One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)

With a gentle creak, the door swung open behind her.

Amelia pivoted, meeting face-to-face not with a servant, as she’d anticipated, but with Lily Chatwick herself. For the first time in … oh, it must have been two years. Since Hugh’s funeral, perhaps. They’d been friends as girls—not the closest of friends, as Lily was a few years older. But after the fever that left Lily without hearing, they’d seen one another less and less. She did not come out in society often.

“Amelia?” Lily swept a lock of dark hair from her face. With her other hand, she clutched the neck of her dressing gown closed. “Why, Amelia d’Orsay, whatever are you doing here at this—” Her sleepy, dark-fringed eyes went to the men.

Amelia squeezed her hands into fists. Lily couldn’t have heard her remarks, she reminded herself. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to break the news gently.

“Oh, dear God.” Lily’s hand went to her throat. “Leo’s dead.”

“I knew it,” Lily said some time later, staring blankly at her folded hands. They sat in the parlor. A cup of brandy-laced tea rested on the table, untouched and long gone cold. “Somehow I just knew it, even before you arrived. I’d retired early. I was so very tired last night. But then I woke with a start not an hour later and haven’t been able to sleep since. I just knew he was gone.”

Amelia moved her chair closer to her friend’s. “I’m so sorry.” Such worthless, feeble words. But really, in such a situation, there was nothing helpful to be said.

“I wouldn’t have been able to believe it, had I not felt it in my own heart. As it is, I’ve been growing accustomed to the idea for several hours now. We’ve always known when the other was in danger. Because we are twins, I suspect. Our bond has always been close. During my illness, he took the mail coach all the way home from Oxford, even though no one had written him. I don’t know how I’ll—” Lily bent her head to her folded hands. “It’s just so hard to imagine existing without him, when I never have.”

Her slight shoulders shook as she cried, and Amelia smoothed the black plait of hair running down the grieving woman’s back. The casual observer would never have guessed that she and Leo were twins. Their appearances could not have been more different. Leo had golden-brown hair, bronzed skin—an aura of health and energy radiated from him. By contrast, Lily was fair and dark-haired, of serene and contemplative disposition. The moon to her brother’s sun. Amelia had heard it suggested, in gossipy settings, that the twin birth was a fortunate thing for their mother’s reputation—for no one would believe Leo and Lily to be children of the same father, had they not emerged from the womb within minutes of one another.

Amelia squeezed her friend’s shoulder lightly until Lily lifted her gaze. “It’s hard to imagine Leo gone, even for me. More than anyone in my acquaintance, he always seemed so … so alive. He will be greatly missed.” She gentled her touch, stroking reassuringly. “But you needn’t be anxious. For as many people as there were who loved Leo, there will be equally many eager to assist you, in any way.” She threw a sideways glance toward the doors that connected this parlor with the library. “Just in the other room, you have three of England’s most powerful men, each of them prepared to swim the Channel, if you asked it.”

The corner of Lily’s mouth curved. “Mr. Bellamy is responsible for the presence of the other two, I am sure. Sometimes I think that man will smother me under his good intentions.”

She must have caught Amelia’s fleeting look of skepticism.

“Oh, do not mistake him,” Lily said. “Julian is a gifted performer. His favorite, and most successful, role is that of the incorrigible roué. But he has been a steadfast friend to Leo and no doubt views it his duty to assume brotherly guardianship of me now.”

“Are you certain his interest is entirely brotherly?” Amelia recalled Mr. Bellamy’s behavior in the coach, and his impassioned defense to any remark that might be construed as even mildly disparaging to Lily.

“Oh, yes,” Lily said. “On that point, I am quite certain.”

“I feel I should tell you, on our way here the three of them were arguing over … over who among them should be the fortunate one to marry you.”

“Marry me? I never thought to marry at all.”