Free Wedding of the Season by Laura Lee Guhrke Page A

he couldn’t consider the course his friend was suggesting.
    He thought of his parents’ empty marriage, a bargain trading his mother’s wealth for his father’s title. It had never been about love. He thought of his mother’s shallowness and obsession with title and position, he thought of his father’s innate laziness and greed, and the words to explain why he couldn’t do the same stuck in his throat. “I didn’t mean you,” he said at last. “I know you loved Susanna. I know you didn’t marry her for her money.”
    Paul held his hand up, palms out in a gesture of truce. “I accept your apology. But to return to the point, I think you’re being far too fastidious about this. You’re a duke, and though you might not think your title’s worth much, there are plenty of women with rich fathers who would disagree, especially among the Americans. The shine’s rather gone off the transatlantic marriage nowadays, but there are still quite a few girls coming across the pond hoping to become duchesses. It wouldn’t be a quick solution, but it’s a feasible one.”
    Will thought of his father, of the fawning deference accorded the old man because he’d been a duke, of the servants who had stopped their work and turned their faces to the wall whenever he’d walked by and who’d served him on a tray so he wouldn’t run the risk of touching them. He thought of his mother, a wealthy American’s daughter who’d bought herself a duke, of how ruthlessly she’d slashed the least influential people from her invitation lists, fighting for a position of social respect until the day she died. He thought of himself, a lonely little boy who’d spent most of his time isolated in the nursery until he could be shipped off to school at the age of nine—out of sight, out of mind, and out of the way. “No. I won’t do it.”
    He got up and walked to the French window. Leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb, he looked out at the expanse of lawn, not so well-manicured now as it used to be when they played football on it as boys. Like everything else in their class of life, it had rather gone to seed.
    “How many of our lot have married these wealthy American girls for their money?” he asked, staring past the lawn to tufted, orderly squares of growing crops, marked by the darker green of hedgerows. “A dozen? Two? My father, both our grandfathers—hell, if I tried, I could probably name a hundred peers who’ve done it. It didn’t do any of them a bit of good.”
    Paul groaned at this renewal of a conversation they’d had many times during their days at Cambridge, but Will persevered. “All those American dollars pouring in to prop up our dying aristocracy, and for what? It’s still dying. No, I want a life that means something, something more than the next ball, the next race meeting, the next season.” He turned to face his friend. “That’s why I went to Egypt in the first place.”
    “Fine.” Paul leaned back, spreading his arms in a gesture of capitulation. “Stick to your principles and sneer at those of us who made a different choice. Principles won’t help you find Tut.”
    “If I wait, I won’t find him at all. Someone else will. I won’t let that happen.”
    “You could spend your entire life looking for that blasted tomb and never find it.”
    “Possibly.”
    “Damn it, Will, isn’t it time to stop tilting at windmills? You’re nearly broke, you haven’t found Tut, and my cousin’s marrying someone else. Look what this obsession has cost you. When are you going to give up?”
    “Never, but thank you for reminding me of all my failures thus far.”
    Paul sighed. “I don’t mean to kick you when you’re already down.”
    “On the contrary. You give me hope.”
    “Hope?”
    He grinned. “Hope my luck is about to change.”
    His oldest friend made a sound of exasperation. “Do you ever stop being such a cockeyed optimist?”
    “No.” Will’s grin faded. He was a cockeyed optimist,