Page 98 of From Duke Till Dawn
Alex set his glass on a table. “I’ve no taste for actresses or opera dancers. Not tonight. Not any night.” The idea of touching any woman besides Cassandra was abhorrent. He shrank within his skin just contemplating it.
“There’s a ball at the Collchesters’ tonight,” Ellingsworth said. “Dance with a few debutantes, listen to moldy jokes by their fathers, and smile politely at their mothers’ attempts at flirtation. Will it cure your suffering? No. But it gives you something to do besides howl and lick your wounds. There will come a time when your loss will lessen. Bit by bit. Until it’s as wide as a well instead of a chasm.”
“You’ve become awfully sagacious,” Alex said wryly.
Ellingsworth made a face. “All the damn Romantic poetry I’ve been reading. Soon I’ll be weaving crowns of flowers and sniffing my lovers’ pillows.”
Alex coughed and looked away, in case he gave himself away as a fellow Romantic. “I’ll meet you at the Collchesters’.”
“Oh, no.” Ellingsworth crossed his arms over his chest. “Go upstairs and change. I’m taking you to supper. The beast won’t be alone tonight.”
Few hosts could claim evenings as fine as those held at the Collchesters’ mansion in Bryanston Square. Theton’s most glittering personages filled the ballroom, exchanging pleasantries and brokering political alliances. The best musicians played as people moved across the dance floor in country dances and the newer waltz. French chefs toiled in the kitchen, preparing the finest dishes for guests to consume, and the wine was also undoubtedly French. Nothing was wanting. Everything was perfect.
Perfect.The word haunted Alex as he spun on the dance floor with Lady Mary Hudson. The young brunette was vivacious, pretty, and from a good family. She had all the hallmarks of an excellent prospective bride.
She wasn’t Cassandra. For that, he could only muster courteousness as he turned Lady Mary in time with the music.
Not that long ago, he’d waltzed with Cassandra. It had been a dance of explicit desire, timeless in its intent, seductive in its power. The location couldn’t have been more dissimilar. At the Collchesters’, the dance was entirely different. It was a mating ritual, to be sure, but so bloodless and calculating. Ennui was a thief, stealing away any interest or enjoyment he might have felt.
They had been dancing together in silence for several minutes. Alex ought to make polite conversation, but asking Lady Mary to dance had exhausted his reserve of words.
This was his world. Where he belonged. With men and women of his station, his rank, his breeding. Not in union halls for swindlers. Not prowling the streets of Whitechapel.
Yet everything here was false and hollow. An illusion where the rest of the city was the reality. He was energized when breathing in the smoke-choked atmosphere of East London, facing off against hired muscle. He was fully in command of himself when people didn’t defer to his title, but cared only about what he could do in that instant.
He was alive when he was with Cassandra.
“The music is very fine, is it not?” Lady Mary offered.
“Yes, fine,” he answered mechanically.
“And the room is commodious without being overlarge,” she went on. “I do hate it when there’s a crush and you cannot take a lungful of air.”
“True,” he murmured without thinking.
She looked discouraged by his rote responses, but he couldn’t bestir himself to alter his behavior.
Finally, she said, “There’s a cut over your left eye.”
His hand began to rise to touch the souvenir from his scuffle with Hughes. He stopped himself in midgesture. “Riding accident.”
“Does it hurt?”
The question reverberated through his mind, his body. Did it hurt? A life without Cassandra felt like an eternity, absent of all pleasure and feeling, scoured clean of happiness, an ache that would never go away—no matter what Ellingsworth said. Her absence was a wound that would never heal. Alex hated the thought of being with any woman other than her. His duty to his title felt like a yoke, tying him to a destiny he didn’t want. What did any of it signify? Life was brief. The mystery of love came to only a few lucky ones.
“I love you, Your Grace.”
He’d grasped love, but had let it slip through his fingers. Like a fool, he’d turned away from it, because he’d believed in rules that didn’t matter, not where the heart was concerned.
Being without Cassandra was an unspeakable agony.
And if he didn’t move quickly, he’d lose his last chance at happiness.
“Forgive me, Lady Mary,” he said, releasing his dancing partner. He bowed. “There is an emergency I must attend to.”
He barely heard her response as he walked quickly away. He hurried out of the ballroom, down the stairs, and out the front door. Ignoring Ellingsworth, who called to him, he hastened to his carriage. But he didn’t get into the vehicle. Instead, he stood at the foot of the waiting driver.
“Where did you take her?” he demanded.
