Page 46 of The Ruin of a Rake
But the butler showed him into the drawing room, where he found Lady Montbray sitting among the remnants of tea with her brother. When the butler opened the door, both Lady Montbray and Rivington sat up a bit straighter, an irritating reminder that they were at their ease around one another and he was an utter outsider.
That’s what he always had been, always would be. It didn’t matter that his desk was covered in invitations. It didn’t matter that the finest gentry in the land treated him as an equal. He had arrived where he was by making a study of how people responded to everything he did, by calibrating his every decision—from the cut of his coat to the company he kept—to achieve a favorable reaction from society. And it had worked.
But there was a difference between acceptance and friendship, and Julian had never felt that gap as acutely as he did now. He tried not to think about the fact that Courtenay had been glad to see him. The last few times they had seen one another, Julian had seen Courtenay’s face light with a lazy smile at the sight of him. It had been a mistake, Julian now realized, to let things get to that point. It had been safer to keep everyone at a comfortable distance. He hadn’t let himself want real friendship until he had a taste of it with Courtenay. Now that it was gone, he didn’t know how he would settle for less. His polished façade now seemed more an obstacle than a protection.
“Good heavens,” Lady Montbray said, rising to her feet and ushering him toward a chair. “Were you accosted? Is Lady Standish well?”
Oh, damn. He must have distress writ across his face. He made an effort to compose himself, but judging by Lady Montbray and Rivington’s increased expressions of concern, he didn’t quite manage it. He touched his immaculate lapels, as if confirming that they were still there, his only armor.
“No, I just...” He nearly made up a story about an accident, some way to preserve the illusion of anodyne Mr. Medlock. But suddenly he wanted to shatter that illusion. It hadn’t done him any good and now he didn’t know why he had bothered in the first place. It had started as a sort of gift for Eleanor, but it had never meant anything to her and now he realized it had come at a cost to himself.
As things stood, he feared nobody cared much for him except as a bachelor to even out the numbers at a dinner table, a gentleman whose presence was guaranteed not to offend. He might as well toss that away too. He would tell them something true, something ugly about himself, and see what happened.
“I wroteThe Brigand Prince,” he blurted out. He was tearing up his reputation and scattering it in the breeze. What did any of it matter, anyway?
Rivington and Lady Montbray stared at him, then flicked a glance at one another, the sort of telling glance that he used to share with Eleanor before he ruined everything.
Inferring that he would no longer be wanted after divulging that information, Julian rose to his feet and prepared to leave. But before he could get out the necessary words, Lady Montbray put a hand on his arm.
“Wait. You wrote that? Anne and I spent a week reading it aloud to one another and trying to sneak the book away when the other wasn’t looking. We adored it.”
“So did I,” Rivington chimed in.
“So did everyone. But—” Lady Montbray paused, and looked as if she were doing a sum in her head “—you must have written that book before meeting Courtenay, so it can’t truly be about him. How disappointing.”
“It is not about Courtenay,” Julian said firmly. “I was idle last autumn and you know what they say about idle hands. I did add details about Courtenay later on and I regret it. Eleanor is most displeased with me.”
“Oh, that is bad, then. Does Courtenay know?”
Julian hesitated. “Now he does.”
“Will he spread it about?”
“I don’t much care.” And that was the truth. If he were known as the author of a book in questionable taste, the betrayer of a friend, that was the least of his problems. “It’s his tale to tell, if that’s what he wants.”
Before he knew what had happened, he had been drawn into conversation about nothing in particular—the virtues of private tutors as opposed to public schools for educating Lady Montbray’s young son, the talents of Rivington’s new cook, the fact that Lady Montbray was nearly finished with her mourning.
It wasn’t until Julian was half asleep, alone in his bed in his impeccable lodgings, that he realized what had been different about this afternoon at Lady Montbray’s house. It was the closest thing to friendship he had experienced in the years since coming to England. And it had happened after he had deliberately aired some of his dirtiest laundry in front of the son and daughter of an earl, the very sort of people he had always sought to impress.
He felt slightly less alone, slightly less miserable, but his bed was still empty and his future as bleak as it had ever been. But perhaps he wouldn’t be going into that future entirely alone.
Courtenay went to a brothel. It was a time-honored tradition, this ceremonial visiting of a whorehouse on the occasion of a broken heart. He had left the stables, gone directly to Norton’s lodgings and roused him, and embarked on a round of drunken carousing.
Except for how he was neither drunk nor engaged in much carousing. This was the soberest he ever had been in a whorehouse, to say nothing of how his breeches were resolutely fastened and his prick bored. Instead, he was leaning against the wall of Madame Louise’s parlor, watching Norton entertain a damsel who had artfully disposed herself on his lap. She was whispering in Norton’s ear, no doubt telling him exactly what she intended to do with him upstairs. One of Norton’s hands was on her ample hip, the other trailing across the bodice of her satin gown. Another place, another time, he might have followed them up and either watched or joined in—he knew from a holiday in Venice that Norton was game for that sort of thing.
Now he had no appetite for anyone but Medlock. It wasn’t possible to go from his bed to paid company, no matter how compelling and beguiling. The pleasures of Madame Louise’s establishment were as ashes in his mouth.
Courtenay idly felt for the piece of card stock he had in his coat pocket. The invitation had come in this morning’s post and he had been eager to show it to Julian, proof of their joined success embodied in a piece of expensive stationery requesting the pleasure of his company at the Preston ball. But to hell with that now—to hell with parties and society and most definitely to hell with Medlock. He would have ripped it up, but for how stupidly solid it felt in his pocket. It was just the right shade of ivory, with just the right linenlike texture and the perfect slanting script to remind him of everything he would never have, to remind him of the world that had cast him out. To remind him of Medlock.
It wasn’t an Eden, this polite society symbolized by inconspicuous yet costly ivory card stock; more like an inner circle of Dante’s hell. But it had cast him out all the same, all those years ago, and as such it was more important to him than perhaps it ought to have been. Or perhaps it was the fact that the only three people he cared about in England—Eleanor, Simon, and Julian Medlock—swam in this very sea that he was barred from.
He’d leave as soon as possible, even if it meant borrowing the money from Eleanor for a packet to Calais. No, not Calais. He’d let his exile take him farther than had been possible the last time, when he’d had a woman and a small child to consider. He’d go to the Argentine or to Siam. Far enough that nobody would have heard of him and he could fill his eyes and ears with new sights and sounds to replace the memories he didn’t want. His mistake—well, one mistake on a list as long as his arm—had been coming back here in the first place. London—hell, all of England, as far as he knew—was filled with regret and disappointment. He was made for warmer weather anyway.
“Lord Courtenay?”
Courtenay looked in the direction of the voice to see a slim man with dark hair looking up at him. He looked dimly familiar. “At your service,” he said.
“I’m George Turner, Radnor’s secretary. We met only briefly.”
