CHAPTER11
“Christ, this is a deuced depressing affair.”
On any other day, the grumbling emerging from Garrick’s side—Aidan, newly restored to the family flock and doing penance by pretending to be on his best behavior—would have given him cause to deliver a crushing quip. He would secure a lemonade and dance a lively quadrille and force his brother to charm some dowager or other. Indeed, on any other day, mingling with the cream of London society at Rivendale’s would have been all he desired.
But this was not any other day. It was today, two full evenings after Garrick had last seen Pen Sutton. He could close his eyes till the day he died and still have the imprint of her swaying hips and lush bottom, scarcely hidden in her drab gentleman’s garb, etched on the insides of his eyelids. Yes, he had dismissed her, the flash of hurt on her lovely face chipping away at a part of himself he had thought long withered and dead before she had summoned her pride and hidden it. Before she had gone.
He cleared his throat and forced himself to respond in the fashion he would have before Pen Sutton had invaded his life. “There is nothing depressing about this dance. Half London would give their eye teeth to be here and you know it.”
While it was true that vouchers for Rivendale’s were an exclusive commodity everyone wanted and few could command, the knowledge somehow seemed to have lost its luster.
Because Pen Sutton had taken her leave from that shabby room above The Beggar’s Purse two nights before, and he had not seen her since.
He had wanted her to go, of course.
He needed her to do so, he reminded himself sternly. Just as he needed to return to his life as it had been ever since he had devoted himself to becoming the next Duke of Dryden. Ever since Veronica’s betrayal, which should have proven to him beyond question that a calm, unaffected society marriage was what he wanted. What was best. Mother and Father never argued. They were always perfectly pleasant to each other.
“Half London is bloody mad if you ask me,” Aidan muttered.
He slanted a quelling look in his brother’s direction. “No one asked you.”
Aidan shifted from his right foot to his left, looking as ill at ease as Garrick felt. “I’m not meant for this twaddle, and you know it.”
“Only look at Mother beaming upon you now,” he said, with a surreptitious nod in the duchess’s direction, on the other end of the ballroom.
She did indeed look pleased, the plumage in her turban fairly quivering with her delight at seeing her youngest son playing the role of proper gentleman at a soiree over which she reigned supreme as one of the ton’s most respected ladies. Between them, young ladies and lords danced in perfect rhythm, nary a step out of time, as the most alluring debutantes sought to secure their future husbands.
“She looks at her cats in the same fashion,” Aidan drawled, “and I’ll be damned if she tries to feed me the gizzard of a fowl. Entrails of any sort make me bilious.”
It was true that their mother had a tendency to care for her felines, whom she adored, more than she did her sons. At least, her outward expression of emotion seemed to suggest so. Lilac, Sweet Pea, and William were her crowning achievement, and most of her day—when she was not paying social calls or ruling Rivendale’s—revolved around keeping company with her cats.
“I ought to feed you gizzard after the torment you unleashed upon us all, first with your supposed betrothal—”
“There was nothing supposed about it,” Aidan interrupted hotly.
“—and then your drunken idiocy that led to you being kidnapped by a pair of thieves and held for ransom in some officious-smelling East End hovel,” Garrick finished, taking a thorough look around him to make certain no sharp-eared gossips were within listening range.
Thankfully, they were not.
It would never do for word of what had befallen Aidan to travel. Mother would be humiliated. Aidan would be a laughingstock. Father could well succumb to his weak heart. And their other brother Jonathan, currently campaigning in the country, would see his aspirations as an MP dashed. The scandal would cause irreparable damage if the world discovered the youngest son of the Duke and Duchess of Dryden had been in his cups and celebrating his pending nuptials to an East End hoyden by bedding a lightskirt when he had been kidnapped and tied naked to a bed.
Humiliating did not begin to describe it.
“The Beggar’s Purse is not entirely a hovel,” Aidan said then, frowning mightily. “I will own that I have made some mistakes. Many mistakes. But I have had ample time to think about my actions, and there is one thing I have realized above all others.”
Garrick’s gaze caught on Lady Hester and her mama, hovering near to Mother’s elbow. He owed her a dance. He also owed her a proposal. But his desire to offer either had been terribly diminished ever since a stubborn, auburn-haired minx had entered his life.
Do not think of her now. She is where she belongs, just as you are where you belong.
Pity those words no longer rang with the same truth he had once believed they did.
He jerked his attention back to Aidan, thinking Lady Hester could wait for another dance or two. Or three. Or ten. “Dare I ask what realization you reached? If it is not what an utter jackanapes you are for having invented your betrothal merely to hurt Mother and Father, only to disappear and cause me all manner of headaches as I sought to find you, I have no wish to hear it.”
“I know I was wrong,” Aidan said gravely. “I do not deny it, and I am sorry for any upset I caused. I was selfish and reckless, only concerned with what I wanted instead of what Pen wished. I will never forgive myself for that.”
Pen.
The reminder that his brother had been close with her first rankled.
“You have the right of it,” he forced himself to say, crushing any feelings of jealousy that attempted to rise to the surface. “You were indeed selfish and reckless, and you ought to be ashamed.”
“So you have been telling me for the past two days.”
He scowled at his brother. “Because you need to understand the ramifications of your actions.”
“I do understand them,” Aidan announced, his countenance brightening. “And that is why I know what I must do next.”
Anything short of groveling would not be sufficient.
“And what is that?” he asked, curious in spite of himself.
“Beg Pen’s forgiveness and ask her to marry me in truth.”
Garrick nearly swallowed his own damned tongue. “Have you not learned your lesson?” he demanded, cursing himself for the loudness of his outburst, the sheer, raw reaction. He took a slow, deep breath, attempting to calm himself. “Look at me, Aidan. You have caused enough problems for Miss Sutton and for our family. The least you can do is to find a suitable young lady from a noble family, cease gadding about gambling and wenching and drinking yourself to perdition, and forget all about Miss Penelope Sutton.”