Page 56 of To Defend a Damaged Duke
“Matters of which I am fully aware.And I wouldn’t miss them for the world.I intend to have a flutter on the horses, then drink myself into a stupor on Countess Eveline Horton’s free sherry.Which reliably flows freely.And after that, who knows what will transpire?”He threw Benedict one of his sly looks, perfected back when they were still in short trousers.Funny how it didn’t elicit quite the usual nervousness.“Loose tongues are worse than loose horses.Isn’t that what they say, Your Grace?You’d know, what with owning all of those ever-so-lovely nags.”
Never mind hearing his father’s echo, Benedict fancied he heard his heart, slipping down into his boots.
“Don’t do this, Lyndon,” he pleaded quietly.“I know you are the anonymous sender of the list.Do not deny it.”
“I have no need to deny it.”If Lyndon was shocked that his underhand behaviour had been discovered, he showed no sign.“Why would I?It comprises nothing but the truth, and unless my share of our family’s wealth is fully restored to me, I intend to reveal it.”
Benedict tried again.His brother was only a lost cause after everyone had given up.And Benedict never would.“Then, I beg you to reconsider.I do not ask for my sake but for Francis’s.And for the sake of our mother.However low your opinion of me, they are not deserving.”
Lyndon examined his nails.A smile toyed at his lips, of a sort that a man less mild than Benedict would have smacked away with his fist.Yet Benedict could no more have raised a hand to this man than he could to a newborn lamb.What was it Francis had said?His big heart was both the worst and the best of him.Ah, well.So be it.
Eventually, Lyndon spoke.“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Your Grace.”
A profound sadness wrapped around Benedict’s chest as he regarded his twin brother.All this, over some damned pilfered teaspoons.
Except it was so much more than that.It was about the impact of a few minutes on years of a life.The whimsy of primogeniture.Chance, a cruel monarch, ruling over them all yet again, sorting the pair of them into the duke and the not duke.The heir and the spare.No judgement, no ambiguity.No choice.Their identities had slotted into a crisp hierarchy from the moment they’d sucked in their first sobbing breaths.
And, in the only ways he knew how, Benedict’s clever, capable, brother rebelled against it by seeking out external pain, a matching twin for his inner grief.
With nothing to lose, Benedict attempted one last time.“This will not end well for you, Lyndon,” he said, gently.“Please.I implore you to reconsider.”
For a long minute, he stared into a pair of dark eyes so similar to his own, even if the rest of his twin’s bloated body and mind had long since slid beyond recognition.
“So you say.”Rising to his feet, Lyndon gestured to the door.“Begging your pardon, Your Grace.I have another appointment.You can show yourself out.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
A PERSISTENT ANDdelicious image of Benedict mooching around his stables in his shirt sleeves, between pretending to woo two very agreeable ladies, convinced Tommy he had the raw end of the deal.He was a busy man, juggling several business interests.He needed to while away four afternoons trotting around Regent’s Park in a phaeton with Lady Isabella Knightley like he needed a new aperture in his cranium.Nonetheless, he fell on his sword and, by the end of the week, was rewarded with rumours of his amour detailed in theMirror of Fashioncolumn, alongside a puff piece about the enigmatic, brooding Mr Angel and his competing pursuits of the delightful Lady Isabella.
The point being, he barely saw Benedict.Of course, he could have paid him a call at his imposing, lavish home on Park Lane, but even if he did, Tommy couldn’t exactly lunge at him on the drawing room settee and cart the man off to bed.A friendly ride through the park would prove equally frustrating.And whilst a brief liaison in Tommy’s rooms above the club was entirely feasible, anyone spotting the duke tripping up and down the staircase would find it most odd.Of course, all that assumed Benedict found a spare moment to visit Squire’s in the first place.So far, since their return from the hunting lodge, the broadsheets reported his evenings had been taken up with soirées, musicales, and an expedition accompanying his harem to the bloody opera.
Rossingley bore the brunt of Tommy’s ill temper.With one knee neatly crossed over the other, he sat in the spindly chair (which didn’t as much as whimper) across from Tommy’s desk, picking through a jar of sherbet twists.
“Since falling in love, darling, you’ve become a terrible bore.”Rossingley licked at a sherbet.“Benedict this, the duke that.Honestly, Tommy, I’m beginning to question why I still endure your company.”
“Says the man who not so long ago sat in that very seat and treated me to a detailed account of precisely how Angel’s double-jointed tongue succeeds in pleasuring you so thoroughly.As I recall, it’s a similar technique to how you’re making love to that blasted sherbet.”
Rossingley pouted, then attacked the sherbet with even more gusto.
Restlessly, Tommy threw down his quill.“Oh, Lordy,” he sighed, swiping a sherbet for himself.“I’m heartsick is all.Is it too much to ask that one might spend a few nights under the same sheets as one’s lover without having to skulk about?”
Rossingley regarded him with a thoughtful look as he demolished the sweet.“No, I daresay not.”
“I can’t just drop everything and hare off to one of his bloody hunting lodges every time the urge takes me.I have too many obligations in town.As does Benedict.And I like town.I don’t sneeze in town.”
Rossingley procured another sweet.“My brother, Robert, a first-rate countryman, would advise you at this juncture that the answer is at the tip of your nose.”
“My runny nose,” Tommy interrupted.“When I’m in the country.”
“Quite,” said Rossingley.“And then, after boring you with an unsolicited diversion into the joys of animal husbandry, he’d pronounce that successful shepherds persuade their sheep so their interests might align with their own.”
“Then thank heavens bloody Robert is not here,” replied Tommy testily.“Really, Lordy, I can’t see the relevance.If you’re simply tolerating my brown study to scoff my sherbets, you can bugger—”
“You’re the shepherd,” cut in Rossingley, his silvery eyes glittering with amusement.“And our club patrons are your sheep.Now—” He paused whilst he unwrapped his sweet.“—ask yourself this.How could my nightly craving for a tumble with my handsome duke possibly align with their needs?”He licked his lips.“Their needs for a nearby bed when foxed, for instance.”
He gazed around Tommy’s cosy study, then drifted his eyes lazily up to the ceiling.“If I’m not mistaken, there are quite a lot of rooms above here, aren’t there?For a single man?Imagine, all those empty bedchambers.Going to waste.”
“Baa,” bleated Tommy irritably.“You really can be bloody smug sometimes, Lordy.”
