Page 184 of The Scandal You Started
He didn’t want to meet her at all. He was scared of doing so.
What if…what if Rayna’s mother had been right? What if he met Lady Claire and history reverted to its original path? All the work he’d been doing, his effort to get to Rayna, would be undone. He would rather hide away than face that possibility, even if it meant he was a coward.
“I can’t,” he rasped, shaking his head. “I will find a way to ensure she marries within the next four months, but I will not meet her. I will do anything but that.”
Chapter 54
Dominic
Dominic couldn’t stop thinking about what River had said after the man left the estate on the back of his hired horse. He thought about it almost as much as he thought about Rayna.
Maybe he did have to meet Lady Claire in order to reduce his Rupture enough. Maybe he would become the trigger for her meeting another man, finally freeing him to go back to Rayna.And therefore, by not meeting her, he was trapping himself in the past, doomed to run out of time.
It was why a month later, he resolved himself to attend the first ball of the Season after the Peace Celebrations, hosted by the Duke and Duchess of Hattington—a very close school friend of Dominic’s.
Except when the night actually came, he felt sick to his stomach. So much so that his family thought he was coming down with something and insisted he stay home and rest.
He still felt horribly nauseous a couple of days later as he thought about the ball his sister, Mary, and her husband, Flyn, were throwing in the evening. He couldn’t get out of attending unless he wanted to face the wrath of his younger sister, now the Countess of Flyntward.
Thankfully, Mother Penny and Patricia had taken the carriage to the Flyntward residence to help oversee preparations, and Dominic had no idea where Art and Solomon had gone, so he was as alone as he could be with a hoard of servants silently floating around the townhouse.
It meant there was no one to bother him as he mentally prepared himself for the evening event. Nor anyone to question why he was lying on cushions in front of the library fireplace, his coat and neckcloth missing, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and paths of tears streaked across his nose.
At least hewasalone until the library door suddenly burst open at the end of the room his booted feet lay facing. A ruckus of male voices and heavy footsteps streamed in.
Dominic startled up onto an elbow and quickly scrubbed a hand over his face, swiping away the evidence of wetness under his eyes. When he glanced towards the intrusion, Candreas was standing to the side of four men in black, grey, and navy half dress, two of them still wearing gloves, all of them in polished boots. They stared at him with varying degrees of confusion.
“Thorney,” Raven, the Marquess of Ravensaw, said, his ruby-red eyes narrowed in amused curiosity. “What the deuces are you doing down there?”
Heir to the Westbridge Dukedom, Raven’s silvery-brown hair, ruby-red eyes, and arrogant grin gave him the air of a fictional villain who seduced innocents with sweet words. While he’d never been that kind of scoundrel, Raven had, in fact, scandalised thetonwith his rakish ways. But if there were anyone to prove reformed rakes made the best husbands, it was Raven. He loved his wife dearly but still spent his time scandalising thetonwith how openly he loved her in public.
“I was resting by the fire,” Dominic muttered, sitting upright.
“Really?” Flyn, his brother-in-law, said, his green eyes sharp behind his spectacles. “Rather looks like you’re moping.”
The Earl of Flyntward was a stern man who’d stuck to the rules of propriety with severity until Mary challenged them four years ago. Though since their marriage, and in the two years they’d had their son, that sternness had melted away significantly. But fatherhood had given him an annoying perception that usually turned out to be accurate.
“I am not moping,” Dominic grumbled.
He had in fact been doing just that.
On the other side of Flyn, Bentley, the Duke of Hattington, had been Dominic’s best friend since school. He’d also lost his father at a young age, but the previous duke had been abusive, so Bentley hadn’t mourned his death very much. His heart had been hardened as a result, but since marrying his older sister’s friend, laughter lit up Bentley’s brown eyes often.
Then there was Brandon Severin, a midnight-blue-eyed wealthy industrialist, who seemed innocently charming at first until one realised Severin had convinced them to sign away the entirety of their wealth to him. He’d tried to do it to all of fourof them at one of their clubs when they’d first met him, but now they all considered him a loyal friend.
Dominic eyed the group of men. “Why have you all barged into my library?”
“We are your friends,” Bentley said, walking forward, and the other three followed. “We will bloody damn barge in whenever we please. Especially when you do not show your face at any of our clubs upon returning to town, nor turn up when invited to a ball.”
“I apologise,” Dominic muttered, averting his gaze away. “I was under the weather.”
“Yes, I can see that.” Bentley offered a hand. “Get up, would you?”
Dominic clasped his friend’s palm and pushed himself up as Bentley pulled.
Once he was standing, Severin grabbed his other arm. “Sit down so we can have a word with you.”
“I am not particularly in the mood for talking,” Dominic said, but he let them push him down into the armchair that matched the three cushioned settees facing each other.
