Page 33 of The Ruin of a Rake
“What happens if the other man decides not to pretend?”
Courtenay shrugged. “It happens.”
“Wouldn’t it be a better idea not to take other men’s wives to bed in the first place? Avoid the necessity of a duel entirely?”
Oh, poor Medlock. Sometimes Courtenay had no idea whether they even inhabited the same world. “Let’s say a lady has a husband who is cruel or absent, or perhaps who doesn’t care for female company. Should she resign herself to a life of celibacy?”
“And those are the women you’ve been with? You confined yourself to unhappily married ladies?”
“No,” he said simply. “But I ought to have.” Another thing to feel guilty about. As he looked out across the lawn at the brightly dressed guests milling about, he was conscious of Medlock scrutinizing him.
“Ever given any thought to getting married yourself, Courtenay?”
He kept looking over the lawn. “Not the marrying sort, Medlock.”
“But you do like, ah...”
Courtenay didn’t have to look to know Medlock was blushing. “Yes, I do. But I’d be a terrible husband. Any woman I liked enough to spend the rest of my life with, I’d be too fond of to punish with my presence.” He had made the same general comment dozens of times over the years, and he had always more or less believed it. But this time when he said the rote words they didn’t ring true.
Medlock, however, didn’t argue that a life with Courtenay would constitute a punishment. “You have a title and some land, badly managed though it is. You probably ought to have an heir. We could find a woman with her own money—”
“Stop,” Courtenay ground out. “I don’t want the sort of marriage your sister has. Christ, look at them. I don’t want to be purchased for my goddamn title. You think that’s never occurred to me as a way out of my troubles?”
“That’s a mercenary way of—”
“Stop,” Courtenay repeated. He felt tears pricking his eyes, whether from anger or sorrow he couldn’t tell. “Sometimes I don’t understand what the hell is wrong with your brain. It’s a fucking mess in there, isn’t it? It’s all columns of numbers marching in a row. I can’t... I’m not like that, Medlock. That’s not what I want.”
“Then what do you want?” Medlock asked, exasperation in his voice.
Courtenay didn’t know what he wanted. But he knew it wasn’t a wife who looked down on him, nor was it the prospect of building a life and a family when he had robbed his sister of that chance.
Stupidly, he had the fleeting thought that what he truly wanted had something to do with deft hands on his cravat, a soft frowning mouth, and quicksilver eyes.
Julian cornered Eleanor in an alcove near the lady’s cloakroom. It was not a dignified way to accost his sister, but at least this way they were alone.
“Courtenay told me you and Ned are having some kind of misunderstanding,” he said, pitching his voice low, “and that you probably want to make things work between you. So you ought to get over whatever’s bothering you and hash it out.”
Eleanor’s mouth went tight, her eyes blank. “I somehow doubt Courtenay said precisely that.”
He had meant his remark to be light and helpful, a way of addressing the chasm that was growing between them, but now he felt defensive. “Those might not have been his exact words.”
“You think it’s so simple, that people’s feelings can be arranged as easily as a column of sums.”
“What the devil does everyone have against sums today?”
“But it isn’t simple, Julian. You can’t make yourself fall in love, let alone make somebody else. You can’t even prevent it from happening.”
Julian was getting peeved. “But—”
And then Eleanor slapped him. Hard, and right in the face. She had never laid a hand on him, not even when he had been a bratty child.
“What the—”
She was already gone, turning back toward the party.
This was the devil of a garden party. First Courtenay was in a state, now Eleanor. He didn’t think he could stand another moment of it, at least not with any semblance of equanimity. He stepped out of the alcove with the intention of finding the hostess and taking his immediate leave. Instead he nearly ran into Courtenay.
“Good lord, Courtenay, why are you by the ladies’ cloakroom? Do you follow my sister about like a spaniel?”
