XV. Distance

He’d had to leave her.

There had been an issue with the bank, and his attorney had some “urgent” business. Of course, it was all because he was trying to set up the accounts so she could start her charitable endeavors. All of the discussions could have been done through the mail, he had quickly realized, and that angered him. He was finally comfortable with how he felt about her; he had finally wanted to change his plans.

But. He was in London and she was not.

“Ahem,” Ezekiel rapped his knuckles on the table to get Vaughan’s attention.

With a start, he remembered that he was in White’s with his cousin.

“I could have just told you I’d spent a week with three Nancys on the moon, and you’d be none the wiser,” the Marquee reprimanded him.

“You’re right,” was all Vaughan said before downing his tumbler of whiskey.

“What? No retort? No verbal sparring? No jokes at my expense?” Ezekiel insisted.

“Oh, Zeke, I do not spar with you, I conquer,” the Duke jibed. The alcohol brought a flush to his cheeks, but the shine in his eyes was not due to drink.

“What’s going on?” Zeke asked with narrowed eyes. He tipped his head back slightly and examined the subject before him: slumped shoulders, disheveled necktie, and shaggy hair. Something was amiss.

As Vaughan waved down a waiter to get him another drink, he looked to his friend and shrugged.

“It’s Lecia,” he said.

His companion lit up. “I knew it!” he gritted. “Are you suffering from an infected stab wound? Has she been slipping you strawberries?” He had moved forward to the edge of his seat awaiting a reply.

“No,” Vaughan groaned. He received his fresh glass and swallowed it whole before the waiter could leave; he motioned for the man to bring two the next time.

“I haven’t seen you drink this much since—” Zeke narrowed his eyes again and withheld the urge to slap the Duke across the face. “Good God.”

“I can now tell you with the greatest clarity that I never loved Annika. If this is love—and I have no doubt it is—this is not at all how I felt about her,” Vaughan confessed.

“You’re an idiot,” the Marquee said painfully. “I should have never told you about her; I should have never introduced you to her father; I should have—”

“I don’t think you could have prevented this,” the Duke interrupted.

“Mate, don’t say things like that,” Ezekiel grumbled. “It’s painful for even my masculinity, and I’m the romantic one.”

Vaughan glared for a moment until Zeke rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“I don’t like what she’s done to you,” he huffed.

“She hasn’t done anything,” Vaughan lamented. “Nothing out of the ordinary for her, anyway. It’s just that I realized how lovely she is. The magnitude of her beauty just…struck me, and I was powerless to stop it, and now… Now she must think me a fool. I told her all of these things about not wanting a true wife, or a family, but then I kissed her and she must see me as a hypocrite and an imbecile.” He ran out of breath. “She asked me for a dog,” Vaughan began to chuckle.

“Beg pardon?” Ezekiel snorted.

“When I kissed her,” the Duke laughed, “she asked for a bloody dog. That was all she said to me.”

After the laughter died down, Vaughan grunted, “I mucked it up.” He dropped his forehead to the table with a thud. His friend winced at the sound.

“Christ,” Zeke breathed. “I really did miss the party of the year.”

“You did,” Vaughan said, though it was somewhat muffled.

“I always forget that you shouldn’t have more than one drink,” Ezekiel said, mostly to himself. Vaughan wasn’t very drunk—yet—but for a person of his size and with his reputation, he did a poor job keeping his liquor.

Already knowing that he’d have to take his cousin home, Ezekiel tentatively allowed Vaughan to remain at the club. If anything, he’d get some more information out of the lush Duke. And he and his grandmother could compare notes when she returned home. The Marchioness had spent the last few weeks at Martis; she surely had an opinion of what had been going on there. He briefly unveiled his neat teeth before becoming aware of his corruption at her hand: what kind of a Marquee cherished gossip? What had she done to him?

Banishing the memory of his childhood, Ezekiel returned his attention to the Duke. “What was it you said about not wanting a true wife?”

“Oh,” Vaughan sighed, sitting back up in his seat as his drinks arrived. “I only married so Drothea would have to leave.” He said it so casually that, for a second, Zeke thought he had already known, but he hadn’t.

“Come again?” he asked, tugging Vaughan’s second whiskey glass away as the man drink the first too quickly.

