in one go. “It is unnatural to forego quim for as long as you have. Never say you have taken up buggery?”
This time, Tom did choke once more, having just taken a hesitant sip. He sputtered. “Brandon, that is decidedly enough.”
His friend tossed back the remainder of his own cognac without bothering to savor. “Devil take it man, you are more Friday-faced than a lad who has just seen his favorite ball floating away in the ocean. I merely seek to enliven and distract you. Your nose is looking better, by the by, I must say. Old Needham has the devil of a punch. Who would have known?”
“Me,” Tom said grimly.
“Healed a bit crooked,” his friend noted, his dark-green gaze studying Tom’s nose more thoroughly than he would have preferred. “Fortunately for you, I am hosting a masked ball this evening rather than the ordinary sort. You can cover it up and the ladies will never be the wiser that your pretty face is ruined.”
Tom groaned. Brandon’s balls were legendary for their licentiousness and depravities. Orgies could be had in any of the anterooms. Courtesans and aristocrats rubbed elbows. They were the sorts of entertainments Tom had once upon a time found diverting. He had been far too weary for them for years now.
“I am not attending,” he told his friend.
“Yes,” Brandon announced with an authoritative air, “you are.”
“I am not.” Calmly, Tom sipped some more of his cognac.
“Are.” Brandon grinned. “You know you cannot deny me when I am determined to have my way. Have you learned nothing in all our years of friendship?”
He had learned to never trust the Duke of Brandon. That much was certain. Also, to avoid his fêtes at all costs.
Tom sighed. “I am eschewing society for the moment, Brandon. I need time to get my house in order.”
Time to recover from the beating his heart had taken. Or mayhap merely time to seduce the lovely widow next door.
Now where had that rogue thought emerged from?
“Your house looks well enough from where I sit.” Brandon sniffed. “This cognac, on the other hand, is not quite up to snuff, however. Wherever did you procure it? I must send over some of my stores. Terrible thing, what is happening with the phylloxera in France, ruining all the bloody vines and in the finest regions, at that. Have you read about it, Sidmouth?”
No, Tom had not.
His life had been marked by disinterest for some time now.
“I have not perused The Times in…” He paused, attempting to recall when he had last bothered himself to procure a paper. “Months, at least.”
Brandon shuddered. “What have you been about all this time, aside from the glowing light of my infrequent calls to make certain you have yet to die of a broken heart? Never tell me you have been wallowing in the depths of mawkish despair.”
Tom stiffened. “Why must my despair be mawkish?”
“More cognac?” Brandon held out his glass. “Because you are yourself, old chap, what with your belief in love and all that claptrap. I do hope you did not write any elegiacs after Lady Needham cut out your heart with a dull spoon and ate it for dinner.”
He thought of the stack of elegies he had been so recently working upon—abandoned following those garden kisses with Hyacinth—and frowned. “Of course not. Do not be an arse.”
“I am an arse.” Brandon grinned, wiggling his still-empty glass in rude fashion. “It is in my nature. My sire was an arse before me, and his darling pater before him was an arse. I am descended from a bloody line of arses. Not much hope for me to improve upon the familial legacy, I am afraid.”
Tom splashed another measure of cognac into the empty crystal. “I cannot argue with that.”
The duke took an exaggerated drink. “Ah. I was parched. So parched I could scarcely form spit, old chap. This is more the thing, even if your cognac is middling. One cannot be sober when one hosts a ball, you know. It is simply not done.”
“I am reasonably sure most hosts are,” he could not resist pointing out. “At least when the evening begins.”
“How unfortunate for them.” Brandon waved his fingers in a dismissive gesture as if to suggest he could hardly be bothered with such pedestrians. “Say you will come tonight, Tom. I promise you it shall be the diversion you need.”
There was only one diversion he wanted at the moment, and it was not a nameless, faceless shag at the Duke of