Page 92 of Duke of Wickedness
“For goodness’ sake, Phoebe,” she said admonishingly.
Phoebe winced. “Sorry,” she said. “I just meant… It seems that he’s sad.”
The rapid emotions of the past minute had left Ariadne feeling a little numb. She stared down at her embroidery. She was doing a very poor job of putting these flowers into bouquets. They looked more like lumpy leaves.
“That’s too bad,” she said.
“Is it?” Phoebe asked, tone incredulous. “By my reckoning, he deserves it.”
“Well, that’s because you’re a good and loyal friend,” Ariadne posited, which made Phoebe preen with praise. “But I don’t want him to suffer.”
And today at least, that was true. The answer might be different tomorrow if she flipped back into fury.
“That’s very noble,” Phoebe said, grimacing. “Exceedingly boring, but noble.”
“I just…” Ariadne sighed, giving up on the embroidery entirely and chucking it aside. “I feel rather foolish, I suppose. When we…ended things, he said that everything had gone according to plan. And that’s true. It all happened as we said it would. He helped me learn about things I wanted to know, and then we parted ways.”
“But?” Phoebe prodded.
“But,” Ariadne managed, “I still feel sad. Except, of course, for when I’m blisteringly furious. And that makes me feel as though I am an idiot—if not now, for feeling these things, then at the beginning, for thinking I might feel them.”
“You arenotan idiot,” Phoebe said firmly. “From what you’ve told me, the two of you weren’t only involved in a physical sense. You were, at the very least, also friends. And I would contend that it’s very normal to be sad and angry when a friend sends you away. I would be very sad and angry if you sent me away, and I haven’t even touched your bosoms.”
Ariadne choked out a laugh at this last bit. She wasn’t certain that she would describe the closeness that she’d built with David asfriendship—as Phoebe had so delicately phrased it, she did not make a habit of letting her friends touch her bosoms—but it had been more than physical. That much was true.
She thought of the way he’d seemed genuinely pleased at her questions about his collection of salacious texts, about how he’d been twice as happy when she’d asked about the history as when she’d blushed over the contents. She thought of his admission about his father.
And she thought, with a pang, of that feeling she would sometimes get when they looked at one another, that feeling like she could reallyseehim, like he could see all of her, too. Like he knew her and liked her still. Like he knew her and still wanted more.
There was a long beat of silence. Ariadne realized that she was gnawing anxiously on her thumbnail and snatched her hand away from her mouth. She hadn’t done that inyears.
“What do you need?” Phoebe asked simply, and Ariadne felt a rush of gratitude for her new friend. Even if this whole messwith David was making her miserable half the time these days, meeting Phoebe was one thing that had, without a doubt, made the entire adventure worth it.
“Oh, just a distraction, I suppose,” Ariadne said, not bothering to hide the moroseness in her tone. “I shall stop being so miserable about this eventually, but in the meantime, the best I can do is pay attention to something that isn’t my own pathetic self.”
“I take umbrage with the termpathetic, but I agree with you on the rest,” Phoebe said. “Why don’t we go to Lady Cutter’s ball tomorrow night? I was invited, and I know you had to have been.”
This was likely true—one of the dubious benefits of the Lightholder name was that Ariadne got invited to just about every Society event, though she hadn’t been paying especially close attention to her invitations. She’d been worried that she would see David on the arm of some other woman, so she’d stuck to family events and smaller soirees. And she’d spent quite a lot of time with Phoebe.
But Ariadne had to return to the splendor of the Season eventually. If she didn’t, Catherine would ask her what had changed, and Ariadne didn’t trust herself not to burst into tears like some missish waif out of a melodrama.
“We certainly can,” she allowed, then blinked as her brain caught up with her. This wasPhoebe. “But why doyouwant to go?” she asked, suspicious. “Is it just for my sake? Because you needn’t accompany me, if so.”
Phoebe generally did everything she could to avoid going to balls, so her offering was odd, to say the least.
But her friend’s eyes lit up in a very Phoebe-esque way.
“I heard,” she said, practically vibrating with delight, “that Lord Cutter collectsantique vermin traps.” She said this in tones of rapturous delight.
“Antiquevermintraps?” Ariadne echoed in a much more skeptical tone. “Really?”
“That’s the rumor. And obviously, I have to see such a thing.”
This was not obvious to Ariadne—or indeed, she suspected, to anyone whose name was not Phoebe Turner.
“But…why?” she asked.
Phoebe grinned that too-wide grin that reminded everyone who saw it that this was no shrinking violet, no matter how angelic she might look at first glance.
