Page 23 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

“Shall I bring the carriage round, Your Grace, or will you be walking tonight?”

Hargreaves waited at the curb with his collar turned up against the drizzle, holding the horses steady with one hand. His coat was darker across the shoulders where the rain had soaked through. He had been waiting, Oliver realized, for the full duration of the afternoon at White’s, standing beside the carriage on St James’s Street without complaint while the sky opened above him.

“How long have you been out here?”

“Since you went in, sir.”

Oliver glanced at the sky. The rain had softened to a mist that clung to the gas lamps, haloing them in wet gold. The street was emptying. A linkboy trotted past with his torch guttering, casting quick shadows against the pavement.

“You could have sheltered in the mews.”

“I could have, sir.” Hargreaves opened the carriage door. His tone suggested he had considered it, rejected it, then stood in the rain out of professional stubbornness. “Home, Your Grace?”

Oliver climbed in.

“Home,” he said. “Take the long route. Through Curzon Street.”

“Sir.” Hargreaves closed the door, climbed to the box. The carriage lurched forward over wet cobblestones.

Sebastian’s voice circled inside his skull, steady, patient, refusing to quiet.

The most dangerous arrangements are the ones that begin with the best intentions.

The carriage turned onto Curzon Street. Oliver shifted forward on the seat, his hand braced against the window frame.

He knew the house before it appeared. His body registered the address through habit, through the accumulated geography of a childhood spent mapping safe rooms, dangerous corridors, the precise distance between his bedroom door and his mother’s chambers at the far end of the hall.

Number thirty-one. The old Sinclair townhouse. His father had sold the Grosvenor Square property when Oliver was six, preferring the quieter address, the narrower street, the house where neighbors were close enough to hear raised voices if anyone had cared to listen. Nobody had cared to listen.

He rapped his knuckles against the carriage wall.

Hargreaves slowed.

“Stop a moment.”

The carriage halted. Oliver did not step out. Through the window, the house sat quiet under the mist, its windows dark, its step swept clean. The lamp above the door cast a circle of yellowish light that reached the pavement but no further.

His mother had kept her rooms on the second floor. During the Season, she dressed, attended the necessary balls on his father’s arm, smiled when required. Then she came home, climbed those stairs, closed her door. Some mornings she appeared at breakfast composed, smiling, ready. Other mornings the door stayed shut. Cook left trays outside it. Tea, toast cut into triangles, a pot of honey because the Duchess preferred honey to jam. Oliver used to count the trays from the bottom of the stairs, watching them go up, watching them return. On good days, the toast was eaten. On bad days, the tray came back untouched, carried by a housemaid who would not meet his eyes.

The house had new owners now. A family, perhaps, who filled the rooms with noise that had nothing to do with fear.

“Drive on, Hargreaves.”

“Sir.”

The carriage moved. Curzon Street gave way to Berkeley Square.

“Hargreaves.”

“Sir?”

“Have you eaten tonight?”

A pause from the box. “I had bread earlier, Your Grace.”

“When you’ve stabled the horses, tell Phelps to give you a proper supper. Use the kitchen. Sit down. I will not have you standing in the rain for all those hours on bread.”

“That’s very kind, sir, but I couldn’t possibly.”