Cam’s laugh was as sour as Simon’s smile. He rose to refill their glasses. “Don’t be absurd. Of course she hasn’t told me. In the Rothermere family, we don’t discuss our emotions. We’re too busy behaving with perfect correctness.”
Simon understood Cam’s acerbity. As a boy living near the ducal estate, he’d witnessed firsthand the glacial chill at the heart of the Rothermere household. “You know that if she throws the blackguard over in my favor, there will be a scandal.”
“Surely by now my credit is strong enough to weather a bit of tattle. I want Lydia to be happy. She deserves better than a cold marriage. The members of this family have enjoyed little enough happiness. At least happiness within wedlock.”
As Cam leaned down to stoke the fire, flaring flame illuminated the sadness weighing his expression. Restoring the family name was Cam’s unfailing purpose. Simon had always admired how he’d devoted his considerable energy and intelligence to overcoming the previous generation’s notoriety. He guessed now that Cam dwelled upon the fact that while the duke’s sister might marry purely for affection, the quest to clear the slate afforded the duke no such luxury in choosing his future bride.
“I appreciate your efforts on my behalf. And your sister’s,” Simon said quietly. “But you know they come too late. In our youth, Lydia and I were in love, but we’ve both become different people since.”
Except, damn it, that wasn’t how he felt. He’d seen Lydia tonight and it was like they’d never been apart. In his heart, she was his, she’d always be his. The problem was he had a strong suspicion that, while she may once have felt the same, she felt the same no longer. Again he cursed evil fate, in the guise of that bull-headed old villain her father, for separating them. “She seems set on marrying Berwick.”
Cam continued to brood into the fire, his expression pensive. “She’s stopped hoping for anything better.”
Simon winced. Hell, he knew what that was like. Desperately as he’d struggled to forget Lydia—and he’d struggled like the devil—he’d long ago given up on ever falling in love with anyone else. Ten years and five continents hadn’t banished her from his heart. Seeing her tonight had only confirmed that he’d pledged himself to her eternally.
First he’d gone to France, then Germany, then two years in Italy. Then he’d ventured into wilder territory; the Ottoman Empire, Russia, China, the two Americas. In the futile hope that distance could mend his broken heart. Yet wherever he went, he hadn’t cared where he was or who he was with. Without Lydia, nothing mattered.
He’d nearly drunk the world dry and he’d taken up with too many women who to his shame he couldn’t remember past the brief oblivion their soft bodies had provided. Grief and loneliness had made him selfish. He wasn’t proud of the man he’d been then.
Eventually on a ship somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, he’d reached the painful conclusion that Lydia was lost to him forever and that if he continued as he was, he wouldn’t see his thirtieth birthday. He didn’t particularly care, but he had a family back in Derbyshire who would.
He’d started to live again, after a fashion. Nobody could spend a lifetime in the mad despair that had gripped him after he left England. He’d stopped acting purely out of misery and anger and found some use for himself as a wandering scholar of small reputation. Sadly his years of misbehavior had saddled him with a much more impressive reputation as a hellion.
But through all that time, nothing had erased the memory of the one woman he’d ever loved. And nothing had eased his yearning for her.
Tonight he stood in Rothermere House again. He still couldn’t accept that after all this time, Cam believed that Simon had a chance to set his life right, to appease the aching loneliness that had darkened every day away from Lydia. “I remain a mere second son, a man of no particular distinction. I’ve got my aunt’s estate now, so my pockets are no longer to let, but my fortune hardly compares to the Rothermere holdings. Are you sure I’m prime enough for your sister? Even if she ditches the bore before the wedding, a duke’s sister can look much higher
for a husband than plain Mr. Metcalf.”
“What do I care for rank? If you want proof of the blessings a great title delivers, just consider my parents.” Cam straightened and returned the poker to its stand with undue force. His somber expression didn’t ease as he wandered toward the sideboard.
Simon didn’t know why he kept harping on the reasons he was unfit for Lydia. “There’s also the small matter of the gossip about what I got up to on the Continent. Aren’t you worried that you invite a libertine into the family?”
Cam leveled an uncompromising stare on him as he lifted the decanter. “Do you mean to play my sister false?”
“Of course not.” He paused. “But how can you trust me?”
“You can’t have changed that much from the boy I grew up with.” Cam refilled his glass. Simon’s was still full. “Anyway the best proof of Lydia’s hold on you is that you came the moment I sent for you.”
“She can do better than a man with a grubby name who can only offer her a rundown manor in Devon.”
Cam’s face remained austere. “The best Lydia can do is to marry a man who loves her. I’m hoping that man is you. Is that still true? Will you have her?”
After a decade away, it seemed crazy to be so convinced that Lydia Rothermere remained the only one for him. But Simon saw so many reminders of the girl he’d adored in the woman who had delivered tonight’s uncompromising set-down. The heart, the wit, the beauty. And she was even more desirable than he remembered. Lovelier. More complex. More compelling.
Since his return, the reports he’d heard had indicated that Lady Lydia had buried the youthful passion he recalled so sweetly in endless good works. Tonight he hadn’t noticed any lack of passion. Tonight she’d been a woman who set the heavens afire.
He longed for that fire to warm him for the rest of his life; at last he was prepared to fight to make that longing reality.
As he stared at his childhood friend, his voice emerged steady and sure. “I will.”
Cam raised his brandy toward Simon in a toast. “In that case, may the best man win.”
* * *
Even as she told Simon Metcalf to stay away, Lydia knew that she wouldn’t be able to avoid him before her wedding. What she hadn’t expected was meeting the miscreant on a daily basis over the next week. Cam and his childhood friend attended most of the same social events she did, curse them. She loved her brother dearly, but after constantly seeing him with the knave who had once seduced her into stupidity, she wanted to hurl a brick at his head. And a second, bigger brick at Simon.
“Those two are demmed inseparable,” Sir Richard Harmsworth drawled from where he lounged picturesquely beside her at the Plaistead ball.