Villiers didn’t even have the strength to read the rest of the letter, which was galling.
He had his chess board by the bed, but he couldn’t seem to keep his mind on a good chess problem, even though Finchley set it up from Chess Analyzed, by Philidor, just as he had asked him to do.
His eyes kept slipping around his room, his empty, tedious room. He had redone it two years ago in a pale gray, the color of an early sky over the ocean, of a day when autumn is just turning into winter. He still liked the color. But it was empty…empty…terribly empty.
He could even find it in himself to regret the fact that his fiancée had left him for Jemma’s brother, though he didn’t give a damn about that when it happened.
“May I bring you some barley soup, Your Grace?” Finchley said, hovering in the doorway like some sort of specter of death.
“No,” Villiers said. And then: “No, thank you, Finchley.”
“A number of visitors called this morning,” Finchley announced with some pride. He took a tray from a waiting footman and displayed it as if it were a baby. Sure enough there was a little heap of cardboard bits, embossed with the names of nobility, acquaintances, friends and the purely curious.
“No, thank you,” Villiers said. There was no one he cared to see among the heaps of cardboard. The truth was that he was depressed. He would have liked to see Benjamin. Benjamin would have rushed into the room like a breath of chill water, and Villiers would have had to say something sharp to him, and would have thought about clumsy-footed puppies and the like.
It was something, to come so close to death. And then to remember that his friend Benjamin had already died.
“I don’t suppose,” he said, just as Finchley was about to leave, “that the Duchess of Beaumont paid a call? Or the Duchess of Berrow?” That would be Benjamin’s widow.
Finchley bowed. “No ladies were among your visitors, Your Grace.” He said it patiently, as though Villiers had forgotten all the social etiquette. Of course no ladies came. Why on earth would Benjamin’s widow pay him a call? Doubtless she blamed him for Benjamin’s suicide.
He would have thought that Jemma might have come. She had said they were friends, after all. One had to suppose that they weren’t as good friends as that. It was hard to remember…his brain was all foggy.
“The Duchess of Beaumont didn’t call, did she?” he asked again, just to make sure.
Finchley got an odd expression on his face, but he shook his head. “No, Your Grace.”
“Raved about her, did I?” Villiers guessed. “I suspect I said all sorts of things, Finchley. I have the oddest memories. Did the solicitor ever come?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Finchley said. “Do you not remember creating your will?”
“Of course,” Villiers said, lying through his teeth. Then he took pity on the uncomfortable manservant. “You may go.”
Finchley disappeared and Villiers stared at his fingers in the light. They had grown thinner, almost transparent, really. Of course Jemma hadn’t visited. She couldn’t visit him. That would be tantamount to telling all London that they were having an affaire—and the worst of it was that they weren’t. In fact, Villiers had been stupid enough, as he recalled it, to turn down what might have been an invitation.
“Fool, fool,” he whispered under his breath.
And then, thinking of Benjamin, “Fool.” The fever was coming back, making his head reel. It lapsed in the mornings, but he felt it coming back now that luncheon was over, approaching like a dark velvet tide that would pull him under.
And for the first time, he thought: I might die. I really might die. And what a fool way to die, dueling over a fiancée for whom he didn’t give a fig. A life thrown away for a careless word, for a twist of steel.