Had anyone ever been as magnificent as Jack?
No, no one had. And he did not know what to do now, because he was not entirely certain that he could find a man that would make her happy. And that made him an utter failure in his lifelong quest to protect people from miserable marriages when given the chance.
His confidence was, at last, shaken.
Perhaps all those years of reading his mother’s letters over and over again, studying her pain, her sorrow, her longing to be appreciated and seen, had been for naught.
He had nothing left to offer Jack.
So, as she played out the last note and was met with a round of applause that fiercely thundered through the room, instead of going toward her, to congratulate her as everyone now seemed eager to do, he found himself unable to face her.
She did not need him now. And he was relieved. Truly.
James turned on his heel and headed out into the dark hall. He needed a moment, a moment to collect himself, to know what he would say to her next. And as he wandered through the elegantly lined halls covered in paintings from the greatest masters all over Europe over the last centuries, he paused before the library door, which was open.
The crimson light of a cheroot glowed in the dark.
He hesitated. Something was amiss. His insides coiled with apprehension.
“Stone,” the voice growled. “Come in.”
Blackbrook.
James obliged his friend, though he felt like a man being led to the gallows. The fact that his friend was not in Cornwall boded ill.
A foreign voice, deep within, whispered to him to run.
But that wasn’t the kind of man he was.
Cowardice had never been a part of his life. So, he strode in to meet his friend.
Blackbrook sat at the massive oak desk, his booted feet propped up on its polished surface. The room was black, only lit by the faint moonlight spilling through the tall polished windows.
And, of course, the cheroot. That single crimson glow.
“You’re in London,” he said, regretting the ridiculous words as soon as he said them, but he could think of nothing else at present. Not after the promises he had broken.
“I never left,” Blackbrook replied quietly.
“You what?” he queried.
Blackbrook was silent for a long moment, and dread pooled in James’s stomach. This was going to be a damned hard conversation. He knew it in his core.
“I have a question for you,” Blackbrook said at last, cocking his head to the side.
“Ask it,” he forced himself to say, his hands slowly closing into fists.
Rage crackled in his friend’s gaze. Even the shadows could not hide that. “When I challenge you to a duel, Stone, will you choose pistols or swords?”
“Neither,” he said quietly. “I will not duel with my only friend.”
Blackbrook leaned back in the chair with a languid air that should have been relaxing. It was not. It was the opposite. In fact, it was his cool, languid position that made James understand he was in very serious trouble indeed.
“Yourfriend?That is supposed to be me?” Blackbrook mocked.“I certainly thought you were mine. Who else isthe man that I have invited into my family and into my life for years? Now, what might induce me to challenge such a man and expect him to face me on the field?”
James stood still. He drew in a slow breath. There would be no running from this moment. No lying. No evading. There could be only truth. And if necessary, he would have to allow his friend to shoot him.
“It’s not what you think,” he said, and the moment the words escaped his lips, he knew they were hollow and the worst thing to say, even if they were true.