Chapter 9
Tony stumbled through the crowded tavern, winding his way through men and women who’d slaved all day for the great machine that was England’s industrial progress. Despite their long hours, they were all merry, making of life what they could.
On the other hand, Tony was already three sheets to the wind. He tossed a coin at the fiddler and bodhrán players who then struck up a sprightly tune which caused a pair of already tipsy women to get up and begin a reel. Once, he would have joined them in the nimble steps. That felt like a hellishly long time ago. It was just days, now.
He grabbed a chair, turned it and plunked himself down at the table across from the Earl of Ellesmere and a new friend that they had recently taken up with, Lord Lockhart Eversleigh.
“I’m getting married,” he said, as though announcing his execution.
“We know,” both men replied brightly. Both of their eyes were dancing.
“In the morning,” Tony added. He was feeling unduly morose as he slumped down and draped his arm across the back of his chair.
Both men grinned at him. “We know.”
Tony scowled and drove a hand through his already wild hair. “She doesn’t like me.”
Both men sat with far more dignity than Tony and intoned together, “We know.”
Tony groaned. “This is going to be terrible.”
“That is debatable,” Ellesmere countered, drinking his gin slowly from his wooden cup.
“Ha!” Tony let out a curse then bellowed, “Gin!”
Before he could even move a muscle, a barmaid was at their table, a hand propped on her curved hip. A tray with another gin bottle and cup balanced on it with practiced ease. Her red curls danced around apple cheeks and she gave him a wink. “’ello, Your Grace. Making merry before you wed, eh?”
“Just in need of a gin, Rose,” he said.
Rose winked. “Course you are, love. You need anything else, you just let me know. I’d love to see you off right and proper.”
As she put down the bottle, he resisted the urge to grumble. He had no interest in being sent off. He had no interest in other women whatsoever and it was absolute hell.
How had he become such a glutton for punishment?
In fact, Tony had spent a good deal of the evening certain that he’d been overcome by a need for power. Or at least, that’s what he’d decided since he’d scrambled down from her room, duly put in his place. Yes. He’d gone power mad, seeking a dukedom.
Surely, that was the only reason he would marry a woman he didn’t know and who barely tolerated him. Worse, she fairly recoiled from the idea of kissing him.
Recoiled.
Even now, the recollection of that particularly splendid moment sent a shudder down his spine.
That had been another new and most unwelcome experience.
He seemed to be having a rush of them lately.
In his life, women had always, always, enjoyed his company. It was because he liked women. Or so he told himself. Genuinely and truly, he liked them. As opposed to many of his male counterparts who insisted on seeing women as unknowable beings. In his experience, women were infinitely knowable if men would but take the time to listen to them and show a genuine interest in their lives.
He’d hoped that she would be the same. Granted, they’d had little interaction but, so far, it was not going well. Ha! Well? It was going to hell.
That was appalling because he’d always assumed that when he did wed, he’d have a genial marriage.
His father and his wife, Ros, had one of the happiest marriages in all of London and theirs and been a marriage out of love. Surely, he was condemning himself to an ever-living misery with this union? His initial optimism was quickly dwindling.
“Romance isn’t everything,” Tony declared, defiant, pounding an open hand on the splintered table. Then he poured himself a dose of gin.
“How much have you had to drink?” Lockhart suddenly asked.
He’d started the evening with Charles and then, after the debacle with Eleanor, he’d found a brandy bottle and drank his way here. He raised the cup to his lips, tossed the contents back and replied, “Enough.”
“Just recall you need to stand up tomorrow,” Ellesmere drawled, his lips twitching.
“While I am glad to be a source of amusement, I have never fallen short after a night of drinking and this is the end of my freedom after all.” He filled his glass again, with the sort of fatality of a condemned man, and then drained it. He grabbed the bottle and poured again.
“Are you quite all right, Tony?” Lock asked. “You seem. . . A bit unhinged.”
He gave a wicked smile, an almost painful thing. “Just contemplating married bliss.”
“Are you planning on exploring your freedom to the fullest?” Ellesmere asked warily. The man was eyeing him up and down then looking over towards Rose who was flirting happily with another table of more eager and likely gents.
Tony snorted, disgusted by the very idea. “I have not looked at another woman since the declaration of marriage. I hadn’t even locked eyes upon the woman and my faithfulness began.”
In truth, he couldn’t imagine looking at another woman now. She’d done something to him. It was as if, despite the lack of vows, he’d become hers. She was entrancing, fascinating and, well, a challenge. He wasn’t accustomed to being so flummoxed.
