Yet, that was their sole course now. How were they to manage that? He had no home, no means, nothing to offer a wife but a meager savings meant to buy a coffee shop and one-room bachelor’s lodgings in an unfashionable location. He’d not rented them with an eye to taking a wife but with the desire to fend for himself. Using only the funds he earned and touching nothing given to him, nothing inherited. Now? Now he would have to.
He ducked his head as he crossed a street, rushing to miss a barreling hackney.
Devon had been within reach of creating his own life, to building a purpose for himself outside of being a spare part, a man in waiting for a day he did not want to come. He’d been so close to his invention, to owning Frederick’s.
Until Miss Lillian Clarke.
Her letter had been the first explosion, the one that had brought him to her doorstep. Her lips were the second. Third if you counted actual explosions, but Lillian’s lips had rocked him more, torn him apart, perhaps for good. She wrote devilish words and kissed like a wanton, all while looking like an angel. He’d waltzed into her home, in order to tease her, annoy her, have his revenge, then leave. But he’d found a passion instead.
Then his lips had found her breast, and now they must marry.
He opened the door to the Collingford townhouse and sailed in without knocking. “Where’s the duke?” he asked the first footman he saw.
“In his study, Lord Devon.”
“Thank you. My mother?”
“In the blue parlor. With company.”
Brother first, then Mother when she was done with guests. He knocked on Arthur’s study door.
“Come in.”
Devon slipped inside the large room lined with books and decorated in dark woods and deep blues. “Hello, Brother.”
Arthur’s head popped up from whatever he was writing, and he carefully placed his pen on the desk. “Devon. What brings you here today? You’ve not been home in ages.” He leaned back in his chair until the front legs hovered off the ground, propped his booted feet on the desktop, and folded his arms behind his head. Arthur and Devon shared their mother’s yellow hair, but Arthur’s eyes glowed the sharp green of spring grass like their father’s had done. He was always perfectly coifed, perfectly dressed, and perfectly postured. Unless his duchess sat nearby, then he was as messy as a slab of butter and as randy as a schoolboy.
Devon sat across the desk from him, enjoying the more informal man his brother had become since his marriage.
“You know,” Devon said, mimicking his brother’s pose, “I merely came to gaze once more upon the man who kicked Uncle Brutus out. Hero, you are.”
Arthur rolled his eyes. “I’m busy, Devon. If you’ve nothing to say but jokes—”
“I’m engaged.”
The front legs of Arthur’s chair hit the ground with a thud. Arthur’s head bobbed up and down with the jolt. “Pardon me? I said no jokes.”
“Not joking. Engaged to Miss Clarke.” Devon ran a fingertip up and down the carved arm of the chair, digging his fingernail into a groove. He found himself in a groove, did he not? One he could not escape from.
Arthur rose to his feet. “Since when?”
Devon eyed his brother’s hands, hoping to see them ball into fists. He needed a good tussle. He would visit Jackson’s, but he’d ended his membership once he’d decided to fend for himself financially. Arthur’s hands remained unfurled.
“Since last night. Around, oh, one in the morning.”
That did it. Arthur’s fingers curled into his palm.
Devon remained sitting, affecting a lazy posture as his muscles bunched, begging him to stand, to fight if necessary. Arthur seemed a staid fellow, but he could throw a bruising right hook. Put his whole weight into it, he did. But Devon’s own right hook wasn’t bad. He cracked his knuckles.
“I will not jump to assumptions about what you and Miss Clarke were doing at one in the morning.”
“Inventing. It was all perfectly proper.” Until it hadn’t been. Devon tapped the well-oiled oak chair arm, jumping his fingertip from one side of the groove to the other.
“How did inventing lead to marriage?”
“Doesn’t it always, Brother?”
“Devon.” Arthur’s tone dripped with familiar exasperation.
