Page 33 of Doxy for the Ton
Perhaps she might survive six months in this hostile environment if she had allies—even if those allies were just a housekeeper and her adolescent nephew.
Chapter Eight
The carriage hita rut and jolted sideways. Alexander groaned as a spike of pain shot through his leg.
Fuck—that hurt.
A sharp sigh from the woman opposite told him he’d spoken aloud.
Shit. That was all he needed—yet more disapproval from his friend’s wife, one of the few respectable women in London who tolerated his company, even if only for her husband’s sake.
“Does it still trouble you?” she asked, gazing at him with her usual intense expression.
“What, Duchess—my leg, or the reason it was broken?”
“I was inquiring after the former,” she replied. “The latter is a matter for your conscience.”
“Eleanor, we discussed this.” Her husband, the Duke of Whitcombe and perhaps Alexander’s only friend, took her hand.
“That we did, Montague,” she said, turning her attention on the world outside, through the raindrop-spattered carriage window.
“It’s most obliging of you to take me home,” Alexander said. “I could have sent for my own carriage.”
“It’s not out of our way. We’ve been taking tea with Lord and Lady Radham—and their new daughter.”
“Had I known, I’d have asked you to give them my best wishes,” Alexander said.
The duchess turned her gaze toward him, then opened her mouth to respond. She was never one to engage in the bland social niceties such as conveying meaninglessregardsto an acquaintance. Instead, she had a discomfiting habit of saying that which everyone else was thinking, but was too polite to voice.
Such as Alexander’s many transgressions toward Lady Radham, the duchess’s younger sister, who had once been the subject of salacious gossip—gossip that Alexander had, to his shame, relished.
But he’d learned his lesson. The pleasure in having indulged in sordid tales about others made the humiliation of being the subject of such tales himself all the more intense.
The carriage turned into Grosvenor Square and the duchess sighed, her breath misting against the window.
“Look at that poor woman caught in the rain,” she said. “She’ll be soaked without an umbrella.”
Whitcombe leaned toward the window. “She has her footman with her, Eleanor. Doubtless he’ll be in for a tongue lashing for forgetting to bring one.”
“She looks more sad than angry.”
“How can you tell at this distance, my love?”
“I can’t see her expression, but there’s something about the way she carries herself, as if she feels she doesn’t belong.”
Alexander laughed. “How can anyone know what another person is thinking merely by looking at theirstance?”
The duchess focused her dark eyes on him, and he felt his cheeks warm under her scrutiny.
Whitcombe took her hand, and her expression softened as she shifted her gaze to her husband.
“I’m fortunate to have a clever wife, Sawbridge,” he said, mirroring her smile.
Ugh. Perhaps getting soaked was preferable to being stuck in a carriage with a lovesick couple. Though Alexander couldn’t deny the pang of longing at seeing two people so much in love—so different, and yet so perfect for each other. Opposites, yet equals.
She glanced outside again. “Thank heaven for that,” she said. “That must be her home.”
Alexander leaned toward the window in time to see two figures—a cloaked woman and a thin youth in blue livery—climbing the stairs toward the front door of a house…the house across the square from his own that had been vacant.
