The cravat was trying to kill him.
Caelan stood before the mirror in his city estate dressing room — a narrow, over-gilded chamber that smelled of cedar and regret — and fought with a length of white silk that had apparently decided, in the manner of all inanimate objects that sensed weakness, to become his mortal enemy. The fabric twisted. Bunched. Refused to lie flat against his throat in the precise, architectural fold that Bellmere society demanded of a duke attending his own courtship announcement.
He had tied this knot ten thousand times. He had tied it in the dark, in the rain, on horseback, in the middle of a duel, once while bleeding from a wound that would have killed a lesser man. He had tied it with one hand. He had tied it drunk. He had tied it while Lucien set fire to a cathedral.
Tonight, his fingers would not cooperate.
