Chapter Seventeen

L ucien sat in his dark and silent study at Brixton House and stared blankly into the shadows, agonizingly counting off the minutes until dawn.

Not that he had anything which needed to be done at dawn. No, the rising sun would simply mean that he’d survived the night without throwing himself into the Thames.

“Empty threat,” he grumbled to himself. He knew he couldn’t kill himself. Not that he didn’t have the resolve to do exactly that, but his death wouldn’t solve any of his problems. After all, wasn’t he still suffering from his father’s misdeeds when the old man was even now rotting in his grave? And those who remained after Lucien would suffer his misdeeds, as well.

His discarded jacket lay on the floor where he’d dropped it, his cravat hanging untied around his neck, and his waistcoat unbuttoned. It was as far as he’d gotten in an attempt to undress himself before giving up completely and choosing to drink himself into oblivion instead. Even now a half-empty bottle of whiskey sat on the desk in front of him, with a glass clasped in his hand. He’d lost count of how much he had drunk since returning home from Vauxhall, after walking a very angry, confused, and wounded Jess back to Lady Bromley’s box, when she hadn’t said a single word to him the entire way. Yet the whiskey wasn’t enough to dull the pain squeezing his heart like a vise.

“Hell,” he grumbled, “all the whisky in Scotland wouldn’t be enough.”

He slammed the empty glass down onto his desktop, shoved himself to his feet, and began to pace. He couldn’t stay still. Too much fury and frustration boiled inside him, with no good way to release any of it except for the one way he knew he would never have—actually making love to Jess. If she didn’t hate him before… Christ.

He gave a bitter laugh. Surely, she hated him now anyway. God knew he certainly hated himself.

Damn her for discovering the truth about him! His blackguard facade was supposed to have kept people like her away. Why couldn’t she have been like every other unmarried miss and been terrified of him? Oh no. Not her. She took his darkness as a challenge. Which was what had drawn him to her in the first place, exactly because she was so unlike any other woman he’d ever known.

So damn himself for letting her invade his thoughts and creep under his skin.

He stopped in mid-pace and scoured his hand over his face, already feeling the light prickle from his midnight growth of beard. She’d caressed her cheek against his tonight, in that glorious moment right after she’d come against his hand, when she was lost to bliss and he was lost in her. Had she felt the scrape of his beard against her cheek? Would she have welcomed the same scrape of his beard against her inner thighs if he’d knelt before her and worshipped her with his mouth?

What an utter fool he was! To want what he could never possess… He might as well have admitted aloud that he believed he could find peace in her arms, that she could provide the solace his black soul craved and somehow pull him back into the light of day. That she could redeem him.

That was what frustrated him most of all, even more than not being able to physically claim her right there in the grotto, exactly as he’d described to her—that he could never accept the absolution she offered.

For once in his life, he’d done the morally right thing, and for no other reason than because he didn’t want to hurt her.

And he’d been damned for it.

He walked back to his desk and snatched up the bottle of whiskey, no longer bothering with the pretense of measured pours in a glass.

His gaze fell onto the report sitting in the middle of the desktop, and he absently picked it up. It had arrived that evening from the investigator he’d hired on Shay’s behest to uncover whatever information he could about James Norton, the man who wanted to marry Sophie Winter, daughter of the Earl of Granville. But he’d been on his way out the door to Vauxhall and hadn’t had time to give it more than a cursory examination. Yet what the investigator had found…

“You’re not going to be happy about its contents, Shay,” he muttered into the dark room, as if his old friend were truly there with him.

But then, neither would the Earl of Granville, although for completely different reasons.

For a fleeting moment, he took a perverse solace in Shay’s situation with Sophie. After all, why should Lucien be the only one of the four best friends who couldn’t have the woman he wanted? He and Shay could grow bitterly into old age together, commiserating about the perfect woman they had both lost.

Lucien tossed the report onto his desk and took a large swallow of whiskey straight from the bottle.

A soft knock at the door echoed through the silent darkness.

“Come,” Lucien called out, cursing the interruption. Not that it mattered. There would be neither sleep nor peace for him tonight. He laughed. Tonight? For many, many nights to come. If ever.

His valet Dalton stopped just inside the room. Smart man. He knew where he wasn’t wanted.

