.

"My wife," Romeo answered unapologetically. He rose languidly from where he'd been lounging, shooting a charming grin at Charlotte before leaning to kiss her on her temple on his way out of the door. "But it's all settled now. Corin is going to be a wonderful brother and take care of it for me. And I'm going to go try and hunt out where your mother has hidden the good liquor. I can hear guests now. She must have set it out somewhere."

Corin bit back a sigh, following his brother and offering his arm to his cousin as Romeo disappeared.

"You're going to have to stop bailing him out eventually, you know," Charlotte said softly as Corin escorted her from the room. "Sybille really doesn't deserve what he puts her through."

"I'm sure that there are things Sybille puts him through as well," Corin lied artlessly. "Marriage is a private affair, Charlotte. One never knows what goes on behind closed doors."

Charlotte gave him a peevish look, her brows furrowed as she considered him. He instantly regretted his choice of words. He'd been avoiding talking about marriage for weeks with her ever since she'd gotten it into her head that his mourning period ought to be over.

"Mother will be happy to hear you speaking so fondly of marriage," Charlotte said instead of chastising him. Though her words were almost the worse for it. "She's mentioned several eligible ladies this season to keep an eye on, you know, and—"

"I'm not interested in ladies, Charlotte, eligible or not," Corin cut her off bluntly, refusing to rise to the bait.

He knew what his aunt thought of his matrimonial state; Lord knew she didn't bandy about words frivolously.

"Oh, are you interested in men then?" Charlotte teased, her voice so low it might well have been a whisper.

Corin almost choked on air, his breath wheezing in his chest as he turned to look at his cousin with wide eyes. "Charlotte!"

"You're the one who said it," she returned with a giggle, her whole face pink from the scandal that she hadn't just implied but had outright said.

It was the most damning thing that Corin had ever heard out of her mouth.

"I said no such thing," Corin answered stiffly, recovering more slowly than he would have liked. He'd certainly meant nothing along those lines. He didn't judge those who dabbled in such things so harshly as most that he knew; he'd had the great fortune of rooming with a lad in school who had indulged in such preferences and liked to think of himself as rather open-minded.

Just…not so much as his cousin was implying.

"You know that Mother is going to push, Corin," Charlotte confided gently, keeping her voice so low that only he could hear her as they passed from the entryway into the slowly filling ballroom.

Already, ladies were milling about, fanning themselves with coquettish expressions while the gathered men watched hungrily from their packs. It was like an animal study, only worse, because Corin knew that his family meant for him to be thrown into the fray of it. A fate he thought he'd escaped upon his marriage two years before.

"She can push all she wants," Corin muttered. "I have no wish to join the throngs of eager bachelors. I'm a widower, in case she'd forgotten."

"You know she's done no such thing." Charlotte eyed the gathered guests with a kind, judgment-free eye. "She hardly counts your marriage to Alice, you know. It only lasted six months and—"

"Yes, well, she died, didn't she?"

Corin knew he'd been too harsh the moment the words left his lips. Charlotte's eyes watered as she looked away from him, her sensitive spirit uncomfortable with the brittle, angry notes between Corin's words.

Most people usually shied away from him when Alice came up. It was a fact he'd grown accustomed to over the last year and a half.

But he hadn't meant to be unkind to Charlotte, of all people.

"Charlotte…"

"No, I know. I am aware that she died, Corin. And so is Mother. But she said a year and a half is enough time to move past your mourning, especially considering the short nature and circumstances of your marriage in the first place." Charlotte stared adamantly out at the crowd, refusing to meet Corin's expression as he tried to apologize to her with his eyes.

Charlotte didn't need to parrot her mother.

Corin knew what she said. He knew her opinion on his staying out of the marriage market just as well as he knew his own name. He just didn't feel the need to bow to her desire to see him back in front of the altar again when getting in front of it the first time had been so damning, to begin with.

Across the room, Romeo stood in the middle of a gaggle of young women, his hands gesturing dramatically as he charmed the lot of them right by the entrance, set up to be seen by anyone who entered.

It left a sour taste in Corin's mouth, especially given the topic of his and Charlotte's discussion.

And apparently hers as well.

"You really don't have to clean up every mess that he makes," Charlotte whispered sadly.

Corin almost laughed.

Didn't he?

"If not I, then who?" he asked dryly.

Their father? The man was so far gone that Corin didn't think he knew the day of the week on any given day well enough to tell anyone, much less have the attention span to see what his youngest son was getting up to. No, that was Corin's job…and had been for quite some time.

"Oh, Lucy Thiebald is wearing that dreadful gray dress again," Charlotte muttered as she leaned into Corin's arm, squeezing it gently. "But…maybe you ought to consider allowing him to clean up his own mess from time to time."

Corin did laugh at that.

Loudly. Too loudly and bitterly, his teeth gritting together as he forced his lips back to a close.

Romeo clean up his own mess? Their father would recover before that happened.

"He would have to care enough to do so first," Corin reminded her, not-so-gently. And be motivated enough to fix it on his own, too, a thing that Romeo had never been.

Corin watched him sweep one of the ladies he was entertaining away to the dance floor, his hands just toeing that line between proprietary and indecency as he did. Because that was what Romeo did—toe the line. Every line and every boundary that he could find. Almost as well as he crossed right over them mindless to the consequences that would follow.

"He cares," Charlotte sighed, turning her face away from where Corin was staring with a frown. "He's just…"

There were a lot of adjectives she could have used and been right in using. Corin could think of at least twenty off of the top of his head that he would have used himself.

Selfish, childish, reckless, impetuous, carefree, emotionally stunted…

"Can we talk of no happier topics?" Corin asked Charlotte as he bumped his shoulder into hers. "First Romeo, then the topic of nuptials that won't be happening, and then Romeo again. We're at a gathering, my dear cousin. Surely there is something more exciting for you to bring up."

Anything would have been preferable to those two topics.

"Oh, there she is!" Charlotte said excitedly, craning her neck toward the entrance with a quick, happy smile. "The new friend I was telling you about!"

Corin's lips twitched as he chose not to point out that Charlotte made a new friend at least twice a day with her countenance and instead turned to see who she was referring to.

The woman in question had her back to him when he looked, already trapped by his aunt in some conversation or another, but that didn't stop him from looking her over.

She was a small thing, barely reaching his aunt's shoulder, with a slender waist and curves that her evening gown did nothing to hide, even from the angle that he was looking at her from. But that wasn't what caught his eye the most, despite how it should have.

It was her hair.

Long and not done up like the majority of the ladies piled atop of her head it was only half up, the rest of the chestnut waves cascading down her back and even framing her face as she turned…

And skewered Corin right to the spot…

She was dainty even from the front, her features soft and slightly pointed like some fairy creature, with wide, almond-shaped hazel eyes that sparked even across the distance of the room that separated them.

Corin's heart stopped completely as recognition ignited every inch of his being, his whole body going stiff.

Imelda.