Chapter 2

Standing next to Anthony, he couldn’t’ve felt more the opposite of all that calm shadow-brown capability. Broad shoulders, big muscles from boxing lessons—Lord Westhaven had enjoyed the sport, and as they’d been lovers at the time, Robert had enjoyed it as well—and hair more gold than red and resolutely unruly, eyes more blue than green but sometimes both, shifting with moods and the light: he knew perfectly well how much he tended to overflow. Into space, into a room, into Society gossip. Messy and dramatic. Twenty-eight years old, and beside Anthony he ended up fourteen again and clumsy as hell.

He said, “Don’t worry, I won’t fire you. Even if you despise me.”

“I don’t despise you.”

“You dislike me.”

“I don’t.”

“You despair of me.”

Anthony’s mouth tugged itself into the faintest upward hint. “That one might be true.”

“There,” Robert said, with satisfaction. “You do smile.” He wanted to provoke more. He’d wanted that for nearly a year. And every time he tried—every time he thought he might be about to catch a glimpse behind that unshakable fa?ade—

Those doors kept swinging shut. He thought Anthony liked him. He wantedAnthony to like him. He was afraid Anthony didn’t, and he wasn’t used to that. Disconcerting, not being liked. Not being liked by Anthony Price in particular.

He didn’t even know whether Anthony was interested in men. These days that sort of desire was, if not precisely the usual, certainly allowable, and even more so if such alliances came with some sort of advantage: money, property, a title. If one’s family already had an heir, then marriage between two men might be welcomed, under the right circumstances; it was not the most common, but not shameful. Robert, who liked to think he himself appreciated beauty in all forms, had enjoyed both men and women as lovers, though not as many as Society seemed to think. He would never have had the time, and also…

And also, he thought. That other reason. The reason he stood in his brother’s house, about to formally proclaim himself an engaged man, and begin preparations for the wedding.

His brother, of course, believed all the rumors. All the gossip. Every story about decadent orgies and naked rides through Hyde Park at dawn, even when thatparticular tale had begun as an offhanded joke told at a picnic. But then James always did believe the worst of him.

And James had given orders, in that no-nonsense head of the family tone, that Robert would indeed attend this ball, honor his engagement, and give young Mr. Dalton Irving his hand.

He said now, in the quiet book-lined space of his brother’s study, exactly where he’d run to hide, “What if I don’t?”

Anthony lifted eyebrows. “If you don’t…smile? Unusual for you, certainly, but hardly enough to end your betrothal.”

“You know what I mean.” He paced a step, swung arms, found himself trapped by a desk and unyielding evening-dress attire. He put up a hand to yank at his cravat, recalled too late that he did not have time to fix it, cringed at what he’d done. “What if I don’t get married?”

“What if you don’t?” Anthony put a slim volume of old-fashioned poetry back and came over. Skillful hands took over Robert’s cravat, swift and practiced. The heat of them brushed Robert’s throat, and somehow spread all the way through his body. To his toes. Other places. “Hold still.”

Robert did, though parts of him wished rather desperately for those hands to drift elsewhere. “I amholding still.”

“You’re not. Try harder.”

Robert nearly whimpered, at that. He did widen his eyes and give his secretary his best please say that againlook, shameless about it.

“Don’t waste it on me,” Anthony said, more dry than fabled deserts in Robert’s favorite books of far-off travels. “Besides, isn’t Isabella Carissini awaiting you in your bedroom later?”

“I’ve sworn off opera singers,” Robert grumbled, deflated. “I’m getting married. Being responsible.” He wanted to yank at his cravat again. Couldn’t. Anthony’d fixed it for him. “We ended it on good terms last week. She’s amused by the whole idea of me settling down.”

Anthony’s hand hovered for just a second over Robert’s shoulder. “She doesn’t know you as well as you deserve, then.”

“What? What does that mean?” He pleaded, as Anthony took a step away, “Tell me. Or I’ll…what would I do? Make you polish the silver? Send you out to buy too many books to carry?”

“You do,” Anthony observed, “employ footmen. My lord…”

“No,” Robert said, more sharply than he’d meant to. But the world was coming apart, he was getting married, Anthony was being cryptic at him, and he couldn’t handle polite civility. “No. Robert, I said. Use my name. Please.”

“Robert.” In that voice, low and warm and smooth as cleanly poured chocolate, his name became a jewel, a steady anchor, a precious cargo. “I really shouldn’t. But…”

“But I’m asking,” Robert said. “And Ican make you smile.”

“Robert…” Anthony shook his head this time, and the smile returned: not large, but wryly beckoning. “I meant that if she’s amused by the idea of you settling down…she can’t be seeing the you I know.”

“The what?” He looked himself up and down, half for effect. Still him: adored and adorable, teetering on the lower rungs of London’s gentry, vaguely and hopefully attractively rumpled even when theoretically polished. “What do you know about me? Is it good?”

Anthony sighed, but the sigh came laced with fondness. Robert hoped it did, anyway. “The Robert Thorne I know buys secondhand melodramatic sensation novels and loves memoirs about travel to places he’s never been. The Robert Thorne I know will sit and read stories to his niece and nephew for hours if they ask. And the Robert Thorne I know would never go back on his word regarding an engagement, not when it matters so much to the families involved. Because the Robert ThorneIknow is a good man.”

Their eyes met across air, blue-green and midnight-dark. Robert, caught up in sudden coal-hot intensity, forgot to breathe.