Today's Reading
Blackwood pulled her back and dragged her to her feet, an instant before the Duke of Ripley rolled over and cast up his accounts.
"He's all right," Blackwood said. "Stunned, thash all."
"He's burnt!"
"Yes. Go back to bed now. Cold out here. Damp. You'll catch your death." He waved a hand up and down, indicating her attire. "Not enough clothes."
He was swaying, blinking, his words slurring together.
She grasped his lapels and shook him, an impossible feat had he been sober. This was because the Duke of Blackwood, like his two friends, was over six feet tall and solid muscle (including his head) and could not be moved when he chose not to be moved.
"Wake up," she said. "Get my brother out of the wet and into the house. I don't care how you do it, but you'd better not upset Aunt Julia."
Their selfishness passed all bounds. To behave so, at a house to which death had brought such acute grief. If Ripley had been killed...
An image flashed into her mind of a smirking face and a short, unpleasant conversation.
But her brother wasn't dead. Yet.
She nodded toward Ashmont, who remained on the ground, smiling up at the cloud-thickened sky. "And while you're at it, drag Luscious Lucius over there to a trough or pump and get him back in his senses—to the extent that is possible. Do you understand?"
Blackwood's gaze slid from her face down to her hands, still clutching his lapels. "Best let go, then, don't you think?"
She jerked her hands free, and he staggered back a pace.
"I hate you," she said. "I shall never forgive you."
She wanted to cry. She wanted desperately to cry. She was so tired of this. And it was never going to get better. She knew that. She'd known it for a good while.
They were hopeless.
Their Dis-Graces. That was what the world called the three dukes, and the world wasn't wrong.
But she would not cry in front of them.
Ripley was alive—for now—and there was nothing she could do for or about him.
Time to face facts. These were the men they'd become. They were not going to turn into better men. They'd only grow worse, and it was mad to hope otherwise.
She would have to make a plan.
Giles Bouverie Lyon, eighth Duke of Blackwood, Marquess of Rossmore, Earl of Redwick, etc., etc., became suddenly and unhappily sober.
He watched Alice march away, dressing gown floating about her in the morning mist, and revealing a great deal more of her tall, shapely body than her usual attire did. No stiff petticoats concealed her hips. No gigantic sleeves turned her arms into balloons. Her nightcap had fallen askew, her braid was loosening, and long, waving locks of black hair trailed over her shoulders.
The stuff that dreams are made on.
A dream, no more. He'd made his choice years ago, an easy choice at seventeen.
His friends or the girl.
He'd made the choice here, at Camberley Place, during the annual late summer gathering of cousins and friends. He, Ripley, and Ashmont had gone down to the fishing house, as they usually did, but Ripley was watching him in an odd way. Then, when Ashmont settled down to serious fishing, Ripley drew Blackwood aside.
"Don't look at Alice that way," he said.
And Blackwood, heart pounding with guilt, instantly took offense: "What way?"
...
