Page 23 of The Ruin of a Rake
She made a noise of frustration. “I don’t know what to do with Radnor. I’ve made your case—Simon’s case—but he isn’t moved.”
“I’m going to need to let it go. Radnor’s very fond of Simon and they don’t need me.”
She pulled back long enough to look at his face. “Oh, Courtenay. Poor dear. You’re another one with a couple of decades to fill and no idea how to do it.”
Wrong. He knew what to do. He’d go back to Italy. No, Greece, because it was further. He’d fuck his way straight across the Continent, as Medlock had so charmingly put it, and then he’d keep going. That would keep him comfortably distracted until he died of the pox or succumbed to a fever.
When he heard the click of the door opening, he stepped away from Eleanor and dropped his hands to his sides. Looking over Eleanor’s shoulder, he saw a man who was strangely familiar, but he couldn’t place him. “Eleanor,” he said quietly. “You have a visitor.”
Eleanor turned and went so pale Courtenay thought she might faint. “Ned,” she whispered. But then she tilted her chin up in her most regal manner and said, “Sir Edward, what a lovely surprise.”
Courtenay’s first thought was that he hadn’t known that Eleanor’s husband was Indian. Or, rather, by the looks of him, he had at least one Indian grandparent. He was dark, quite handsome, and only a few years older than Eleanor. Courtenay had always imagined an aged, bookish Englishman of the type who went off to travel the world and then simply never came back.
With a start, he realized how he knew Sir Edward Standish. Their paths had crossed more than once—several years ago in Constantinople, and later in Cairo when Isabella had taken a fancy to showing Simon the pyramids. Standish had been working as a translator and hadn’t been using his title. He had never made the connection to Eleanor until now.
Courtenay saw the answering gleam of recognition on Standish’s face, and also remembered that Courtenay had been carrying on an indiscreet affair with a married woman during that time in Constantinople. Standish was clearly not best pleased to find his wife in the arms of a man such as Courtenay. Really, if he cared so much about who she kept company with, he shouldn’t have abandoned her in the first place. Yet, his jaw was clenched, his hands balled in fists at his sides.
“My lady,” Standish ground out. “Do me the favor of an introduction, if you please.” Courtenay wanted to clock him on the head if that was how he greeted his wife after six years’ absence.
“Lord Courtenay, this is my husband, Sir Edward Standish.”
“That’s what I thought,” Standish said, eying him up and down.
“A pleasure,” Courtenay drawled. If he was going to be cast in the role of wife-stealing rake, he’d play it.
Standish folded his arms across his chest and stood silently. Plainly he wanted Courtenay to leave, but there wasn’t a chance Courtenay was leaving Eleanor alone with a man who had a look of such fury on his face, not unless Eleanor explicitly told him to.
He sat on the sofa—right in the middle, so one of the Standishes would have to sit beside him if they sat at all—and smiled broadly. “I hope you had a pleasant journey,” he said. “A couple years long, was it?”
There were advantages to being considered beneath reproach: if everybody already thought one rude and scandalous, it was almost satisfying to live up to their expectations. And Standish deserved a lot worse than a bit of drawing-room rudeness.
Eleanor rang the bell to summon a servant, then hesitated between sitting at her desk chair or sitting on the sofa beside Courtenay. She ended by pulling out the desk chair and pushing it to Standish, then perching on the edge of the desk. That at first seemed like a diplomatic solution, but when the tea arrived, she couldn’t very well stay there, so she had to sit beside Courtenay.
“How long are you in London, Sir Edward?” she asked as she poured tea.
“That depends,” he said curtly and without elaboration.
Courtenay supposed he needed money and had come to get some from his wife. He liked the fellow less by the minute. Or perhaps he came to demand an heir. Even worse.
“You’ll find London much changed,” Courtenay ventured, because it was the pleasantry he had heard the most since his return to England. It never failed to annoy him, and he was glad to pass the bad feelings on to Standish.
“I haven’t set foot in England since I was a child,” he said, looking at Eleanor. “I never planned to return.” He stared at his tea, as if his cup contained something unfathomably wrong, like paraffin or hair tonic instead of perfectly normal tea. “We were married in India,” he added abstractedly. His gaze seemed to fix on Eleanor’s paperweight.
“You can leave, Courtenay,” Eleanor murmured. “It’s all right.”
“Are you certain?” he whispered, aware that Standish had turned to watch them with a hawk’s piercing gaze.
“He won’t hurt me, if that’s what you’re asking. As for everything else, it could hardly get worse.”
He kissed her hand and took his leave, sparing Standish only the most insouciant of bows on his way out the door.
As soon as he got to the street his smile dropped. Medlock needed to be informed right away of his brother-in-law’s return, so he could be present to help his sister should the need arise.
After they had parted on such awkward terms, he had rather hoped to avoid Medlock, but now he had no choice.
“It doesn’t make any sense.” Julian collapsed, peeved and out of breath, onto a bench at the fencing studio. “You have one good leg. I ought to have beaten you handily.”
Rivington—Lady Montbray’s brother—sank onto the bench beside him. “I have a longer reach and better training,” he said simply.
