The devil’s arsehole. All he could remember was that he had been searching for Persephone for a week, and he had nothing to show for his efforts. Not so much as a damned whisper of her name in all London. And that nothing echoed what was left of his conscience and his soul.
“You’re becoming a tosspot like our pa,” Hart observed shrewdly.
To that, Rafe raised his glass in mock salute. “I ain’t a tosspot. I’m a chap whose heart’s been crushed to dust beneath ’is lady’s fine beater cases. Have a care now, you bleeding arsehole. I’d ’ate to give you a basting, but I will, lad. Don’t doubt it.”
Persephone had left him without a word, nary a farewell, and no means of finding her after she had gone. No chance to right the wrongs he had done.
“I’m not a lad.” Hart reached out and thieved the glass from Rafe’s fingers. “And you’ve had enough hazard and gin for the evening, brother.”
He couldn’t have Persephone.
She was lost to him forever.
All he had left was dice and drink.
He attempted to wrest the plunder from his brother’s greedy hand, but the bastard was too quick. “Give me my jackey.”
“You don’t need it, Rafe.”
“And since when are you my mother?” he snapped, growing irritated by Hart’s attempts at steering him from his course. “I’m older than you by a bleeding year.”
Persephone wasn’t coming back. After scouring every inch of London, desperation keeping him awake all night long as he tirelessly attempted to find her, he had finally admitted defeat. He’d never see her again. He wanted to lose himself in game and drink. Was that so much to ask for?
Hart clapped him on the back whilst sliding the glass along the table, farther away and out of Rafe’s reach. “What do you say we pay a call to The Garden of Flora?”
He could never look at another woman again, for as long as he lived.
“Don’t want petticoats,” he grumbled. “There’s only one woman for me.”
“And yet, she’s left you,” Hart pointed out calmly. “Don’t be daft. This bit of skirts wasn’t for you. Find a moll and fuck her silly. You’ll feel better for it in the morning.”
There had been a time in Rafe’s life when the notion of hiring one of Sophie’s girls for the night and surrendering himself to depravity would have been all he wished. But Persephone was the only woman he wanted. The only woman he would ever want, now and forever. Too blasted bad he had been too stupid to tell her that when he’d had the chance. Maybe she wouldn’t have run.
“I don’t want a moll.” He reached for the gin again and just missed it, but he also managed to upend the glass and send his precious jackey all over the table. “Ballocks.”
Something smacked into the back of Rafe’s head then. He blinked, his vision fuzzier than ever. He rubbed his skull, scowling. “What the devil was that?”
“That was me.” Dominic Winter was hovering over him, a hard expression on his face. “And there’s more where that came from if you don’t get some sense into that thick pate of yours.”
“Winter.” Rafe attempted to pin the other man with a glare for having the daring to lay a hand upon him, but his eyes were being deuced difficult thanks to all the spirits he had partaken. Besides that, he was filled with the munificent glow that only a dram—or two, or three—could provide. He was in that transcendent state where he bloody well loved everyone. Or most people. Not Hart. Fuck him, the cursed liquor thief. “Bene bowse, old chap. Your jackey is quite good, loath though I am to admit it.”
Winter inclined his head. “The patrons of The Devil’s Spawn are damned exacting. I aim to please. No baptized spirits here as they will find in other, lesser establishments. But your brother is quite right that you’ve had enough.”
Christ. Not more of this damned fee, faw, fum.
He sighed. “You don’t look like my mother, Winter.”
“I certainly hope your mother was prettier than I,” Winter said, deadly serious. “Given your ugly Friday face, it ain’t likely.”
He scoffed. “Don’t tempt me into giving you the drubbing of your life.”
Rafe knew he was by no means in a state to enter into a bout of fisticuffs with Dominic Winter, or any other manner of defending himself, and yet he could not seem to still his tongue. When a man had nothing left to lose, he clung to recklessness, and damn all else to perdition.
Where was his gin? Hart had taken it from him. Why? He needed more. Right bleeding now. Yesterday, in fact. His brother was a heartless arsehole.
Oh, Christ. That was right. He’d spilled it, hadn’t he?
“You’ll be coming with me, Sutton, or the only one of the two of us receiving a drubbing will be you,” Winter said coolly. “Hart?”