Devon’s head pounded. Surely his father-in-law stood above him, slamming a hammer into his skull like some gleefully violent Hephaestus.
His father-in-law! Devon jerked to sit upright, then sank back down with a knife in both eyes and a groan.Damn, his head. How much had he drunk last night?
Had he really had a drunken conversation with Mr. Clarke?
He peeked open an eye. He was in the workshop, and the door had been thrown open. Dim sunlight streamed in from the hallway, and sounds of morning activity tapped along the corridor and into his aching skull.
But no Mr. Clarke and no hammer. Thank heavens. He’d dispensed his wisdom last night and disappeared like a burly fairy godfather.
Hephaestus, a fairy godfather. What else could he liken the man to?
Didn’t matter. What the man was, wasright.
As last night’s conversation poured into Devon’s memory, he rubbed his temples and listened to his father-in-law’s words anew with a more alert, albeit still fuzzy, intellect. Had it been a whisky-induced hallucination? Or had his father-in-law told him the secret to his success was not his own wit and hard work, but reliance on others?
He slapped his hands over his face and groaned, then winced away. Damn, but his breath smelt like rotten meat in Hyde Park on a summer afternoon.
Not good.
His soul was just as rank, his heart just as rotten.
He had to fix this.
Because he loved Lillian. No sudden revelation. No surprise. Just a quiet dawning of absolute fact. He loved her, and she deserved better.
He had to make this right.
How?
He needed coffee to wake his brain, so he could figure it all out.
Devon swung his feet to the floor and inhaled the metallic scent of the workshop, let it settle into his bones.
The only way to set this right was to make sure Lillian got what she desired. By any means necessary.
CHAPTER24
Lillian paced back and forth in the large ducal drawing room. She dragged her feet across the soft carpet, but the movement only elicited a softswish swish. She raised her knees high and dropped her feet heavy with each step, but still barely a sound, softest of thuds. You could drop a baby on this carpet, and it would land as if in a cloud, cooing and grinning.
Why couldn’t every house be as loud as her own childhood home had been? Where were the sounds of explosions? How could they stand such peaceful silence?
She snorted. A sound, and a good one—finally!
There was nothing peaceful about this silence. Anything could be happening in such a silence. When bangs and clanks resonated from every room, you knew what was going on. More or less. You knew, at the very least, where people were. In this deafening absence of sound, Lillian had no idea what was happening with Devon, no idea where he was. He’d not returned to the duke’s home after the ball, and she’d been grateful for it then, too angry to exist in the same room with him, let alone the same bed.
A full day and night had passed since then, and he’d not shown his face or sent a message, and a quick jaunt to his apartment had proven futile. Mrs. Matlock had even confirmed, while he’d slept there the night of the ball, he’d not slept there last night. With noon having come and gone, Lillian began to worry.
She worried he’d gotten what he desired and now wished to have nothing to do with her.
She worried she’d berated him so soundly that he now wanted nothing to do with her.
Had he deserved such treatment? What had happened at the ball had been his attempt to defend her honor. She’d not let him speak to it then, but she’d found out as much this morning. Lady Georgiana had paid a visit, Lord Adam hot on her heels, both extolling Devon’s virtues.
Her husband had, in his own enthusiastically Devon way, come to her rescue. And she had answered his heroics with censure. A cut direct to her own husband.
A cut direct to her own heart.
She paced faster. No solution. She shook her head and wrapped her arms around her aching belly.
