LITMIR.BIZ

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the ballroom, Ash held down the narrow end of an Aubusson carpet runner borrowed from the corridor, taking practice swings with a cricket bat.

      In the center of the space stood Khan, glumly enduring his role as bowler.

      “Come along, then.” Ash was ready to rattle some portraits on the far wall of the ballroom.

      Khan plucked a ball from the basket, wound his arm, stepped forward, and bowled. Rather forcefully, as it turned out. The ball took a sharp bounce off the carpeting. Ash swung the bat and caught only air.

      He glanced behind him at the missed ball.

      “Just warming up the muscles, you know.” He took a few more idle swings.

      “But of course, Your Grace.”

      Khan took up a second ball and bowled it with surprising speed and skill. This time, Ash grazed the thing—just barely.

      “Quite an arm on you, haven’t you?”

      The butler’s next effort bounced directly at Ash’s feet, shooting upward and hitting his shin with one devil of a wallop.

      “Ow.” Ash rubbed his smarting leg with the flat of his hand. “Take care, will you?”

      Before he could even lift his bat, Khan bowled again. This ball struck Ash directly in the thigh. There could no longer be any doubt that he’d aimed for Ash purposely.

      “What was that for?”

      “You’re letting her leave, you bloody fool.”

      Ash threw up his hands. “It’s what she wants! She’s been planning it for months. Manipulated me into tupping her all over the house, going out in society, and—and feeling things.” He walked in a circle, shaking the stinging pain from his leg.

      Ash barely managed to duck as another ball whistled by his ear. “Good Lord. What the blazes are you doing?”

      “A missile knocked the sense from you once. Perhaps another can knock it back in.” He reached for another ball. “You vowed to love, comfort, honor, and keep your wife. It was in the vows. I was there.”

      Ash lifted the cricket bat and pointed it at him. “Then you should recall she vowed to obey me. Look how that’s turned out.”

      The butler pulled his arm back, preparing to bowl.

      Ash flinched. “Wait.” He threw the bat aside and held up both hands in surrender. “Listen to me, will you? If she wants to leave for the country, that’s best.” He passed a hand over his twisted face. “She doesn’t need me.”

      “Of course she doesn’t need you.” Khan’s indignant words rang through the ballroom. “Only a fool would underscore it.”

      “What am I supposed to do, then?”

      Khan gave a long-suffering sigh. “Go. To. The. Ball. Whether you agree with her or not. Whether she goes to Swanlea or not. You know how Miss Worthing will be salivating to tear her apart. If you send her to face that on her own, you’re no better than the rest of them. First that rotter Giles—”

      Ash frowned. “Who’s Giles?”

      “The squire’s son. In Hertfordshire. Don’t tell me she hasn’t—”

      “Yes, yes. Of course she told me. I didn’t ask for the blackguard’s name.”

      Khan began again. “First Giles. Then her father. Next, that villain Robert . . .”

      “Wait, wait, wait. There was a Robert?”

      The butler winged the last cricket ball. “Robert. The one who made a pretense at courting her, when his true goal was to learn about the ladies who came into the modiste’s shop? The one who eloped with a rubber heiress? She must have told you this.”

      Not only did Ash not know about Robert—he didn’t even know there could be such a thing as a rubber heiress.

      Khan stalked about the ballroom, gathering the errant cricket balls into the basket. “Every one of those men failed Emma in the same way: He chose protecting his own pride over standing by her. And now you’ve done the same. You’d rather skulk about London playing at ‘monster’ than stand at her side for one night and be the man she needs. How utterly infantile.”

      Ash groaned.

      “You’re going to lose her. And when you do, you are losing me. I’ve served your family for thirty years. I’m due a pension, and I’m not enabling this self-pitying codswallop any further. I wish you all happiness living alone and growing old with your twenty cats.”

      “I never expected any different outcome,” Ash protested. “Emma and I had an arrangement of convenience, not a love match.”

      “Your Grace, you wouldn’t know a love match if it punched you in the stomach.” The butler plunked the basket of cricket balls at Ash’s feet. “Dodge.”

      “What?”

       Thwack.

      Khan dealt him a solid blow to the gut. Ash doubled over.

      The butler tugged on his vest. “You were supposed to dodge.” He bowed deeply, then departed the room.

      Ash was left dazed and hunched over, working for breath. He braced one hand on the wall. “Damn, Khan.”

      He supposed he’d deserved that. And really, what was one more injury atop all the others?

      He’d spent years hurting. For that matter, so had Emma. Neither of them could undo each other’s wounds. He couldn’t go back in time and tell her not to waste her love on a series of increasingly worthless men.

      Ash was her worst choice of all. He was supposed to be the one and only man in her life who hadn’t let her down?

      Impossible. It was already too late.

      But curse it all, perhaps his butler was right. Tonight was different. The gossips of London would eat her alive, and the least he could do was throw himself out as the bloodier cut of meat. Drawing attention was one task to which he was especially well suited.

      “Khan!” He stormed into the corridor. “Brush down my black tailcoat and polish my boots.”

      From the opposite end, the butler gave him a bored look. “I already did, Your Grace.”

      “You are so insufferably presumptuous.”

      “You’re welcome.”

      No time for further conversation. He needed to dress.

      Upstairs, Ash hopped around the bedchamber on one foot, pulling a boot onto the other. He windmilled in a backward circle, chasing his own coat sleeve. His cravat knot resembled a boiled potato. At last, he decided he had sufficient wool and linen heaped upon his person, even if it was in complete disarray.

      After a mad scramble down the stairs, he flung open the rear door to leave, and—

      And the damned cat streaked between his boots, disappearing into the alley behind the mews.

      The little bastard.

      Ash jogged in pursuit. He couldn’t let the cursed beast get away. Someone, or something, had to be there for Emma if everything else went to hell.

      “Breeches!” he called, dashing down to the corner and then hooking left. “Come, Breeches. Come.” He whistled, chirped, snapped his fingers, peered into every crack and crevice. “Breeches!”

      Ash tried, very hard, not to think about how this scene must appear. A scarred madman sprinting up and down the dark lanes of Mayfair, calling the words “come” and “breeches” repeatedly while making kissing noises. Sporting wild hair and a misbuttoned waistcoat. Excellent.

      When the trio of men cornered him in a blind alley, tackling him to the ground and throwing

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