Come the Dawn Read Free Page B

was looking decidedly pale.”
    Monkton toyed with his embroidered waistcoat. “I won’t avoid the subject, if that’s what you’re hinting at, Penn. Thorne was my best friend. If the lady is so fickle to forget him already, I want nothing more to do with her.”
    “Monk, my idiot, it’s been well over a year. Even a Delamere heiress must eventually think of her future. She must marry and marry well. The Duke of Devonham is a doting parent, but even his patience must begin to grow short. I’ve heard her grandmother’s been trotting eligible suitors back and forth, but India refuses to look at any of them. All except for Longborough, perhaps.”
    Monkton snorted. “Longborough?” He studied a sober figure standing among the dowagers. “I don’t believe it. The fellow’s got no sense of color and even less notion of how to tie a cravat. Don’t make a bit of sense to me how India could ever consider him for a husband.”
    “Perhaps the lady looks for something other than the skillful fall of a cravat in a husband when she accepts a proposal,” his companion said with awful irony.
    “Being damned clever again, Penn. Don’t like it. Can’t follow a word in ten when you turn clever and speak in that prodigious cold tone. Wish Thorne were here. He always knew how to handle you. Stap me if I do.” Shaking his head, the viscount heaved a long sigh. “And I don’t give a damn what you say, here’s to Thorne. Best friend any of us ever had. Never made me feel my wits were all to let. Always managed to lend a spare guinea without reading a lecture. Taught me how to tie my first Mathematical knot, too.” Of the three, this last skill was clearly the highest accolade for Monkton. “Here’s to you, Devlyn Carlisle, wherever you are. You’re bloody well missed, old friend.”
    ~ ~ ~
     
    Out in the street, beyond the clattering carriages, beyond the jewel-clad women, beyond the urchins in tattered shirts lined up for a look at the gentry in all their splendor, a man stood surveying the Duchess of Cranford’s brightly lit ballroom.
    His tall frame was swathed in a heavy, caped riding coat. His eyes were brooding, their silvery depths aglint in the moonlight.
    Travelers swirled around him. Grimy children begged for a spare pence. But the sober figure gave no notice. His eyes were locked on the windows of the ballroom at the far side of the square.
    The Watch moved past, then stopped. “Lost, are you? New to London, mayhap?”
    The man seemed to rouse himself. His lips took on a bitter smile. “Not lost. I’ve merely been … gone some months.”
    “Looking for an address, are you? Or information about a certain resident? Someone you were fond of?”
    The silver eyes narrowed. “I have all the information I shall ever need.”
    At the coldness in his tone, the Watch took an involuntary step back. “Well, then, I’ll be off. Clearly, you have no need of me.”
    There was no answer from the broad-shouldered figure in the shadows. Before him the road stretched dark, like a gorge that separated him from the very different man he had been before the horrors of Waterloo.
    For he was Devlyn Carlisle and he was alive, yet not alive.
    He was returned, yet not truly returned.
    He fingered his chest, where a French cavalry sword had laid him low in the Belgian mud. There he’d lain for two days before his body was finally discovered.
    Memories…
    Always too many memories. And of her, not enough.
    He slid his hat lower and moved into the glittering throng spilling toward Devonham House. He would have to work to make his way inside in this crush. All London had turned out to see the duchess’s beautiful granddaughter, it seemed.
    And though it was utterly rash, Devlyn could not keep from joining them.
    As he turned down a side street, Thornwood’s face slid into view, all hard lines and angles. And in the glow of the lamplight the scar at his jaw gleamed with cold brilliance.
    ~ ~ ~
     
    White candles danced in the