Page 62 of The Wrong Duke

“Lord Wexley told me what happened. That you allowed yourself —”

“Allowed!” David jumped to his feet, stumbled, caught the side of the chair, and pushed himself to standing. “There was no allowing it! It wasn’t something that I simply let happen. I was tricked, Evan! Beguiled! Lured and trapped like a rat! You think I want this to happen? You think I... you think this is something I yearn for?” He scoffed and snarled at Evan. “You of all people should know me better than that.”

“Then why agree to the marriage?” Evan demanded hotly, taking a step closer to David, shoving a finger into his chest. “Why not explain what happened? Why go along with this farce!”

“It’s not so simple.”

“It is!”

David leaned back as if he’d been slapped. His body swayed, and he was forced to catch himself on the couch again. “You really don’t understand, do you?”

“Understand what?”

“It’s so easy for you, isn’t it? A duke. A man who has spent his life spurning his station, caring not for what others think of him.”

“I hardly see what that has to do with this.”

“No, you don’t, and that’s the point. I have spent mylifebuilding my reputation, Evan. I don’t have the grace of a dukedom to fall back on. I can’t write to the king and ask him to turn a blind eye if I misstep or bring shame to my name.”

Evan pushed his lips together. “You know that’s not how it works —”

“Irrelevant! All I have ever wanted, Evan, is to fall in love. To meet a woman who I could spend the rest of my life with – who wanted to spend hers with me. Not because of who I am or my title. But because ofme.And I had that. I had it!”

“You still could,” Evan tried. “There’s no reason that you can’t —”

“Of course, there is!” he cried. “I don’t blame Miss Forbes for spurning me. She did what she thought she must. And why wouldn’t she? After what Lord Wexley and Lord Chalmers and Lord Lindstone saw. Ha! She’d be a fool to take a chance with me because from this moment on, my name will be linked to what they thought I’d done – what they will tell the entiretonI have done. No, Evan...” He shook his head to himself, looking a broken man. “This is it for me. I had one chance, one. And now it’s gone.”

God, how he wished to be angry with his friend. How he wanted to blame him. Or better, to take him by the scruff of the neck, shake some sense into him, and force him to stand up to Lord Lindstone. He clearly knew that Lindstone was the one who tricked him, but that didn’t seem to bother him as much as it ought to have.

In the end, David was right. He was trapped in a marriage he did not want, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“So... you were saying about a drink?” Even sighed, body slumping, feeling the fight begin to leave him because the truth of the matter was that it was never really there in the first place.

David grinned. “Mr. Rogers! Brandy!”

As Mr. Rogers got about bringing them another bottle and then pouring them each a glass, Evan pulled another couch over beside David’s and sat himself down — but not before helping David into his own because the man could barely stand on his own two feet, let alone guide his buttocks back into the chair.

“I’m sorry,” David then started, slumping down in his chair, nearly spilling his drink all over himself.

“It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not. You warned me — or your actions did. Don’t think I didn’t know what you were doing and why.”

“It was that obvious, was it?” Evan chuckled, not seeing the point of denying his feelings any longer.

“You knew Miss Baker and her father were bad sorts, and you meant to stop it. And me? The fool that I am, thought you were being a tad over-protective. Ha! Isn’t my face red.”

Evan frowned and studied his drunken friend. He still didn’t know? He still thought that Evan’s barging in here, the anger in him, was on account of his disappointment for letting his friend be tricked like this. He had no idea how Evan felt about Miss Baker, and most importantly, how she felt about him.

Evan wondered if he should keep it a secret now, seeing as it wouldn’t do him any good to speak out loud. But another sip or two of his brandy and he was feeling the urge to speak it. Just because he knew that come tomorrow, all that was and all that ever might have been would be nothing more than a dream, and to keep it a secret like this felt wrong somehow.

“There’s something you should know,” Evan sighed. “Miss Baker and I —”

“What I don’t understand,” David spoke up, apparently not hearing Evan speak, “is why me? Why is Lord Lindstone so insistent upon me marrying Miss Baker? I mean, to pursue me is one thing. But the lengths he has gone through are beyond anything I have ever heard.”

Evan looked at his friend. “Do you really no know?”

“You do?!”

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