One Night in London

Prologue-3

James was regarding Anthony with some gratitude for the civilizing influence. Robert gritted teeth.

Mr. Dalton Irving got quiet again.

Mrs. Irving chattered, words like pearls dropping on glass, “Of course you’ll be married by special license—we’re certain you won’t want to wait, having waited so long already—Dalton will be twenty-one in precisely three weeks, so you can be wed just as soon as he’s properly of age—”

Dancers spun and came together and separated like water at his back: a ribbon, a weaving on a loom, a pattern. Fate, right here in this ballroom. Where Robert should no doubt ask his fiancé to join the tapestry. James was staring at him as if attempting to shove him forward by sheer force of will.

He needed air. He needed to breathe. He needed to rip off this cravat, which Anthony had tied for him, and to never look so many expectations in the face again—

He took a step back. His brother took a step forward.

Robert inched back again, collided with a thin red-haired young woman in white—Miss Elizabeth Thorne, he vaguely recalled, one of the distant family cousins, here because James really had invited everyone—and saw punch splash from her glass onto the folds of her skirt. She gasped; he got out, “My apologies—” and bolted.

He couldn’t go far. James’s ballroom wasn’t large, and the crush of people had filled it to capacity. He avoided matrons and Society gossips and fashionable young rakes, several of whom he’d seen under much more naked circumstances, who tried to ask whether he was quite well. Lady Rosamond, he noticed, had come over to help Miss Elizabeth with her dress.

He found a gap in the crowd beside a window and a large potted fern. He tried to breathe in, to breathe out. His head throbbed.

The fern offered leafy green condolences, but couldn’t do anything much more practical. Robert tugged at his cravat.

He wanted to peel off his stifling jacket and waistcoat. He wanted to run. He wanted to see the world, to touch the waters of the Mediterranean, to see the sands of Africa, to walk through the ruins of Greece—he wanted to find everyplace he’d only read about in books, a world full of life and color and vibrancy—

He wanted everything he could not have, and would never have. Because he would be married to a boy barely of age, a pretty young man who’d never known any of those things either, and who looked at him as if Robert might devour him whole, while Robert’s skin remembered the brush of Anthony’s fingers—

Another mark in the column of everything he’d never have. His secretary. A man who depended on him. Who dismissed any flirtation with unruffled equanimity.

The music swelled, crashed, spun into another tune. Anthony, summoned by Robert’s thoughts, materialized. His eyes wore more concern than Robert had ever seen, dark and protective. “Are you all right?”

“No,” Robert said bleakly. “But that doesn’t matter to you.”

Anthony’s eyebrows drew together. “Robert, if you’re unhappy, I—”

James arrived. Naturally. A pugnacious whirlwind of temper scowled at a younger brother’s transgression. “Explain yourself. Now.”

Robert scowled right back. “There’s nothing to explain.”

“That was beyond impolite—”

“Awkward, but hardly—”

“You are,” James said over him, “embarrassing yourself. And this family.”

“I’m embarrassing you,” Robert said. It was true. “The match you arranged—the fortune we’re hunting—your evening, your announcement. Not mine.”

“You’re a Thorne,” James snapped. “Kindly act like one. That boy expects to marry you.”

“That boy,” Robert retorted, “expects to marry into a viscount’s family. He doesn’t give a damn about me. You could marry him.”

James’s face went white. Robert instantly regretted the words, and couldn’t take them back.

Anthony visibly winced on James’s behalf. Even the fern rustled leaves in betrayal.

His brother said, low and angry, “You know I cannot—”

“No. I don’t. Because you won’t talk to me. Because you don’t tell me anything.”

“As the head of this family—”

“You never even asked whether I wanted to get married!” His voice had risen. Drawing attention. He saw the disaster happening. Couldn’t stop the slow-motion carriage-crash. “You never gave me a choice!”

“You had choices!” James was more angry now. “You chose. You chose to spend your days doing God knows what, with God knows who—staying out at gambling hells, going through lover after lover as soon as you grew bored—if I hadn’t chosen for you, where would you be—”

“Not here! Did you ever ask what I want?”

James’s eyes narrowed. “And what do you want, Robert?”

