went to a table and poured out two whiskeys. Holloway had always been an aficionado of fine spirits, and while his financial fortune—and personal happiness—had improved since marrying an earl’s daughter, he still didn’t indulge often in expensive liquor.
Holloway strode into the study.
“What good fortune that I happened to enter just as you poured yourself two drinks,” Holloway said, taking the offered glass. “Two-handed drinking is never a good strategy, Rotherby.”
“I’m reevaluating that statement as we speak.” Noel sipped at his whiskey. It burned, but not enough.
Holloway studied him. Noel stared right back as he did his best not to squirm beneath his friend’s examination, but it was ruddy hard when the perceptive Holloway had Noel within his sights.
“It’s a woman,” Holloway said at last.
“It’s not,” Noel answered.
Holloway snorted. “The very fact that you immediately deny it proves without a doubt that it’s a woman. But then,” he mused after taking a sip, “it never has been a woman before, so I’ve nothing to base my hypothesis on except instinct. Still, I’m almost entirely certain that the downward cast of your mouth and your rigid shoulders indicate that you’re brooding because of a woman.”
“My shoulders aren’t rigid.” Noel loosened them. But . . . “Goddamn it, you’re right.” He turned away from his friend and walked to the row of bookshelves lining one wall. He read the titles but absorbed none of it.
“Up until very recently,” Holloway said, coming to stand beside him, “I was the last person to give anyone advice about women, especially you.”
Noel shrugged. The fact that he’d often had someone to share his bed reflected nothing about who he was as a person.
“She was a damned surprise,” he muttered.
“A good surprise? Or an unwelcome one?”
“Started out good. Very good. Now it’s a goddamned misery.”
“Ah.” Holloway rocked back on his heels, his gaze roaming upward. “Most cultures have group celebrations for matrimonial unions, and some societies even ritualize less formal pairings. But not many have traditions when those unions fragment. Which is a shame—broken hearts must be suffered alone.”
Noel gripped his glass tightly. “Soon after I’d become the duke, I had renovations done on this place.”
“I remember. Scaffolding everywhere, and the sawdust made Rowe sneeze.”
A faint smile touched Noel’s lips. “One of the workmen left a saw in a corner. The blade was jagged, capable of cutting through nearly anything.” His jaw was tight. “I feel exactly like that saw blade.”
“The lady in question, she knows your feelings?”
Noel threw back the last of his drink and returned to the decanter. Apparently, it was a two-whiskey afternoon. “She knows. And fled as if I’d told her about my love for cannibalism.”
Holloway walked to him and held out his glass for a refill. “Civilizations all over the world have different thoughts about love. And the very fact that there are so many theories and myths about it shows that it’s fucking complicated.”
“Who the deuce said anything about love?” Noel snapped. At Holloway’s even, unblinking look, Noel slammed his glass down onto the table. Whiskey sloshed over the rim and onto his hand.
Scowling, Noel stuck the side of his hand into his mouth. He muttered, “I don’t love her.”
“But you’re serrated as a handsaw, sucking whiskey off your hand, and in general acting like a moody ass. Yes,” Holloway said carefully, “I can see that you clearly don’t have feelings for the woman.”
“Perhaps I do. What of it? It’s not reciprocated.”
“How certain are you of that?”
Noel crossed his arms over his chest. “She told me it was over. Didn’t say why, though.”
“What do you want for yourself, at least where this woman is concerned?”
“An abundance of questions, Holloway,” Noel grumbled. “Now I’m your newest subject of study.”
“What you are,” Holloway said gently, “is my friend. The selfsame friend who trained me in all the ways of rakehood, rather than let me flounder and fail.”
Noel swallowed around a hard mass in his throat. “If I hadn’t, you would have caused mass panic whenever you appeared in public. It was for the nation’s safety.”
Behind the glass of his spectacles, Holloway’s eyes were kind. “I ask again—what do you want for yourself and your lady?”
“I want to have her in my life,” Noel answered at once. “Today and every day thereafter.”
“Marriage?”
“I . . .” Hell. He’d never said anything to her about marriage. Only that he wanted to continue their liaison.
It didn’t need to be an affair. It could be permanent.
His heart thudded heavily. But— “She’s leaving the country.”