Page 637 of From Rakes to Riches

“A lifetime—Caius’s lifetime, at the very least.” Beech knocked back another drink of brandy. “Which is damned ironic, considering I was meant to be the expendable one.”

Such a thought was not to be borne. “Not expendable, Beech. Never that. Out of sight, perhaps, but never out of mind, surely.”

“Out of mind until they had use of me,” he scoffed. “My mother, and the lawyers and secretaries she has set nipping at my heels like a pack of rat terriers.”

“Poor Beech, to discover yourself a duke,” she teased.

“Aye, well…” One side of Beech’s lovely mouth curved up in a rueful smile. “I know there are a thousand men—nay, a hundred thousand—who should love to be standing in my well-polished boots, but…”

He let the thought trail away as he absently touched the empty sleeve of his coat where it was sewn under his lapel. “I daresay I’ll be happier once I feel I’ve a firmer grasp of my duties, though I dread the knowledge that I will also have to go back to London to do so. At least in the country I can get a fresh breath of clean winter air—I was like to suffocate in that ballroom.”

“Poor Beech.” Penelope sympathized, but to her, leaving society was exile, not escape. This winter, and every one thereafter, would be spent as a companion to a relative she had never met, in some frozen corner of the countryside where she would doubtless spend the coming years being made to stop up drafts.

Such a bleak prospect was enough to prompt sarcasm. “I should recommend getting yourself ruined if you want to escape society entirely, Beech. Though I daresay a fellow as handsome as you got himself good and ruined a long time ago.”

“I beg your pardon?” His tone was incredulous enough to remind Penelope that Beech had done nothing to earn her spleen.

Yet some still-wounded piece of her tattered pride prompted her on.

“But, of course, chaps aren’t accounted ruined whenever they indulge in…shall we call it ungentlemanly behavior, are they? Because myunladylikebehavior—being caught alone with your brother, to be specific—is how I was ruined.”

He looked slightly stunned. “You went apart with Caius? Willingly?”

Good Lord—he really was naïve.

“I have to admit so, yes. Very willingly. Enthusiastically, even.” She gave Beech that much of the truth. She had been a fool for a handsome face so very much like Beech’s, and the late Duke of Warwick had been irresistible to her—all brooding, dark delight that she had learned nearly too late was the sort of self-loathing that poisons everything and everyone it touches.

She had only just missed that darkness touching her. Still, she had been poisoned, and everything that had made her life comfortable, everything she had recklessly taken for granted—her good name and her family’s regard and protection—was gone in an evening.

“Damn him for a miserable cad.” Beech’s scowl loomed across his brow like a thundercloud. “He always did like having his way, and he never did care who he hurt while he got it.”

Dear, clever Beech, to see so clearly, and yet, still not see all.

“Alas, Beech, I was the one who kissed him.”

Penelope could not tell if the look in his eyes was pity or disappointment. Either way, it was more than she could stomach. “What about you? Have you never kissed anyone, Beech?”

Her question took him aback for only the briefest moment. “Indeed, I have,” he confirmed without a trace of rancor. “And enjoyed it. Immensely. Great stuff kissing, when properly done—amicably and with the right person.”

Something within her, something ridiculously, miserably hopeful, sparked to life.

Properly done, indeed.

She attempted to douse the ember by taking another drink. But the brandy only seemed to loosen her tongue.

“Be glad you are not a woman, Beech, else you’d be ruined for such enthusiasm.”

Lord, but it felt good to say what she’d been thinking, to let the words loose upon the world. She propped her feet upon the fireplace bumper.

“Utterly ruined—your very existence treated as an affront to all well-bred behavior.”

Gracious but shewasairing out all sorts of her dirty linen this evening—even she could hear the bitterness in her tone.

But Beech had been a loyal friend in their long-ago youth—before he had gone away to the Navy and she had been fool enough to turn her reckless fancy to kissing handsome men—and he deserved the truth. The whole truth, and not what she had been admitting out of some idiotic mixture of resentment and pride.

“If I’m honest, I did bring it all upon myself.”

“Well, damn,” was what he said before he crossed his ankles and regarded her more thoughtfully.

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