Page 67 of Of Fate and Phantoms
I shook my head. "You regret it. That's something, at least."
He blinked a slow, drunken blink. "I wish you weren't so god damnednoble."
It struck me that his plea to invite Lady Harcourt was a ruse, a vehicle to allow him to confess. "Did you come here to unburden yourself? To somehow assuage your guilt?"
"Nothing can assuage my guilt. But I had to tell someone my dirty little secret or I'd go mad."
"Why me?"
"Every man must have a confessor, and I've decided that you're mine. Don't look at me like that, Charlie. Who else have I got? Aside from Julia and Douglas, you're the only one knows all my faults."
"Why not tell your brother then?"
"He's a self-righteous cock and would lecture me until I knocked all his teeth out. You're not so bad. In fact, I even like you."
I reached for a glass and poured myself a brandy. He snickered as I sipped. "Let's be clear, Mr. Buchanan."
"Call me Andrew."
"No. Let's be clear—we are not friends."
He held up his hands in surrender. "I abhor friendship. It comes with expectations that I'm not prepared to meet."
"I am not someone you can tell all your disgusting secrets to. I don't want to know them. This one was quite enough, thank you."
"Oh. Pity." He pouted. "I feel better already for telling you."
"You shouldn't. You did a despicable thing."
"Yes, but let's be honest, she's a despicable person. Doesn't that cancel out what I did?"
The man was truly awful. How could I have ever thought he might have been a nice person before Lady Harcourt destroyed his innocence? I doubted he was ever an innocent. "I think you ought to leave now."
"If you insist. But you will consider my request, won't you?"
I blanched. "You were serious about me asking her to parties where she'll meet other gentlemen?"
"Of course."
"But why do you want to do that? Is it simply because you feel guilty?"
He screwed his eyes shut and squeezed the bridge of his nose. When he pulled his hand away and opened his eyes, he suddenly looked much older than his early twenties. "What I want is to extract Julia from Swinburn's clutches and place her into those of a man less likely to discard her. She wants marriage, but Swinburn won't marry her. If she must hitch herself to the marriage wagon again, then I want her wedded to some dull, dusty old lord she can't possibly fall in love with. Swinburn's got swagger. He's got charm and is influential, not to mention he has the prince's ear and leads an exciting life. That's the sort of man Julia could fall in love with. That, Charlie, is a nightmare I'd like to see avoided."
His little speech left me stunned. If it were anyone else, such devoted love would be the stuff of poetry, but with those two, it was too sordid for even the penny dreadfuls. "I…I'll think about it. We're busy with an investigation now and we have few staff. Dinner parties are not on our list of priorities."
"But they will be, if I know Lady Vickers." He went to kiss my cheek, but I moved away. He snorted a laugh then patted my shoulder instead. "Thank you, Charlie. You won't utter a word of this to anyone, will you?"
"I don't keep secrets from Lincoln."
"He's hardly the gossiping sort." He lifted one shoulder. "You can tell him, if you like, but no one else."
"You have my word."
"Good. Excellent." He eyed his empty glass. "Perhaps just one more before I go."
"Doyle!"
The door swung open and Doyle rushed in, Cook and Alice behind him.
