Page 33 of The Last Crimes of Peregrine Hind
“Will you at least stop robbing my guests?”
“Is that a condition of this?” Lyd asked, holding up the papers.
“No,” Sandy said honestly. “But it never hurts to ask.” He gave her his biggest smile, the one that usually got him whatever he wanted.
She didn’t look impressed, but she did say, “I’ll think on it.”
“You really still prefer this life?” Sandy asked, gesturing to the cold night around them. “Waiting in the cold and in the dark? Robbing people? Fleeing from them?”
Lyd had grinned again. “People flee from me, Sandy. Should I go back to embroidery by the window? Sitting quietly in church and thinking of what repairs the dairy will need next year? After I’ve gone wherever I’ve liked, done whatever I’ve liked, and chosen who shares my bed and when? Do you really think I would want to go back to a quiet gentry life after that?”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Sandy said. “But there’s always the Second Kingdom. I could invite you, you know.”
Her smile turned into a baring of teeth. “I don’t want your kingdom of rich hypocrites, Sandy.”
“I’m trying to make the Kingdom better,” Sandy said, a little wearily.
“Is it working?”
Sandy could only be honest. “I don’t know,” he’d said. “But I have to try, don’t I?”
Who else would, if he didn’t? He was the duke, and the Kingdom was his. It was his duty to end the petty infighting and favoritism that Reginald had fostered, and he hoped that things were already changing. He only wished he didn’t have to do it alone. He had Juliana and her family as staunch allies, and a few other friends in the Kingdom, but he wanted someone at his side, nearby always, holding him at night while he worked through the never-ending list of problems that came with the Kingdom.
He wanted Peregrine.
He finally asked Lyd what he’d been dying to from the moment they’d stopped his carriage. “Is Peregrine with you?”
Lyd gave Sandy a pitying look.
“Please,” Sandy said quietly, not above begging, not above demanding they take him captive again just so they could bring him back to Peregrine. “Please, Lydia.”
“He isn’t with us, Sandy,” Lyd said. “I’m sorry.”
“No—” he started as she moved back toward the others and their horses. “Lyd, wait?—”
But it was too late. They were on their horses and riding away, leaving Sandy only with his driver in the dark. He’d climbed numbly back in the carriage, signaled for the return to Far Hope, and tried not to cry the entire way back. He’d believed Lyd when she said that Peregrine wasn’t with them, but then where was he?
Had he retired? Rusticated? Left the country altogether?
God. Was that really so preferable to a life with Sandy?
“So you’re not planning on marrying? At all?”
Sandy and Juliana Durrington née Foscourt, the daughter of the Earl of Kellow and Sandy’s lifelong friend, were walking through the ballroom with stars on the ceiling after a heavy lunch. She’d come to stay for the latest Second Kingdom revel—only the third that Sandy had presided over in the last half year—and he’d shamelessly made her plan the entire thing. It was enough to adjudicate the membership disputes and manage the tangle of internecine politics Reginald had left behind. He couldn’t be bothered to plan the menus for the orgies too.
Luckily for him, Juliana lived for such things, and even luckier for him, she was more than happy to seed little rumors on his behalf here and there. Mainly that his current abstention from the pleasures of the Kingdom was due to the loss of his beloved brother and sister-in-law, and for no other more scandalous reason.
Like that he was pining for a lover who didn’t want him back—and who was also currently wanted by the Crown.
It was raining buckets and buckets outside, making a dull roar everywhere in the manor house, a roar which echoed the noise inside Sandy’s head these days.
He took a minute to answer Juliana’s question. “I have a passel of first cousins already, and all of them are breeding like rabbits. There are plenty of heirs with the Dartham name.”
Juliana looked over at him. “Are you sure, though?” she asked softly. “A marriage doesn’t have to be about heirs alone. A wife could help shoulder the burden of the dukedom and the Second Kingdom. She could make life easier for you—and be a friend and companion.”
Sandy cut her a look. “Are you volunteering, Juliana?”
She let out a laugh. “No, no, I’m quite enjoying my new life as a widow. But it’s something to consider. You’ve bedded women before, after all, and you might also find someone who is happy to seek their pleasure outside your bed, if you’d rather not have a sexual relationship.”
