said curtly.
“Of course you don’t,” Peregrin said quickly.
“Precisely,” Montgomery slurred.
Peregrin had hardly seen a man more drunk in his life, and as the head of a drinking society, he’d seen his fair share. The duke was completely pissed, and no doubt held upright only by his inhuman discipline.
He didn’t know what made him say what he said next: “Is it because Father drowned in a puddle when he was in his cups?”
Montgomery’s gaze narrowed. “How did you learn that?”
“The usual way. People whisper. I have ears.”
Montgomery was quiet. His sight adjusted to the low light, Peregrin could see his brother’s face clearly now and found he wasn’t the only one who looked awful. Montgomery’s features were lined and harsh with tension, but most alarming was the grim set of his mouth. It was a fatalistic grimness, not his usual determined one that said he was about to embark on a grand mission. No, this was an altogether different level of grim.
Finally, Montgomery moved. He switched on the desk lamp, then rifled through a few hopelessly disarrayed sheets, unearthed a slim silver case, and took out a cigarette. He fumbled with the matches, squinting with concentration until one finally hissed to life. He exhaled a stream of smoke toward the ceiling before he met Peregrin’s eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I don’t drink because Charles Devereux ended his life drunk and facedown in a puddle.”
A mighty emotion welled in Peregrin’s chest. He had thrown out his question because that was what he did: chancing things, following risky impulses. He hadn’t expected to reel in a flat-out admission from his brother. Almost as though they were talking man to man.
“Why was I told he had a riding accident?” he ventured, pushing his luck.
Montgomery rolled the cigarette between his fingers. “To keep the past from haunting you.”
“I do not need protecting from ugly truths,” Peregrin muttered, trying to not remember Miss Archer’s scathing verdict that he was a spoiled brat.
“It’s not about the truth,” Montgomery said. “The stories we hear about our fathers can become like a cage to the mind, dictating to us the things we fear or think we should do. Or they give us excuses to be weak. When a man with thousands of people depending on him drowns in a puddle because he was too drunk to stand, what does it say about him?”
Peregrin thought about that. “That he was terribly unlucky?” he suggested.
Montgomery glared at him. “Possibly that, too,” he finally allowed. “Why are you here?”
Just like that, the nausea returned. Fear, guilt, and shame congealed in the pit of his stomach.
“I should have never left.”
“Indeed,” Montgomery said, carelessly flicking ash from his cigarette onto the rug.
“And I saw my error a while ago, but then I did not dare to return, and the longer I stayed away the more difficult a return seemed to become.”
“Quite a conundrum.” Montgomery nodded without sympathy.
“But then I came upon Miss Archer today,” Peregrin said, “and she seemed . . . in distress . . . over you.”
Blimey, he could not remember now why it had seemed a good and righteous idea to go there.
Montgomery was oddly frozen in his chair, a disconcerting flicker in his eyes.
“There is just no escaping her, is there,” he muttered, “no having her, no getting away.”
“Sir?”
His brother’s metallic glare made Peregrin shrink back.
“Have you come to defend her honor?” Montgomery demanded, “or to ask an explanation from me? Bold of you. Mad, even. But then I know what her green eyes can do to a man, so I’m inclined to let this go.”
“Thank you,” Peregrin stammered. Her green eyes?
Montgomery frowned. “I proposed to her,” he said. “I proposed and she rejected me, so I do not see how she can be the one in distress.”
For a minute, Peregrin was speechless. “You proposed to Miss Archer,” he said faintly.
“Yes.”
“Proposed . . . marriage.”
“Correct.”
“Are you . . . sure?”
Montgomery’s lips twisted impatiently. “I’m drunk, not demented. I’m certain I uttered the words ‘Marry me,’ and, paraphrasing, she replied, ‘Not a chance in hell.’”
“Good God,” Peregrin said, and a long moment later, “Good God.”
“She wants to marry an Oxford don instead,” Montgomery said grimly.
“You proposed,” Peregrin yelped. “Whatever made you do such a thing?”
“I received a blow to the head when I fell off the horse earlier,” Montgomery replied, “and it made everything perfectly clear.”
Peregrin felt more confused by the moment.
“But I had to propose to the one woman in England who would turn down a dukedom—because she does not