Vivian Rourke looked at the folded note on the hall table and smiled.
“I knew you wouldn’t stay away.”
Gardenia perfume drifted through the narrow entrance of her East Seventy-Third Street townhouse.
Vivian wore deep blue silk, her dark hair arranged carelessly enough to suggest she had not been waiting even though everything about the room said otherwise: two glasses prepared on the drawing-room table, fire laid despite the mild April evening, curtains already drawn against curious neighbors.
Duke Alden removed his gloves one finger at a time.
Vivian watched him with amusement.
“Was it dreadful?”
“Was what dreadful?”
“The ceremony.
The relatives.
The photographers.
All that white satin and respectable suffering.”
She laughed softly.
Duke did not.
For the first time in nearly two years, Vivian’s confidence did not charm him.
It exposed something.
Perhaps it exposed him.
She stepped closer.
“Sebastian.”
Only a handful of people used his first name.
Vivian did it because she believed intimacy entitled her to something the rest of the world could not claim.
Her hand reached for his lapel.
He caught her wrist gently before she touched him.
Vivian’s expression changed.
Not fear.
Surprise.
“What is this?”
Duke released her.
“I came because we need to speak.”
She stared for half a second, then smiled again.
“Of course we do.
Your first day as a married man.
I imagine you’re desperate to assure me nothing has changed.”
That sentence landed harder than she intended.
Nothing has changed.
It was exactly what Duke had believed that morning.
Claire would occupy Alden House.
Vivian would occupy this townhouse.
The city would nod politely at one woman and whisper knowingly about the other.
Duke would move between them without consequence because wealth had taught him that inconvenience was something other people absorbed for him.
Vivian turned toward the drawing room.
“Come inside.
You look as if Judge Halpern sentenced you instead of congratulating you.”
Duke remained in the hall.
She looked back.
“Well?”
“I am not staying.”
The smile disappeared.
Outside, carriage wheels rattled over the street.
Inside, the mantel clock clicked with absurd clarity.
Vivian folded her arms.
“Then say whatever performance you’ve prepared.”
Duke glanced at her note.
“You wrote that you trusted the ceremony was painless.”
“It was a joke.”
“I know.”
