“These things happen.” Byron waved a dismissive hand. Clearly, he was too enamored with being a duke these days to care about the price of his new title.
There was another short-lived silence before Benedict spoke again.
“She’d told all of her friends you were coming back to her, you know. Louisa. Poor bird went to see venues for engagement parties all across London.”
Louisa gnawed on her inner cheek, swirling her glass of wine and looking into it without drinking. I wanted to drag her somewhere secluded and private. To apologize for the mess I’d created in her life. To assure her I fucked myself over just as much as I fucked her over.
“Gawd, do you remember?” Byron cackled, slapping his brother’s back. “She even chose an engagement ring and everything. Got our father to pay for it because she didn’t want you to think she was too demanding. You properly mugged her off, mate.”
“That was not my intention,” I said through gritted teeth, finding no appetite for my dish nor the company. “We were both children.”
“I do believe this is something Devon and Louisa shall address privately.” My mother tapped the corners of her mouth with a napkin, although there was no trace of food on her face. “It is inappropriate to broach this matter in company, not to mention at my husband’s funeral dinner.”
“Besides, there’s so much more to talk about,” Drew, Cece’s husband, exclaimed with faux excitement, grinning at me. “Devon, I’d been meaning to ask—what are your thoughts about Britain’s mortgage boom? The inflation risk is quite high, don’t you reckon?”
I opened my mouth to answer, when Byron cut into the conversation, raising his wine glass in the air like a tyrannical emperor.
“Please, no one cares about the housing market. You’re talking to people who don’t even know how to spell the word mortgage, let alone ever had to pay one.” He slammed the wine glass on the table, its carmine-red contents spilling over on the white tablecloth. “Instead, why don’t we talk about all the promises Devon Whitehall hasn’t kept throughout the years? To our sister. To his family. How reality has finally caught up with Lord Handsome, and he now needs to make some serious concessions if he wants to keep whatever’s left of his previous life.”
Louisa stood up and slapped her napkin over her still full plate.
“If you will excuse me.” Her voice trembled, but her composure remained perfect. “The meal was fantastic, Mrs. Whitehall, but I am afraid my brothers’ company was not. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”
She turned around and stalked off.
My mother and I exchanged looks.
I knew I needed to rectify the situation, even though I wasn’t the one to create it.
But first, I had to deal with the two clowns occupying my dinner table.
I speared Benedict and Byron with a glare.
“While I’m sympathetic to your recent loss of your parents, this is the last time you speak to me this way. Like it or not, I’m the lord of the manor. I choose whom to entertain, and more importantly, whom not to entertain. You’ve crossed the line and made your sister and my mother upset. Next time you do this, you’ll be met with a bullet to the arse. I may be a rake of few scruples, but as we all know, I am a damn good shot, and your arses are an easy target.”
Byron and Benedict’s smug smiles evaporated into thin air, replaced with scowls.
I stood up and stormed in the direction in which Louisa went. Behind my back, I heard the Butchart brothers droning a half-hearted apology about their behavior, blaming the wine for their poor manners.
I found Louisa in my old conservatory room, surrounded by exotic plants, big windows, and mint-colored wood. Her fingertips moved over an assortment of colorful roses in an expensive vase. A gift from a French viscount, which dated all the way to the nineteenth century.
Rather than touch the velvety petals, Louisa played with the thorns. I stood on the threshold in awe. She reminded me of Emmabelle. A woman who was more charmed by the pain of a beautiful thing than the pleasure it offered.
Louisa prickled the tip of her index finger. She withdrew from the thorn unhurriedly, sucking the blood, showing no signs of distress.
I closed the door behind me. “Louisa.”
She didn’t look up, her neck turned downward like a graceful swan. “Devon.”
“I believe an apology is in order.” I rolled a finger along a wood panel, finding it to be layered with a thick blanket of dust. Jesus Christ. Whitehall Court Castle was usually flawless. Did my mother and Cece have money issues?
“To me or to your family?” Louisa returned to caressing the thorns, and I found myself unable to look away from her.
She seemed so calm. So accepting, even after all these years.