Page 43 of Duke of Wickedness
Ha. As if David was the one who deserved concern. He had lived his life in the open. The entiretonknew what he was. Percy knew, too. David had never merited this kind of care.
“It’s nothing that meritsconcern,” David said dismissively, ignoring the twinge in his stomach, as that didn’t even make any sense anyway. “There’s just…something. It won’t last.”
He needed to remember that. It was the strangest thing. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d needed a reminder.
“But is it fun while it does?” Percy asked.
“Yes,” David said, though he didn’t think that this told the whole story, not at all. It was the story that needed to be told, however, and he would maintain it until his dying breath. “It’s a great deal of fun while it lasts.”
CHAPTER 11
“You are looking very thoughtful this morning,” Catherine observed.
Ariadne couldn’t deny it. Being in the park felt…oddly surreal.
Ariadne wasn’t certain where she would mark a difference between her life before she had begun this thing with David and the life she was living now. They were different—starkly, staggeringly so—but she didn’t know where to draw the line. Was it when she had agreed to the bargain? Was it when she had followed David from the ball and ended up at his scandalous party?
Or had this whole thing been going on for far longer than that? Had the wheels of fate begun turning when she’d gone to that first house party, two years prior?
Ariadne wasn’t even certain that she hadspokento him at that party, and if she had, it wouldn’t have gone beyond the common conversation between a host and a guest, all thehow do you dos, and thethank you for inviting mes. She had been—she could admit it—a little frightened of him.
So maybe it was just the exhaustion of all these late nights pulling at her, or maybe it was the strangeness of promenading through the park, just like she’d done all her life, but she was inclined to take a long view.
Maybe everything had been pulling her toward this.
“Sorry,” she told her sister. “Just woolgathering.”
Catherine gave her an understanding look.
“Still puzzling over your romantic intrigues?”
Ariadne hoped that her laugh didn’t seem too forced.
“I’m not sure anyone has ever called my particular suitorromantic,” she said, careful not to name names. This was one of the warmest mornings they’d enjoyed yet all year, and it seemed as though three-quarters of thetonwas out to enjoy the sunshine. Ariadne was already courting gossip in one ill-advised aspect of her life; she didn’t need to also drop the names of viscounts in a crowded park.
“Allow me to once again remind you of the merits of telling him to go away,” Catherine said. “I promise that you will feel better once you do.”
Ariadne scrunched her nose, partially as an instinctual response against sibling interference, partially because Catherine was probably right, and partially because it was oh so very nice to be reminded that she hadanotherset of problems besides the one that had been nagging at her day and night.
“Thank you for that sage advice,” she said dryly.
Catherine laughed. “Oh, how I long for the days when you used to hang on my every word. It was foreverKitty, please help me with this, Kitty, please help me with that.” She pitched her voice low and high like a child’s.
“As I recall it,” Ariadne countered, “you did not like that at all.”
“The harvest is always richer in another field,” Catherine said with mock solemnity. “We always seek the bright side elsewhere.”
“Alas,” Ariadne commiserated.
The two sisters devolved into laughter. The surreal sensation faded, and things felt normal. Maybe she wasn’t charging headlong into destruction as she feared. Maybe this would all just befine.
It took the span of two heartbeats for Ariadne to abandon this theory and return to her previous hunch about the wretched hand of fate.
Because she saw her.
The woman from the theater. The one who had looked familiar.
The one who apparently looked familiar because she spent her time walking in Regent’s Park with the rest of theton.
