Page 10 of The Ruin of a Rake
“I could say the same to you,” she said.
His departure from Lady Montbray was more formal, thank heavens. Julian took hold of Courtenay’s sleeve and all but dragged him away.
“What were you doing with Miss Sutherland?” Medlock said once they had gotten back to their box. “You can’t possibly have hoped to get under her skirts.”
Courtenay regarded him in bewilderment. “Do you think that’s the only interest I have in people? You talk to women and as far as I’ve observed, you haven’t any interest in getting under their skirts.”
They were now seated in the respectable center of the box, amply lit, so Courtenay could see the blush that rose to Medlock’s cheeks. Pretty, a part of him thought. The part in his breeches, naturally.
“I like brilliance,” Courtenay explained. “I can’t resist it. I like clever people.”
“You must have run in devilish clever company, Courtenay,” Medlock quipped. “Must have run into geniuses everywhere you went.”
“I don’t just mean fucking them, Medlock.” He watched the blush rise in Medlock’s cheeks again. “How old are you?”
“Four and twenty.”
He acted much older, and it was strange to realize that he was scarcely older than Norton’s opera girl. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?” He sounded affronted.
“I forget what it’s like to be young enough to think you have answers.”
“It’s not about thinking I have the answers. My desires are well regulated. I have self-control.” And yet, the blush had returned to his cheeks and he shifted in his seat in a way that made Courtenay wonder if his prick knew about this program of well-regulated desires.
“You need a good hard rogering.”
Medlock looked like he was trying to purse his lips but couldn’t quite manage it. Oh, he was trying his damnedest to hate this conversation, but he couldn’t help himself. “And I suppose you’re volunteering?”
Well,of course, he was volunteering. But it wouldn’t do to say so. Medlock had rebuffed his advances earlier, and Courtenay wasn’t in the habit of trying to argue his way into other people’s beds. “I do apologize for that earlier assault on your person, Medlock,” he said with exaggerated politeness. “I ought to know better than to inconvenience Eleanor by debauching her brother.”
He heard Medlock suck in a breath. He was irritated. Good.
Courtenay decided to take pity on the fellow. “Look, you don’t need to do this,” he said. “We’ll tell Eleanor you tried your best to make me respectable but it didn’t take.”
Medlock made a noise that might have been a snort in a less correct gentleman. “If you think it’s that simple, you don’t know my sister.”
“She’s... tenacious.”
“Tenacious doesn’t cover it. And she’s...” a whisper of pain flickered across his face “...not herself lately.”
It went unsaid that Eleanor’s association with Courtenay constituted this great departure from her usual behavior. Courtenay might have been hurt if he hadn’t already developed a convenient callous over that part of his heart.
But Courtenay wouldn’t let that casual aspersion on Eleanor’s character go unanswered. “A lucky few people have desires that map onto what the world expects of them.” He spoke slowly, giving Medlock time to reflect on how little he belonged in that group. “For the rest of us, it’s like holding down a balloon.”
“A balloon?” There was a hefty dose of scorn in Medlock’s voice, but Courtenay had plenty of practice ignoring worse.
“Before they launch a hot-air balloon,” he said, all patience, “it’s tethered to the earth with the thickest ropes you’ve ever seen.” Eleanor had taken him to a see a balloon launch the previous month. He had at first thought it simply an expensive form of suicide, but then watching the colorful orb coast into the sky, he thought he understood. “The thing is made of nothing but wicker and silk and air, but it’s straining these ropes to the breaking point trying to float away.” And then once it was released from its tethers, the balloon went anywhere it damned well pleased until it fell out of the sky, more or less. He felt that his metaphor stood.
“And you’re telling me that Eleanor’sdesires”—he said the word with an audible cringe, like one might saysewageorlice—“are similarly strained.”
“We aren’t lovers and we never have been.” Was it his imagination or did Medlock look relieved in a way that had nothing to do with his sister’s virtue? “But desire isn’t always about fucking.” He enjoyed the shiver of distaste, or whatever it was, that went through Medlock’s lean frame at the sound of that word. “Has it occurred to you that your sister’s intellectual pursuits depend on her husband’s absence? All those natural philosophers she corresponds with assume she’s managing her husband’s business interests while he’s away. If they are ever reunited, that would all be over for her.” He paused, not sure whether to go on. “However, she may have other wants that require a husband’s more immediate presence.”
“I see.” Medlock’s mouth was a tight line. “And she has confided these secret desires”—another moue of distaste—“to you.”
“No, Medlock, she has not. But I can read between the lines.” It was a wonder that Medlock hadn’t. “I had a sister of my own, you know.”
“From what I understand, your sister had little in common with mine.”