Lucien collapsed back into his chair. “I don’t need to be undressed tonight.”

Dalton wisely said nothing about that, even as he reached down to pick up the discarded jacket from the floor. Instead, he took a deep breath and steeled himself. Lucien recognized the posture. It was the same one he’d seen countless times in soldiers right before they charged into battle.

“A note arrived by special messenger, sir.”

Lucien blinked. He hadn’t heard anyone at the front door. But then, his thoughts had been concentrated elsewhere, on a challenging, alluring, and frustrating golden-haired gel who somehow managed to bring out both the best and worst in him. For a moment, he desperately wanted the message to be from Jess and sat forward. “From whom?”

“Ealing, sir.”

The small bit of energy he still possessed instantly dissolved away, and he slumped back against the chair.

Dalton placed the note on the desk and retreated toward the doorway, to wait for a response.

Lucien stared at it. He didn’t have to read the note to know what it said. What the notes from Ealing always said. That the situation there with his brother Phillip had grown out of control, that he was needed immediately. And since the message was sent via special messenger at night, then he would most likely be away for days.

At the worst possible time, too. He needed to be in London now, to make amends with Jess. Somehow. She deserved the opportunity to vent her wrath upon him, and he deserved that wrath—and more.

He clenched his jaw against the weight that sat upon his chest like a lead cannonball. But there was no help for it, and never would be.

He couldn’t ignore the message and the fresh hell that awaited him in Ealing. He had no choice. He alone was responsible for Phillip and would be until the day one of them took his last breath. No—Lucien would be forced to be responsible even after that. After all, as his father had proven, his family’s actions could never be confined to a coffin. There would be no respite for Lucien, even in his grave.

Slowly, he stood and faced the fireplace. Then he furiously heaved the bottle of whiskey into it with all his might.

The glass shattered with an ear-splitting crash, and the whiskey flared the hot coals beneath the banked fire, bringing it instantly to life. Flames leapt high into the fireplace as if suddenly infused with hellish brimstone.

Fitting. He was certainly in hell.

For Christ’s sake! He didn’t deserve this life! He didn’t deserve to live in the shadows and keep the kinds of secrets that could destroy a dukedom and all the lives associated with it, from his all the way down to the lowliest worker in the meanest hovel on his estates. Was this his punishment for all he’d done during the wars? Or for not discovering his father’s evils sooner and putting a quicker end to them?

No—he knew the truth. It was all punishment for an original sin thrust upon his head before he was even born. A sin he would never be able to free himself from. This life and those secrets—and now, never to be with Jessamyn—they were the punishments he was forced to bear through no fault of his own.

There would never be absolution.

“Sir?” Dalton stiffly took a single step forward. Concern radiated from every inch of the former aide-de-camp, yet he knew not to ask if Lucien were all right or if he needed help. That single word would be all.

“I need you to run an errand for me in the morning.” Lucien returned to the desk and reached for the bronze writing set. He quickly scrawled out a short message on a note card, then folded it, sealed it, and placed it onto the investigator’s report. He slid both across the desk toward Dalton. “At dawn, deliver these to Seamus Douglass at the Prince of Wales Inn in Cheapside. Make certain you put them directly into his hands.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have my saddle horse readied and waiting out front. I want to leave within the half-hour.”

“Not your carriage, sir? You want to travel by horseback at this hour?”

In other words, was Lucien willing to risk his safety by traveling exposed on horseback through some of the darkest, most sparsely populated areas edging London, where he could be easily attacked? In other words, had Lucien lost his mind?

“Yes,” he answered.

“Very well, sir.” Dalton turned toward the door.

“One more thing,” Lucien called out to him, stopping him. He reached for the quill and ink to write out a second set of instructions and a separate note to go with it. He held out the instructions. “Send one of the footmen out to purchase this in the morning and deliver it to that house.” He held up the folded, sealed note. “With this.”

The valet took both and scanned over the instructions in the dying firelight. A bewildered expression crossed his face, yet as a former soldier, he knew not to question orders. “Yes, sir.”

Twenty minutes later, Lucien descended the front steps and mounted his horse. He rode off toward Ealing, his heart now truly dead to the world.