Chapter Three
“That went well,” Camden Rothermere, Duke of Sedgemoor, said drily. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his feet toward the hearty fire that warmed his well-stocked library in Rothermere House.
With a snort of unamused laughter, Simon glanced up from where he poured himself a brandy at the sideboard. “Sarcasm doesn’t become you.”
It surprised him, this immediate ease in Cam’s company. Neither had kept up correspondence during Simon’s exile, but from the moment he’d met Cam again, he felt as though they’d parted mere days ago. Cam still felt like the close friend of his youth.
If only his reunion with Lydia had gone so smoothly.
Cam’s smile was wry. “Believe me, anything that ruffles the smooth surface of my sister’s perfect manners is good. Lydia’s been such a paragon since that brouhaha ten years ago, she even frightens me. At least she wasn’t indifferent to you tonight.”
“No, she hates my guts,” Simon said flatly, slumping into the matching leather chair on the other side of the hearth and taking a disheartened gulp of his brandy. It was late and the house around them was quiet. The last guests had left the ball more than an hour ago.
Seeing Lydia again had left Simon’s belly churning with desire and regret and old, futile anger over events
that he couldn’t change. How he hated to revisit those first months after he’d realized that his only honorable action with respect to both Lydia and his family was to leave the country.
Hell, he hadn’t been fit for human company for over a year after he’d forsaken Lydia. Afterward, he’d reached a point where he could pretend that he functioned as a normal man, but he’d remained a walking automaton. Beneath the cynical façade he cultivated, he’d felt as though someone had ripped out his vitals.
“She doesn’t hate you,” Cam said.
“She damn well should.” Simon glared at his friend who, as far as he could tell, had little reason to look so pleased with himself and his lunatic scheme. If Cam had heard how contemptuously Lydia had referred to marrying Simon tonight, he wouldn’t sound half so jolly. “She rumbled our plans immediately. She knows you don’t want her to marry that pompous warthog and she knows you brought me onto the scene to cause trouble.”
Cam’s smile was faint but fond as he idly tilted his glass side to side, watching the brandy eddy. “She’s a clever girl, my sister.”
“I may as well have stayed away.”
Cam looked up, his hand stilling. “Come, come, old man. Faint heart never won fair lady.”
“Fair lady washed her hands of me years ago.” Simon emptied his glass. Not that alcohol calmed the turmoil in his heart. He’d tried to find comfort for Lydia’s loss in liquor years ago and failed.
“I don’t think so. After Father banished you from England, she spent months looking like a ghost.”
“Puppy love.”
“Then why has she never married? Believe me, she’s had her chances. Much better chances than that superannuated walrus.”
“Oh, I do believe that,” Simon said grimly.
Of course she’d had men after her. She was more beautiful now than she’d ever been, especially once he’d needled her out of acting like a pattern card of propriety. Anger had unleashed the vibrant woman concealed within. At seventeen, Lydia Rothermere had filled his every dream. Her memory had haunted him ever since, although until he’d received Cam’s letter pleading for him to come back, he’d never imagined he still had a chance with her.
After tonight, he knew he didn’t have a chance with her.
That didn’t mean her beauty hadn’t sliced through him like a blade, reopening wounds that had barely knitted during his exile. And somewhere since he’d gone away, she’d found her strength. She stood up to him now, put him in his place. To his sorrow, he recognized that his place, in her mind, was far away from her.
He’d loved how the girlish Lydia had adored him with her eyes. But there was a snap and a challenge about this more mature, prickly woman that he found breathtakingly exciting.
And this gloriously sensual creature intended to waste herself on that self-satisfied bore Sir Grenville Berwick? It didn’t bear thinking about.
Simon sighed heavily and stared into the flickering flames. How her sherry-brown eyes had flashed when she’d told him to take his cheap flirtation and stow it. How her delicate, high-bred face had flushed into vivacity when she’d denied his right to meddle in her life.
Ten years ago, he’d tasted her passion too briefly. Meeting her again, he was eager to take up where he’d left off. Except this time, he was a man with a man’s experience and in return, Lydia offered the promise of a woman’s ripe desire. She’d turn his nights to flame.
Good God, what was he doing? These were hardly thoughts a man should entertain while he drank her brother’s brandy.
Cam’s stare was unwavering. “Don’t tell me Simon Metcalf is suffering a crisis of confidence? I’d never have credited it.”
Simon’s mouth stretched in a bitter smile, even as he hoped his friend caught no hint of the graphic scenes heating his imagination. “Given her choice, Lydia wouldn’t spare me the time of day.” He paused. “What makes you so sure she still wants me? Has she told you she loves me?”