Page 83 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

Oliver took the paper back and folded it. “Did you come here to be tiresome, or is there a secondary purpose?”

“Both, as it happens.” Sebastian signaled a steward for brandy. “I came because Benton told me you’ve been here every evening this week, and because you turned down four invitations in three days, including Lady Davenport’s, which you have attended every year since inheriting your title. Benton thinks you are unwell. I think you are hiding. If I were a betting man…”

Oliver scowled at his friend. “I am not hiding. I am choosing to spend my evenings in comfortable silence rather than in rooms full of people who want to discuss the weather and their daughters.”

“You used to enjoy rooms full of people.”

“I find it tedious now.”

Sebastian studied him across the dim lamplight, a frown between his brows. Oliver shifted. Sebastian knew him far too well. There was no hiding from it.

“I saw her tonight,” Sebastian said. “At the Davenport ball. Miss Fairchild. She was wearing blue.”

Oliver’s hand tightened on the arm of the chair. He released it, deliberately. “I trust she looked well.”

“She looked miserable.”

Oliver kept his face still, though he swallowed dryly.

“She was smiling, naturally,” Sebastian continued. “But we both know that smile. The smile one gives when it is expected, even when lives fall apart around us.” Sebastian paused. “She is not happy, Oliver.”

Oliver stood. He crossed to the fireplace and rested his forearm against the mantel, looking down into the coals. The fire was low, banked for the evening, glowing without heat.

“She accepted his proposal,” Oliver said at last. “She chose him.”

“She chose him after you vanished from her life without a word of explanation.”

“I gave her an explanation.”

“You gave her an excuse. You told her you could not protect her, and then you proved it by leaving.” Sebastian accepted his brandy from the steward and waited until the man withdrew. “That is not honor, Oliver. That is fear.”

Oliver closed his eyes, and allowed the bitterness to envelop him.

“I struck a man,” he said quietly.

“You struck a man who was hurting her.”

“I lost control.”

“You acted. You are not him, Oliver, and if you spent less time torturing yourself and more time thinking clearly, you would see that the comparison you are drawing is grotesque. Your father beat a woman who could not defend herself. You hit a man your size, who had his hand around a woman’s wrist. Those are not the same act. They are not even the same language.”

Oliver did not move. He could still feel the impact in his knuckles if he closed his fist. The vibration of bone against bone, the man’s head snapping back, the gasps from the corridor. And beneath the memory, older and sharper, the sound of a palm meeting flesh through a study door.

“I cannot be certain,” he muttered softly.

“Of what? That you are not your father?” Sebastian set down his glass. “I have known you for fifteen years. You are a good man, Oliver. You do not get angry without cause, of which you had more than enough. Your father was different.”

The fire shifted. A coal broke apart and resettled in a scatter of sparks.

“Regardless, it no longer matters. She is engaged, Sebastian.”

“Yes.”

“To a respectable man who will provide for her and treat her decently.”

“Decently.” Sebastian shook his head with a sigh. “Langley will give her a comfortable house and a predictable life. Like every gentleman who marries a gentlewoman, he will be perfectly content without caring whether she is.”

Oliver looked at him sharply. “You do not know that.”