Page 37 of The Duke and His Jilted Bride

But Evander didn’t contribute. Aurelia did not look at him. She moved into a second song without being asked, and the singing resumed. Even Patrick joined in. Evander stood by the window with his drink and watched her hands on the keys. He considered the way her body moved, and he remembered that same body cradled in his arms just that morning with a pang of regret and shame.

He realised how much he missed it. How cruel it was that the body was there now at the piano and not leaning against him listening to someone else play. He told himself to stop these delusions.

The evening ended eventually, even if the rain didn’t. Violet retired first, then Miss Penrose followed. The friend kissed Aurelia's cheek and said something in her ear that made Aurelia grin. Patrick announced he was going to find the library before going to bed, and he made it sound like a threat – or an invitation.

If it was intended for Evander, he didn’t follow. Instead, he and Aurelia remained in the music room mostly by accident. She was collecting the music sheets from the piano stand one at a time. He was standing by the fire, devising a reason to excuse himself first.

The thought of sleep summoned another question to his mind. And it slipped from him before he could check himself. “Where are you sleeping tonight?” he asked – and immediately regretted it.

Aurelia straightened the sheets, but her fingers faltered a moment. Her jaw ticked.

“In my rooms,” she replied. The statement sounded more like a question.

“Yes.” He nodded, which he supposed was the correct response despite the tight knot in his gut. “Where you should be,” he agreed woefully.

She darted past him on her way to the door, coming close enough that he could feel the warmth from her body, and then she was gone. The room was empty, and the fire crackled. His chest felt suddenly too small for his heart and lungs, and he rested a hand on the mantle.

He was still standing there when Patrick reappeared a few minutes later, muttering under his breath about the layout of the house.

“The library was locked. Although for all I know I was trying to access a larder,” Patrick said. “Where is your wife?”

“She has gone to her rooms.”

For a moment Patrick said nothing. He came and stood beside him, the fire casting moving shadows on them.

“Will you tell me now what you intended to tell me before, at dinner?”

“That depends largely on how likely it is you will strike me.”

“I haven’t the energy for that tonight.”

“Good. Your right hook is vicious, and I indulged too much this evening to adequately defend myself.” Patrick angled his shoulders toward him. “I heard from John French before I left. Well, not from him. It was the acquaintance-of-a-friend type of hearing. He had it from someone in Edinburgh.”

There was an unnecessary pause. The question about Frederick had had time to settle over the course of the evening. Evander knew what was coming.

“Frederick and Lady Seraphina... The marriage went through two weeks ago, apparently. Though who can be sure about the dates from the backwaters of Scotland?”

Evander nodded, but he was miles away. He reminisced about Frederick at nine years old being taken fishing all summer and the way his hair had turned blonde in the summer sun. He thought about Lady Seraphina, who he had been arranged to marry forever but had never managed to fall in love with – and who had apparently felt the same. He found with some surprise that the news landed without the sting a man in his position should probably have felt.

“That is the best outcome for them. Better that, than…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it, to imagine them attacked on the road or gone for ever. “It’s a fine turn of events on the whole.”

Patrick looked at him. “That's all you have to say?”

“What else would you like to hear?”

“A reaction beyond indifference doesn’t seem too much to ask.” Patrick placed a hand on his shoulder and forced him to look at him. “Would you behave this way if it had been me running off to marry your intended? You would have struck me dead with that right hook. It must make you feel some sort of way that it was your own flesh and blood. There are no prizes to be won for the man who says least what he feels. We’ve seen men shed tears in Parliament.”

Evander looked at the fire, laughing miserably. He could barely think about flesh or blood. Especially because any mention of Frederick led to thoughts about Aurelia, and that was somehow more difficult to deconstruct and vocalise.

“I don't know yet. But isn’t that what sleep is for? So a man can make up his mind in peace and quiet?” he asked, putting his glass down definitively and stepping back from the flames.

“Now you’re a philosopher. I gather there are prizes for that,” Patrick said, picking up someone's abandoned glass and examining it. “I will say this before you exit. Your brother is married and presumably somewhere in Scotland, happy about it.” He set the glass back down. “Meantime you are standing here with too-hot knees looking like a man whose wife just told him she is sleeping in her own rooms as though that’s a problem.” He glanced across at him. “You tell me which one seems like the more pressing concern for a man of your station.”

Evander moved toward the doors, not wanting to speak any more that night.

“Goodnight, my friend,” Patrick called. “Rest well and long to make up that troubled mind of yours.”

Next day, he was at the window with his coffee when he saw them. Aurelia and Miss Penrose were walking down the south lawn. The young lady was talking with her hands, and Aurelia listened with her head tilted, the brown hair at the nape of her neck catching the sun beneath her bonnet. Nike had attached herself to Aurelia's left side. Titan was attempting to arrest the stick from Miss Penrose’s hand. And for her part Miss Penrose didn’t even seem to notice she had left the poor beast waiting for it to be thrown.