Page 68 of Sir Durham’s Disarming Asset

She cleared her throat. “He is dashing.”

“Word is he plans to ask you to marry him.”

She blew out a breath. Now she was angry. Why could he not come to the point they needed to discuss? “Where do you get your information? I need to subscribe.”

“Zeph?”

“Yes?”

“We can be friends.”

“We are, have been, will remain so.”

He came around once more in a formation that had him putting one hand to her waist, his other to her other hand. “You cannot lock me out.”

At last, he speaks of the future. She met his gaze with her own stern one. “You are not letting me in.”

“I am—”

She groaned—and pattered away.

He followed her to her chair. “Every woman with half her senses will now be dancing barefoot.”

She grinned like a child getting her way. “It’s about time they discarded all restrictions.”

And at Rafe’s side, the viscount whom gossips said would propose to her appeared. “Miss Butler?” He eyed Rafe casually. “May I ask you to talk with me?”

Talking was certainly different from dancing. What did Islington intend? She’d take it!

She stood, smiled at Rafe, and said, “Pardon me, sir. Lord Islington? Let us walk around the room.”

*

Rafe watched Zeph walk away with Islington until they disappeared into the crowd. Blind with the loss of her, he made his excuses to Amber and Ramsey.

Then he fled the house like a thief in the night.

His coach and his grooms remained at Brook Street. They were safe, most likely enjoying themselves in the kitchens of Ramsey House. He did not care to disturb them. He walked and walked until he saw that he was the only man on the streets. The moonlight was bright. His heart dark.

And inside him, the memory of saving his sister from herself reappeared like a play before him. He found a bench along the Thames and sat watching the shallow waves of the river sway and swish in refracted light. He saw Lianne as she was when she was sixteen, young and carefree, lovely in her youth and naïveté. He recalled her as she was when, one year later, she met a man who wanted her for her money and not her heart. Rafe and his father had tried to reveal to her the man’s intentions, but words could never dampen the sweet desires of the fantasy of romance and the promise of true love.

Lianne was sheltered enough to want both, unsophisticated about how her dreams could die at the whims of a ruthless man. The rogue had persuaded her to run away with him, elope to the north. But he had had her somewhere along the Great North Road. Used her often, beat her afterward, stole her pin money. Rafe and his father had tracked them to a small inn near Bradford, where they found only Lianne.

Despondent and bruised in body and soul, Lianne went with them south to London and their care. She refused to allow anyone near her, only her father and Rafe. Once a lively, pretty girl with soft ink-black hair and the bluest of eyes, she would not eat, could not sleep, did not talk.

Rafe and his father took turns feeding her, dressing her. Weeks went on and she did not recuperate. They learned soon she was pregnant. But she miscarried. That only served to make her more inconsolable.

One morning, when Rafe went with her breakfast to her room, she was gone.

Without any idea where she would go, Rafe and their father scoured London.

’Twas a man from the Thames River Police who knocked on their door late that night. Her body had been discovered along the river near the East India Docks. How or why she went there was a mystery. But how she had died was not.

She had walked down the steps of a quay and jumped into the water. She could swim, but chose not to.

Their father withered after that. Giving authority to Rafe to run their shipping company, the man who had taught Rafe how to administer, how to give, how to love unconditionally, remained at home day in and out. Two years later, he was gone.

And Rafe was left with the sorrow of both losses.