The Duke Goes Down (The Duke Hunt #1) - Sophie Jordan Page 0,72

drawing room afterwards, pretending as though it felt normal to do so—as though it could be his life.

“I won’t be gone very long.”

“Where could you be going at this hour?” she pressed.

“For a ride.”

“At night?”

“There’s a full moon.”

That was not true, but his mother did not know that. She was an abject indoorswoman. The only time she stepped outside was on the way to her carriage.

“Hm.” She looked down her slim nose at him. He felt her disapproval keenly. It did not help that she loomed above him several steps. He swallowed back his aggravation at being questioned. He was a grown man. He had not apprised his mother of his activities since he was a lad.

“Do not be too late,” she directed. “You’ll be tired tomorrow and I wanted to go over our upcoming travel plans. We have several decisions to make. I’d like to visit Aunt Judith, but then there is your sister. She always expects me to be there for Thomas’s birthday celebration.”

This was his mother’s life. These were his mother’s plans. She was lumping him into them as though he were a child to be dragged along with her.

It was miserable.

He supposed he should be grateful for her unwavering support—even though she was the cause for the current circumstances of his life—but he longed for his freedom. Her actions might have determined his present situation, but it did not determine his future. That was up to Perry.

“Ah. I won’t be about much tomorrow. I have some errands. Do not wait on me. Feel free to decide whatever you like.” She did not know it yet, but he would not be accompanying her.

“Errands? Such as?” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Just some business to attend to.”

“Business? What manner of business do you have in Shropshire?” The level of derision in her voice was insulting. Then her expression suddenly transformed into one of hopefulness. She grasped the railing and descended the stairs. “Is it a marital prospect? Did you sort out that vile . . . matter?” She fluttered her fingers, clearly unable to put to words the rumor that he had the pox.

He nodded and waved a hand reassuringly. “The rumors have been put to rest.” At least he assumed so. It had been two days since he bumped into Imogen leaving Mrs. Hathaway’s house, when she had assured him everything was set to rights. He had not verified it one way or another.

Not that he was overly concerned anymore. People could talk. People always talked. He was not worried as his mother was. His future did not depend on finding a rich heiress. At least not anymore. He’d let that particular ambition go, replacing it with actual ambition.

“Well, that is a relief.” His mother stopped two steps above him. “Are you calling on the baroness tomorrow? Or perhaps Mr. Blankenship?”

“No. That is not my errand.”

His mother’s smile faltered. “No?”

“No,” he confirmed, and before she could press for more information, he started away. “If you’ll excuse me, Mother. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He left her staring after him, feeling her disappointment like a dagger in his back as he stepped out into the evening and closed the front door to the dower house firmly behind him.

He made quick work of fetching his mount from the stables and saddling the horse himself. He rode for town, his destination an amorphous thing in his mind. He rode without putting it into definitive words, but he knew.

He knew as well as he knew the shape of his own hand. It was instinctive. A burning impulse that he could not resist. He felt it in his bones, in the rush of blood through his veins, in the primal pump of his heart.

He was going to see her.

Chapter Nineteen

Imogen was still awake, the lamp beside her bed only just put out, and her head still settling into the pillow when a scrabbling sounded at her window that had her lurching upright with a gasp.

Her first thought was highwaymen, and then she called herself ten kinds of silly. That’s what came of reading too many gothic romances before bed and taking to heart Mrs. Hathaway’s tales of wild rogues holding up coaches on the road south to London.

She fumbled in the dark, groping for the lamp, just managing to illuminate the room in time to spot the man emerging halfway through her bedchamber window, one long leg slung over the sill and a hessian boot on her floor. Not a highwayman.