“You know the nuptials were rushed. Half the ton expected her to be visibly pregnant by now.” Vaughan was sufficiently foxed, and he couldn’t stop himself from talking. “Truthfully, I wanted to make Drothea as unwelcome at Martis as possible; I didn’t care who the bride was. Well, I did, but not how you’d think.”

“Really,” Zeke encouraged him to continue.

“Lecia was perfect,” he recalled. “She wanted a life free of a husband, and I wanted a life free of children. They’re precisely the same when you think about it, so we married and she was supposed to resent me and run away as soon as she was able, and I was going to forget I was a married man and keep to my usual activities, and it was going to be perfect.

“But the damn woman is so bloody handsome and clever and amusing. It wasn’t supposed to end up like…this,” he gestured to himself.

“I’m not sure I completely understand what you’re trying to tell me,” Zeke said.

“Neither of us wanted children,” Vaughan divulged. “But now her sister is with child, so we talked about it a bit and she told me that she’d have them if I changed my mind. Not that she expected her choice mattered on the subject.” Seeing that the Marquee was a bit confused Vaughan huffed and tossed back the rest of his tumbler. “Everything is wrong now. I all but told her I loved her and she asked me about a dog. We were friends—though I was sure there was flirting—and now I’ve gone and ruined it.”

Vaughan collapsed on the table again and Zeke groaned. Carrying him out to the cab would be a task, the giant bastard. This incident was effectively worse than the fallout from Annika. However this ended, it would be without the opium this time around. What a disaster that all had been.

“I’m sure it’s not as terrible as you think it is,” Zeke reassured his cousin. “You’ve just had a few too many sips.”

“I’m—what did I do?” Vaughan held his head in his hands.

From some distant corner of the club, Ezekiel heard a familiar tune and perked up.

“Perk up, they’re singing your song, mate,” he grinned. He got up and proceeded to drag his disorganized friend through the aisles of fancily dressed men. As they got nearer, Vaughan could hear the chorus of an old favorite and started to hum along. By the time they came upon the group of flushed faces bobbing up and down with the cadence, the Duke was belting out robust notes with sober clarity.

Perhaps he’d manage to walk himself most of the way out.

Ezekiel had had to drag Vaughan out to hire a cab. It had been a haphazard method of assisting a man, but, while not small, Zeke was neither big nor strong enough to manage his cousin any other way. Goliath had threatened to crush David under his dead weight of muscle.

The drapes had been left open and golden light seeped through Vaughan’s drawn eyelids. He vaguely remembered the previous evening, but his throbbing temples and the sloshing in his gut reminded him quite nicely. A familiar sensation caused his skin to bristle and he brusquely rolled himself off of the bed and onto the floor. Promptly, a tremor wracked his body and he retched on the floor.

“Shit,” he gurgled. His crawl was an embarrassment to babies and he collapsed as he lifted an arm to reach for the wastebasket. He stayed on the ground, twice more heaving the foul contents of his stomach, this time in a basket.

When he finally felt the vomiting was over, he pulled himself up using the bed for assistance. The previous night someone had left a glass of water on the bedside table for him, which he first swished through his mouth and spat out, then took a sip. Setting the water down again, he noticed a shoddily opened missive. Reaching for it, Vaughan recalled what the message had been.

“Shit.”

Hurriedly, he glanced around the room for his things. He pulled on his shoes and his coat, and then stuffed the letter in his pocket. Managing to keep himself from running, Vaughan made his way down the halls of the Shevingtons’ London home; because of the short notice of his visit to town, he didn’t make arrangements to stay at Buckingham. And, if his memory was any indication of his state, he was happy not to have stayed there this time around.

Leaping off of the stairs, Vaughan maneuvered around two maids before he found his cousin sitting in the dining room. Zeke was having breakfast, which he was about to offer to the Duke, but Vaughan got his words out first.

“I have to leave straight away,” he gasped. His body had not been prepared to move so quickly.

“I already sent for your horses,” Zeke said. As Vaughan caught his breath, the Marquee asked: “What on earth did that letter say? You wouldn’t tell me anything last night; you just went on about having to get home, but you were not in any shape for that, which prompted a few more glasses.”

The ache was deep before he even said it aloud. Sorrowfully, he looked to his cousin and clenched his jaw before saying: “Vasyl Harper died.”

A/N: