“Ah.” Here was the opportunity he needed. “As a matter of course, I’ve been invited to the same event and am late. I could watch over her tonight and escort her home if you’d like.”
Dear God, would these men see through the thinness of his excuse? He hated to keep putting the wool over the eyes of his friends, but seeing Isobel again won out over caution.
“Excellent idea.” The earl nodded with enthusiasm. “Best you do the pretty whenever you can since you’ll come into a title of your own once the powers-that-be give you the nod of approval.” He chuckled. “A man’s whole life changes once he’s handed a title.”
“Don’t remind me.” The feeling of wanting to retch climbed Royce’s throat. He swallowed a few times in succession to keep it at bay. The facts stared at him with unrelenting accuracy. He needed to let Isobel go and focus on courting a woman much better suited to being a future countess, a woman without scandal and rumors attached to her name. He owed that to the title and his father’s memory. “I should go.” As he rose to his feet, Andrew lifted a hand.
“Of course, of course, and let me say how much having a man of your sterling reputation looking out for my cousin eases my mind.”
Bloody, bloody hell.Hot guilt poured through Royce’s chest. None of the Stormes deserved his current deceit. They’d been nothing but kind to him.
“However, I do have one last item of interest to impart.”
“Oh?” Please don’t say someone in the ton had seen him together with Isobel in a compromising position.
“I had a letter from Brand yesterday.” Everyone looked at him with interest. “His wife has been safely delivered of a son at the end of June.” The earl beamed, as if that was the best of good news, and Royce gawked. Truly, the man was changing for the better. “My mother and Lady Jane are even now planning to visit them in Ipswich.”
Quickly, Royce took up his glass. “To the new parents. May they know nothing except happiness and hope.”
“Here, here!” Finn said, but there were haunted shadows in his eyes as he lifted the port bottle.
Poor Finn.Royce’s heart went out to him. As of yet, he and Lady Jane hadn’t been able to conceive, yet he was forced to watch while his immediate family expanded in ways he couldn’t help. Then dread mixed within his chest to tamp the anticipation at seeing Isobel again. “May we all be fortunate enough to find happiness on whatever paths we trod,” he added in a soft voice, for whatever he decided, someone would be hurt.
*
It took Roycethe better part of an hour to locate Isobel at the viscount’s home. There was quite a crush inside, and since it was a fair enough night and hot besides, guests had spilled out onto a back terrace that looked out onto the tranquil green space of Hanover Square. She was there, standing at the stone railing, peering unfocused into the gardens below.
“Miss Storme,” he said softly as he joined her, his shoulder barely brushing hers. “I apologize for my tardiness. Hadleigh summoned me for a meeting that I couldn’t refuse.”
“Already making excuses, Doctor?” she said in quiet tones but didn’t look at him. “You’re well on your way to acting like a titled gentleman, aren’t you?” In the illumination from the drawing room, she fairly glowed with her own light in a gown of silver satin, the same one she’d worn for the masquerade ball they’d crashed. An overskirt of some sort of fine mesh sparkled with her every movement. It was if she’d fallen from the star-strewn sky merely to tarry with him.
And I’m about to play the cad.
Icy fingers traced down his spine. Once more the ugly specter of change loomed between them. Despite the other couples mingling on the terrace, he briefly touched a gloved a hand to hers. When she met his gaze and he spied the annoyance glinting in those blue pools, his unease only increased. “It has nothing to do with the title.” If his words were sharper than he’d intended, he had good reason. Did she not understand the strain he was under?
“I wanted you to meet me here tonight for food and dancing. That we might have met in the shadows of the garden for a bit of heat and friction. You need it—I need it—especially after what we shared last night.” The tiny waver in her voice spoke of her high emotions, and it tugged at his chest. “Yet with your actions you’ve shown that such things aren’t important.” She lowered her voice so much that he had to lean toward her to hear the rest. “That I’m no longer important.”
Damn.She was falling back into old patterns, thinking he, too, would leave her life. He kept his voice just as low. “While it’s true that I’ll be an earl as soon as the legalities of it go through, none of that negates our friendship, our relationship.” Would she see the lies of that in his eyes? He would leave her, of course, because his life demanded it. “I cannot flaunt the rules of the ton any longer. Please say you understand?” A part of him acknowledged he’d come to the ball tonight to put an end to their affair before it became evident to society, but a part of him rebelled against the idea. Yet the Storme family shouldn’t have to have the imminent discovery of this affair looming over their heads.
What was everything so suddenly confusing?
“Bah!” She waved a hand in dismissal and put a few inches of space between them. “I understand you are losing your identity, the very things that made you… you when I first became acquainted with you last Christmastide.” Unnamed emotion gave her tone a smoky quality that went straight to his prick. “That’s a crime, and it’s not fair to you.”
He reeled from her words, for she was right. Then he shook his head. “It’s always been my fate. If not now, then years from now.” Though he’d been adept at ignoring it, he was the firstborn son. It was always evident he’d eventually become the earl.
“No.” Isobel shook her head. Infinite sadness reflected in her eyes. “The title is who you are known for at present, but you will always be a doctor.” Her sigh ruffled a few escaped dark curls on her forehead. “Don’t abandon that. If you do, you’re not the man I thought you were.”
His heartbeat quickened. “Why do you care?” Was it possible she’d developed romantic feelings for him?
She darted her gaze to something over his left shoulder. “I’m not certain.”
Ah, that was a lie. “Well, you aren’t after my title.” His laughter was a tad forced.
So was hers. “No, I’m not.” When her chin quivered, he nearly threw himself on his knees at her feet to beg forgiveness. “I never wanted any man’s title, and the fact that you have one frightens me, for I will lose you in a different and more wretched way than I’ve lost others in my life.”
The divide between them grew. “How so?”
“You won’t have died, which means I’ll be forced to see you move within society knowing I’ll never again have you.”