Page 20 of The Courtship Dance

All he wanted, he thought, was to settle down with a bottle of port and drink himself into oblivion. With that purpose in mind, he gestured toward Timmons, the maitre d’, and flung himself down in a chair across the room, in an area unoccupied by anyone else.

He leaned his head back, closing his eyes as he struggled to restore himself to some semblance of calm. How the devil did she manage to get him twisted around like this, after all these years? He knew that he was generally regarded as an even-tempered sort—calm in a crisis and slow to anger. It was only with Francesca that he found himself on the edge of exploding.

Footsteps stopped beside his chair. Rochford kept his eyes closed in the hopes that the person would decide to pass him by. But there was no sound of anyone moving on, and after a moment he let out a little sigh and opened his eyes.

“Gideon!” He didn’t know who he had expected his visitor to be—perhaps one of the chaps who were always determined to speak to a duke, seemingly impervious to set-downs or hints—but he certainly had not thought he would see the man who was now standing beside his chair. “What are you doing here?”

“I belong to this club,” the other man answered, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Perhaps you remember—you put me forth for membership.”

Rochford grimaced. “I am quite aware of that. It is just that you are so rarely here—particularly not at this time of the evening.” He gestured vaguely toward the chair sitting at a right angle to him. “Sit. Please.”

“One might say the same about you.” Gideon, Lord Radbourne, sat down in the chair Rochford indicated.

Gideon was a cousin of sorts to the duke, another grandnephew of the much-feared Lady Odelia Pencully, and there was a faint hint of family resemblance between them. Both were tall, with thick, dark hair, but Gideon was somewhat shorter, broader of chest and shoulders, and his hair was a shade lighter. It was not that which set him apart, though, so much as the way he carried himself and the harder, warier set to his face. Though an earl, Lord Radbourne had grown up on the hard streets of the East End of London, unaware that he was actually the son of the Earl of Radbourne. It had been only a year or so ago that the truth of his existence had been made known, but in that time he and Rochford had grown into a kind of friendship that had less to do with blood than with their essential natures.

The duke shrugged now, saying, “I admit I am not much one for clubs. I fear I am a boring sort. However, I do drop by now and then for a tipple before bed. But I do not have a beautiful wife waiting for me at home.” He looked significantly at the other man.

“Neither do I,” Gideon returned. “Irene has gone, along with her mother, to visit Lady Wyngate, her brother’s wife. ’Tis almost time for Lady Wyngate’s lying-in, you see.”

“Ah.” Rochford nodded sagely. “And she wants Irene there for the event.”

Gideon’s normally saturnine face lightened with a grin. “I sincerely doubt it. Maura and Irene get along like oil and water—and that is when they are feeling pleasant. No, ’tis Irene’s mother whose presence is requested. Irene is merely traveling with her. Her mother will doubtless be there several weeks, but Irene, I am sure, will be back within a sennight, if she can bear it that long. But for the moment, I am at loose ends.”

“And not enjoying it, I’ll warrant,” Rochford replied. His cousin’s deep attachment to his new bride was well known throughout the ton. There were even those who called him henpecked—though none dared do so to his face, of course.

“No.” Gideon frowned. “I don’t understand it. I was well content by myself before I met Irene. ’Tis strange how empty my house seems without her now.”

Rochford shrugged. “I fear that is a subject beyond this bachelor’s understanding.”

Timmons arrived with the bottle of port and, observant man that he was, two glasses. They spent a few minutes pouring and sipping in companionable silence.

Then Radbourne, with a glance at his companion, began, “I wasn’t certain whether you were desirous of company. You looked as though…I’m not sure…perhaps as though you might be in need of a second.”

The duke let out a short laugh. “No. Nothing so dire as a duel. Only…Lady Haughston.” He finished his drink and poured another.

Gideon did not appear to be particularly enlightened by this explanation. “You are…at odds with the lady?”

“She is the most infuriating, most difficult, most…impossible woman I have ever known!” Rochford burst out.

Gideon blinked. “I—I see.”

“No, I am sure that you do not,” the duke retorted. “You have not spent the last fifteen years trying to deal with the woman.”

Gideon made a noncommital murmur.

“Tonight is just the latest of her many—do you know what she is doing?” The duke fixed him with a black stare. “Do you know what latest idiocy she is trying to foist on me?”

“Indeed not.”

“She wants to find me a wife.” Rochford’s mouth twisted on the word, as if it tasted too bitter to bear. “She has set out to choose the woman she thinks will make the best Duchess of Rochford.”

“I presume that you did not ask her to,” Gideon ventured.

“Indeed not. She thinks that if she finds me a wife, it will somehow make up for—for something that happened long ago.” He paused and glanced at Gideon. “Oh, devil take it! The truth is, she broke off our engagement.”

Gideon gaped at him. “Engagement? You and Lady Haughston are engaged?”

The duke sighed. “We were, long ago. She was not Lady Haughston then. It was fifteen years past, and she was only Lady Francesca, the daughter of the Earl of Selbrooke.”