“Glad to hear it,” Ellesmere said, his voice full of relief.
“I have good reason.” He was not going to be a disappointment to his new wife. Come rack or ruin. He would be the best of husbands. He had to be. It was the only way to make his mother proud. Anything less would earn him her curses from the grave. And he’d always taken great stock in her ability to sway events with her powerful words. There was also his own sense of honor.
Added to all this was the fact that he felt oddly compelled by his future wife. He wanted her. He wanted her in a way he’d never wanted another woman which was damned astonishing since it seemed to be entirely one sided.
He groaned again. “I just hope to God that she won’t freeze me into stone.”
“Lady Eleanor does have a certain distance to her,” Ellesmere agreed kindly.
“A veritable wall of stone,” Tony intoned, tilting back his cup of gin, gritting his teeth as he swallowed the no doubt half-poisonous liquid down.
His friends watched him warily. But then, as if sensing his need to get dead drunk, they began to join him in speed.
“People with stone walls about them have good reasons,” Lock said quietly after he drank a cup in one go.
“You should know,” drawled Tony.
Lock rolled his eyes and drank again. In the last months, Lock had progressed from a furious man who hated just about everyone to a simmering fellow who tolerated company. He was, to his credit, good company in a tavern. No one was going to take that particular lord in a dark alley.
All of them had proved their mettle in this particular part of town and had earned a grudging respect from the people here.
“I told her that we should get to know each other,” Tony began, unable to hide his consternation. “Do you know what she said?”
Ellesmere and Lock waited expectantly.
“If I like.” He threw up his hands, as if this said everything, for it did. “As if knowing each other wasn’t important in a marriage!”
He wasn’t able to confess her reaction to his request for a kiss. That was far too demoralizing for words. He? A man that women flocked to could not receive a kiss from his intended without apparent horror or pity.
His heart sank. Lower. It was too late to turn back now. But the wisdom of this all seemed very doubtful. His usual sense of optimism had taken a very serious turn.
Ellesmere tapped his cup, not nearly as dismayed as his friend. “You’ve grown accustomed to affectionate marriages. I do not think my parents exchanged above twenty words a day.”
Tony blinked as he took that in, but he wasn’t about to accept it. He leaned across the table. “That is the stuff of hell.”
Ellesmere shrugged then drank a touch deeper than before. “They didn’t seem to mind.”
“Not my parents,” Lock cut in with a laugh as he bandied the bottle, his eyes showing the typical horror of a child with amorous parents. “They were always escaping off to their bedroom. Always kissing, always proclaiming their undying love. Let me tell you, the passion between them was quite something for us children to witness.”
Tony and all of London were aware of the scandalous behavior of Lock’s parents. He wouldn’t mind a little scandal of his own just now. But she’d firmly said she did not make scandal. So. . . “What the devil am I to do?”
“Get on with it,” Lock observed dryly and without any particular mercy.
“Good God, man.” Tony thumped his hand on the table. “I’m not going to war or building a canal.”
“No.” Lock stared unblinking and leaned forward to emphasize his point. He patted the air a few times. “You’re building a legacy. Hundreds of years of future little Tony’s as Duke of Ayr.”
“Now, that is a thought,” Tony breathed, both intrigued and aghast. He had not even known he had a lineage of any meaningful sort for half his life. Once he’d discovered it, he’d never thought to perpetuate it. There’d been no need, being a bastard. Now, it was his duty to breed.
The thought was positively ball crushing. Duty and the bedchamber did not belong together in his estimation.
But the way things were headed with Eleanor, he was going to face a lifetime of duty done in the dark. And given his passionate nature, and his unwillingness to be unfaithful, it was damned harrowing.
Lock waggled his brows. “Isn’t it though?”
Tony sighed, wiping a hand over his face. “Surely, it won’t be so very bad?”
The silence of his friends wasn’t encouraging.
He looked from friend to friend. “Surely?”
Still, he refused to believe his father and Ros would set him into a miserable marriage. They had to believe that some sort of affinity would arise between himself and Eleanor. He had to believe it, too. He could not face a lifetime without love or passion.
Then, as he took another drink of gin, he knew exactly what he needed to do. He was bloody well going to teach Lady Eleanor how to dance. And he was bloody well going to find a way to scale her wall, the one around her heart, since scaling up to her bedroom had proven so very ineffective. There had been one moment, one moment in which he had seen the deep emotion beneath her facade, her desire for more. And that. That was the thing which gave him hope.
Lifting his glass, he said with half-mad smile, “To marriage, lads. To marriage.”