“I don’t know!” He didn’t. He didn’t know anything. He just knew—“But I don’t want to get married in three weeks, and I don’t want to be married to a boy right out of a schoolroom who can barely string two sentences together and knows nothing about the world, and I don’t want to marry Mr. Dalton Irving!”

Silence hit the way cannon-thunder did, across a battlefield. Shots fired. Men wounded.

No one even gasped, but Robert saw Anthony’s eyes flick past his shoulder, and fill with comprehension.

He turned, already knowing what he’d see. “Mr. Irving—”

Mr. Dalton Irving, who’d obviously been pushed Robert’s direction by nervous parents, stood directly behind him. Face even paler than before. Eyes huge and injured. Hit by the gunfire of Robert’s words.

Robert, horrified, tripped over sounds, sentences, syllables. “Mr. Irving, I—perhaps we could—if we could speak in private—”

He hadn’t meant the words. Or he had. But not like that. Not to hurt. Truly.

He did not know how to explain.

Mr. Irving actually lifted that chin, despite shaking like a leaf, and managed, “I don’t believe I have anything to say to you at the moment, sir.” Robert discovered that perhaps his fiancé did have some admirable courage after all, even if the bravery was rather undercut by the fact that Dalton then promptly turned on a heel and fled.

Right out of the ballroom. On the wings of that speech. Which everyone had heard.

All eyes swung to Robert. The gossip raced. From person to person, growing and spreading, a susurration that’d be a scandal in no time at all: did you hear what Mr. Thorne said about his fiancé at his own engagement ball, can you imagine, what will the viscount do, what will happen to the betrothal now…

James’s face burned hot with fury. The Irving parents had become horrified gemstone-encrusted statues. Nicholas Herron, who for some reason had followed James, propped a shoulder against a wall and regarded the catastrophe with cool sarcastic eyes; the Duke of Wellingham appeared to be silently disapproving of the entire situation, probably because Edward despised scandal and cruelty. Lady Rosamond and Miss Elizabeth had reappeared and were clutching each other’s hands in astonishment.

Anthony’s gaze, resting on Robert, held disappointment, hot and dark and as expected; but some other emotion lay in all that deep shadowy velvet too, something more akin to sympathy than Robert might’ve guessed. And it was Anthony who said quietly, “I think we’ll retire from the ball for the moment, James.”

His brother blew out a short sharp breath, but nodded. Robert couldn’t process that either. Since when were his secretary and his brother on a first-name basis?

Anthony said, “You’ll be able to salvage this if you’re careful. Everyone knows they don’t know each other well, and misunderstandings happen, and perhaps some time to court, to get to know each other, would be in order before the wedding…” His voice was soothing, precise, finding solutions.

“Yes,” James said. “Yes. Get him—” This came with a head-jerk at Robert. “—out of here.”

Anthony nodded, put a proprietary hand under Robert’s elbow, and steered him away. Out of the ballroom. Out of the disaster he’d just made of their lives, their future—Dalton Irving’s life and future—the Thorne family’s hope for financial comfort, settlements for his niece and nephew—

What had he done?

He said that aloud too: “What have I done?”

“We’ll find out,” Anthony said, as they stepped out into the hall, “soon enough. For now…back to the study, I think. For the moment. We’ll find a way to handle this.”

The carpet—expensive several years ago, but worn in spots—muffled their footsteps. Ancestral Thorne family portraits glowered from imposing walls around them. They, and their gilded frames, did not approve of Robert’s failures. More guilt piling on. Or gilt.

He shouldn’t make puns at the moment. Not even in his own head. Not the time. One more failure. “Can you? Handle this?”

“We’ll certainly try.”

“But—”

“Quiet,” Anthony said, not angry but infinitely patient and commandingly firm; Robert subsided, chastised.

He did not know what came next. The evening had spun wide open, wildly out of control; Society would be aflame with news by now. The scandal of Viscount Thorne’s ball. The sudden delicious shock of upheaval, rejection, remorse. The consequences, because there would be consequences, of this night.

Just one night, he thought. Just one outburst, one snap of frustration, one damn night. And it had changed all their lives. Whatever came next, all their futures wouldn’t be the same.

One Night in London: James and Nicholas by Shelly GreeneTo my wonderful co-authors! Luni and Kells, this story absolutely would not exist without your encouragement and support.