The comment gave him pause. “Only two years?” He slid out of the box and offered his arm in the hope the action seemed less like a command.
The lady exited the supper box and gripped his arm. “Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, it takes time for something new to emerge from something so cruelly destroyed.”
The last word sent his heart sinking to his stomach.
“You contradict your earlier statement.” Despite his previous misgivings, he lived in the hope that his sweet Scarlett had escaped the bonfire. “You said the woman you once were still lives beneath the hard shell.”
“I did say that, though I am surprised you remember.”
He forgot nothing when it came to the angel who had saved him. “Perhaps where you’re concerned, I am keen to learn the truth.”
She was about to reply when Lady Rathbone and her grandson came upon them.
“Lady Steele,” the matron said with exalted enthusiasm while the lord drank in the sight of the widow’s ebony locks fashioned in an elegant coiffure. “As you’re sitting in our booth, am I to hope you’re joining us for supper?”
The matron offered Damian a strained smile, for few ladies of breeding curtsied to the bastard son even if his father was a marquis.
“Forgive the intrusion,” the widow said, all charm and light. “But we’ve decided to take a stroll before supper.”
The matron patted the widow’s arm. “Then we will wait for you, my dear.”
Lord Rathbone said nothing, though his gaze lingered on the widow’s lips. Damian considered stamping on the fool’s toe and delivering a sharp uppercut to the chin.
“Please, do not delay your meal on my account. Mr Wycliff kindly agreed to escort me the full length of the Walk.”
The matron glanced at Mrs Crandell, who had changed direction and sauntered to a box at the end of the arcade. “Mr Wycliff has friends here,” the lady said, sneering down her nose as she undoubtedly did when navigating street urchins littering the road. “I am sure he can amuse himself while you dine with us.”
Clearly the invitation to sup extended only to Lady Steele and not the rogue out to ravish her in the gardens.
“Thank you for your kind offer.” The widow inclined her head graciously. “But I am here at Mr Wycliff’s invitation and have promised him my full attention for the entire evening.”
Damian offered the Rathbones a smug grin. “Can I help it if the lady finds me irresistible?”
“Then you must dine with us tomorrow,” the matron said, ignoring Damian’s comment. She seemed most keen to have the widow’s company. Perhaps she did want her grandson to marry a woman of notoriety. A woman more courageous than any who graced the ballrooms of the ton.
“I shall check my appointment diary and send word in the morning.” Without further ado, the widow took hold of Damian’s arm, his cue to lead her away.
“I believe Lady Rathbone has designs on having you as a granddaughter,” Damian said as he escorted her towards the Triumphal Arches. “Had she Medusa’s power, I would be just another stone statue decorating the arcade.”
Sensing the matron’s burning gaze boring into his back, he glanced over his shoulder. And yet Lady Rathbone was not the only person whose piercing stare followed them. The marquis seemed just as displeased, while Lord Rathbone looked pained if not distraught.
“Trust me. If Lady Rathbone wanted me to marry her grandson, she would not be so subtle. If anything, I am inclined to believe that she is short of friends and enjoys the attention that comes with playing companion to the Scarlet Widow.”
After a brief pause, he said, “Will you dine with them tomorrow?” The thought of her spending time in Lord Rathbone’s company roused the devil in him.
“Perhaps,” she said pensively as they passed through the arch.
They turned right, heading for Lovers Walk.
“You do not sound eager for their company.”
Silence ensued as they strolled the narrow avenue between the bank of trees and the topiary hedge. Away from the orchestra, he could hear the heaviness of her breathing, hear the numerous sighs that told him her mind was troubled.
“Are you not tired of this life?” she suddenly said. “Are you not tired of the games, the lies, the falsehoods?”
No one had ever asked him the question. While his head said no—he lived to bring the marquis misery—he had never considered the other half of himself.
“I take satisfaction knowing my father’s life is as vacuous as my own.”