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icily back at her husband. The silence between them pronounced their mutual contempt more loudly than any angry words could have. He felt suddenly smothered. “God,” he muttered, running a finger inside his collar, “it’s so damned hard to breathe in this country.”
    “Sir?”
    “Never mind.” He eased back in his chair with a sigh. “Trousers and a smoking jacket are good enough for dining alone, Aman. And I’ll eat in the breakfast room, not the formal dining room.”
    “Very good, sir.” The valet bowed and departed, and Will stared at his outstretched leg with aggravation. Ages since he’d fallen from a horse. Due to Aman’s vile camphor liniment, the pain was beginning to ease, but if all went well with Paul, he probably wouldn’t have time to take Mr. Robinson’s wind-fast gelding racing across the moor. He felt a tinge of disappointment at that. He’d always loved the moor—loved the wild beauty, the rugged tors and mossy dells. The moorland from horseback was one of the things in Devonshire he’d really missed during his years away.
    But not the only thing , a devilish voice inside him whispered.
    Unbidden, an image of brown eyes and blond hair came into his mind, and before he realized what he was doing, he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket. He pulled out the folded scrap of newspaper, an announcement torn from the society page of the Times last January.
The Earl of Danbury is pleased to announce the engagement of his cousin, Lady Beatrix, to His Grace, the Duke of Trathen . . .

    Will’s hand tightened to a fist, crumpling the yellowed scrap of paper, remembering the day he’d seen it. Rooted to his chair at the club in Thebes, he’d stared down at the news that by then had been a month old, reading the announcement of her engagement over and over again, trying to accept it. He’d torn the announcement out of the paper and stuck it in the breast pocket of his jacket, too shocked to even realize what he was doing.
    His surprise didn’t stem from conceit, for he’d known she would eventually marry. She was too desirable a woman, she wanted marriage and children too much, not to do so. No, his surprise had stemmed not from the announcement, but from his own reaction to it. He’d felt as if he’d been hit square in the chest, a painful blow, leaving an ache that had taken ages to subside.
    But it had subsided. He’d recovered since that day nine months ago. He’d reminded himself it was all for the best. He’d prayed for her happiness, and he’d tried to mean it. Yet he still hadn’t been able to toss this stupid little scrap of paper. He always kept it in his breast pocket, always within easy reach.
    Go to Egypt? Abandon my father, my home, and all our friends? Sleep in a tent, drink water from a canteen, and bathe out of a tin basin? Are you mad?
    The moment she’d said those words, in that appalled voice, her eyes wide with horror at the prospect, he’d known the inevitable end of the story. Three days of arguing, each of them trying with all they had to persuade the other to an impossible choice, each of them hoping the other would be the one to give in, to change, to embrace a life that only the other one wanted.
    Go to Egypt? Are you mad?
    The truth was, any hope that they could have a life together had ended the moment she’d spoken those words. Or perhaps it had really ended before that, when he’d received Sir Edmund’s telegram, and he’d seen a way to escape the pointless life that had been laid out for him since the day he was born.
    Perhaps that was why he kept this scrap of paper—to remind himself of how narrowly he’d escaped a suffocating life of pointless duties and silly social rituals, a life he would have hated. Or perhaps, he thought with a wry smile, his reason was simpler. Perhaps he kept it just to prove to himself he was over her.
    He realized he’d wadded the announcement into a ball within his fist, and he forced himself to relax his