Page 70 of A Duke's Keeper
She laughed. “You make conversing sound like one of your lawn games.”
He gave her a knowing smile. “When you find the right person, everything becomes a game. It’s what keeps the relationship alive.”
Camille couldn’t help thinking of Renard. From the moment he’d shuffled into that poorly lit alley, every word had been like a challenge, a dance.
She followed Lord Quickner’s soft gaze to where his wife stood in a group of young men, each one leaning in to listen to something she said.
“Is it that way for you two?” she asked.
“I love my wife,” he said without shame. “Even after thirty years of marriage, Lady Quickner surprises me, tempts me.”
Camille would never understand the ‘love’ that people spoke of like poetry or song. “Then why the ‘nightly’ party? If you were truly happy together, wouldn’t you wish to keep her to yourself?”
He scrunched his nose at her. “Don’t be boring, Miss Forthright. It doesn’t suit you. You’re an intelligent woman. I’m sure you can grasp that unrequited love is no less impassioned.”
Lady Quickner didn’t love her husband. At least not the same way he loved her.
Camille’s heart gave a painfulthump. The viscount’s admission resonated in the corner of her mind she’d blocked off. Rejection, acceptance, loneliness for a person he could never truly, at her core, touch. Marriage and marriage rights didn’t guarantee the man his wife’s affections.
“You do all this for her.” The parties, the multiple couplings: The man was a saint, not a sinner.
His smile turned sad. He patted her hand again, the warmth in the action the same as the kindness he’d shown last night. “When you love someone, you’d do anything to make them happy. Absolutely anything.”
Camille nodded, though she would never agree. The kind of affection the man spouted was fiction. No one loved enough to overlook infidelity. Jealousy, rage, and resentment tainted any innocent emotions, no matter how selfless their origin, and left every party in ruin.
She would know; the lie of love had brought her into this world, and it was her own form of love for her father that had destroyed them all. But that wasn’t right.
She knew love by its real name: romanticized obsession. And obsession faded. Some people like Lord Quickner could cling to those softer edges, it seemed, but it was a fruit mixed in poison. The sadness in his voice as he spoke of his wife proved her theory. No one loved unconditionally. And doing ‘absolutely anything’ to make a person happy... well, happiness was a condition of affliction as well, along with hope and joy.
And any ‘good girl’ knew not to expect those.
*
Fate continued tobe as fickle a bitch as ever. After sending his note and retrieving the emerald necklace from his personal effects, Renard had been waylaid by every servant, gardener, and lady who knew the wordsYour Grace.
By the time he’d extricated himself from the rehearsed and expected introductions and pleasantries, the archery tournament had been long over, and the morning meal cleared away in preparation for a more formal late luncheon in the dining hall. Seeing as the party would conclude by that evening, Lord and Lady Quickner had foregone tradition and decided on one last flamboyant display of extravagance and floral dress, because they could.
Renard searched for Camille along the lakeside and gardens before he was forced to return to the house to bathe and redress before escorting Charlotte downstairs to a packed drawing room of guests making idle chitchat.
“Having fun?” he asked.
Charlotte’s expression was as grey as the dress buttoned all the way up to her chin. “Conversing is harder than I imagined.” She tucked a piece of her fair hair behind her ear before pushing her spectacles up her nose. “Lady Quickner is lovely, but the rest of the guests seem so eccentric.”
“You’ve no idea,” Renard mumbled, searching the room’s occupants for signs of Camille. “If only you had a chaperone to keep you company.”
Charlotte scowled. “Chaperones are horrid and make everything far more boring.”
Hard to argue with that. Mrs. Chislehurst had regaled him with her many exploits discovering the best shops for embroidery thread during her interview for a position in the Lux household. “Entertainment is not the point,” he said. “Achaperone is meant to keep you safe. Now I’ll have to find another to keep you in check...” A flash of red had him angling to see over the other guests’ heads.
“What’s the point?” Charlotte said. “There’s little need for safety when I’m locked away at home.”
“Hmm.”
Slender fingers snapped in his direct line of vision.
He focused on his sister’s furrowed expression. “What?”
“You seem distracted.”
