The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)(103)

Sera shook her head. “I don’t want to marry him, Sesily. I’m just curious.”

“Oh. Good then.”

“He is married,” Sophie offered. “The marchioness frequents the bookshop.”

“Helen,” Sera said. “Her name is Helen.”

“Well, I’ve only ever called her Lady Mayweather, but yes, I think it is. Did you know her? Before?”

She shook her head, barely speaking above a whisper, distracted by the man far below. “I knew of her. I knew that he was besotted.” She was distracted by the fact that he entered the Content Lobby. The Marquess of Mayweather voted for divorce. Why? Wouldn’t he side with his friend? “She likes cats,” she said, vaguely. Nearly unaware of what she was saying.

If Malcolm wanted a divorce, wouldn’t he ask his friends to vote with him?

“I also like cats,” Sesily said. “Has anyone seen Lady Felicity since she returned to town? I was so happy she returned Brummell. Someone should have her to dinner.”

“You could have her to dinner,” Seleste said.

Sesily shook her head. “No one will let their unmarried daughter befriend me.” After the events at the Sparrow, Sesily’s name had been plastered throughout the papers, and their parents were threatening to send her away from London to restore her reputation. As though such a thing were possible.

“Sophie should host her. She’s the most respectable of the lot of you.”

“Oh, yes,” Seleste smirked. “She’s never done anything scandalous.”

“Well, her scandal ended in a marquessate.”

As Sera watched, another man exited the Content Lobby far below, stopping to speak to several others in a tightly knit group. She couldn’t place them, but they were terribly familiar.

“Sera?” Sophie said, quietly, as though she could sense Sera was thinking.

“Who is that man?”

Sophie turned to look. “The big one is the Duke of Lamont. The tall ginger is the Earl of Arlesley. And the handsome one is the Marquess of Bourne. They own a club.”

Not just any club. They owned Haven’s club.

And they were voting for divorce.

Something was happening. Her breath came fast in her chest. Something was afoot, and she could not work it out. Where was Mal? Would he not cast his vote? Why not? Why let her sit in the gallery and wait for the results as though she were waiting for the guillotine?

It had been three weeks since she’d left him, sleeping at Highley, and he’d left her at the Sparrow. She’d seen him there, in the audience. It had been impossible not to see him, and not only because he and her sister had colluded to destroy a table and several chairs at the Sparrow, and sent four men battered and bruised to the ground.

She’d seen him the moment he’d entered.

But Mal had disappeared, as though the night had never happened. Which was, Sera supposed, what she had always hoped for him to do. Except, once it was done, she seemed not to want that at all. He’d disappeared and, somehow, all she wanted was to see him.

Why wasn’t he here?

“Sera,” Sophie said her name a third time. When Sera looked, it was to discover her youngest sister, watching her carefully. “Do you still want it?”

The question was nearly too much. Of course she wanted it, didn’t she? She’d wanted it for years. It had been the thing she’d promised herself in the years she’d had nothing. After she’d lost everything—the marriage of which she’d dreamed, the husband she’d loved, the child she’d birthed, the future she’d imagined. And when she’d run, she’d even lost these women, her sisters.

Divorce was to close the door on all that loss and give her a chance to begin again. “Everything I’ve ever loved has turned to rubbish. Everything but the Sparrow.”

For nearly three years, the only time Sera had ever been happy was on the stage, first, in Boston as the Dove and then here, as the Sparrow. In song, she had always found herself.

And if she had nothing else, she at least had that.

“I cannot be the Sparrow and the duchess. I never wanted to be. But now . . .” She let the words trail off.

“But now . . . ?” Sophie always saw the truth before the rest of them.

Sera looked to the floor far below, absent of Mal. Thought of the past three weeks, absent of Mal. Where was he? Had he decided not to be here? Not to chase her? He’d spent the last three years chasing her. He’d traveled the Continent. He’d sailed to Boston. He’d searched for her.

He’d loved her.

Even as she’d believed she’d lost everything, he’d loved her.

And now, he was gone.

And it felt, somehow, like she was losing everything all over again, and this time, she was not certain the Sparrow would save her.

“My lords, the votes are tallied,” the Lord Chancellor boomed from his place at the far end of the floor. “And I am surprised and not a little amazed that the result is a tie. Eighty of my lords have cast a Content vote, and eighty a Non-Content vote.”

Sera caught her breath in shock as the collected aristocrats hemmed and hawed and harrumphed, several calling out their vocal discontent for the scenario.

“A demmed tie?”

“As though it weren’t enough that we wasted a day voting on a dratted divorce!”