Anthony glanced at the woman in question. Lady Thornwood was beautiful in the way women at these establishments tended to be: dark hair arranged in artful disarray, décolletage displayed to excellent advantage, lips curved in the practicedsmile of someone who knew precisely what men wanted and how to provide it.
Three months ago, he would have taken her upstairs without a second thought.
Now, he felt nothing.
“Your Grace?” Lady Thornwood leaned closer, her voice dropping to the husky register women used when they wanted to sound inviting. “Perhaps we might find somewhere more… private?”
He should say yes. He should take her hand and lead her upstairs and lose himself in her body until he stopped thinking about hazel eyes and paint-stained fingers and the way Caroline had looked at him when she left his house.
Instead, he said, “I am afraid I must decline. I have an early appointment tomorrow.”
It was a lie. He had no appointments. He had nothing but an empty house and the memory of Caroline’s voice saying his name as she came apart beneath his mouth.
Lady Thornwood’s smile tightened fractionally before smoothing back into place. “Of course, Your Grace. Another time, perhaps.”
She rose with the fluid grace of a woman who had been dismissed before and would be dismissed again and moved across the room to where another man was watching her with undisguised interest.
Gideon was quiet for a long moment. Then: “What happened?”
“Nothing happened.” Anthony signaled for another drink.
“You have been miserable for a week. You are drinking more than usual. You turned down a woman who was all but offering herself on a platter. Something happened.”
Anthony looked at his friend. Gideon’s expression was patient, concerned, and entirely too perceptive.
“It is nothing,” Anthony said.
“Is it a woman?”
The question landed with uncomfortable accuracy. Anthony said nothing but could not resist spearing his nosy friend with a glare.
“Ah.” Gideon sat back. “It is a woman. Well. That explains the brooding.”
“I am not brooding.”
“You are absolutely brooding. You have been brooding for days. I would wager money that you are brooding over… her. Again.”
Anthony’s jaw tightened. “It does not matter.”
“It clearly matters a great deal, given that you are sitting here refusing perfectly good company and drinking yourself into a stupor.”
Anthony said nothing. He thought of Caroline in the studio, her hair coming loose from its pins, paint smudged on her temple. The way she had looked at him when he told her the arrangement was over, as though he had just ripped something vital out of her chest.
The way he felt when he did it.
“She is not mine to have,” Anthony said at last.
Gideon watched him for a long moment. “And you are simply going to let that happen?”
“What would you have me do?” Anthony’s voice was harsher than he intended. “Ruin her? Compromise her into a marriage she does not want?”
“I would have you consider, once more, whether she wants you, my friend.”
She had wanted him. That was the problem. She had wanted him with the same desperate intensity he had wanted her, and he had sent her away anyway because keeping her would have destroyed her.
Anthony stood abruptly. “I am going home.”
“Running away again will not help,” Gideon said.