“If you’re sure…” Mr. Bradshaw let his words trail off into silence, but his expression had shifted into abject relief that someone else was willing to take up the mantle of wrangling the marquess.
“I am,” she said. “Although you might have one of the maids prepare some willow bark tea…if his lordship has been drinking as much as you say, he’s certain to be the worse for it.” She patted his arm. “Don’t send Sukey,” she said as she headed for the library. “She’s been through enough for one day, I think.”
There was no sound from the library as she approached it, and the light was dim. Likely the fire had gone out, with no one willing to risk his lordship’s wrath should they enter the room. Only a lamp was lit, in the far corner of the room, shedding a low light that faltered just as it reached the couch, where she could see a stockinged foot hanging over the arm.
She eased closer, letting her eyes adjust to the relative darkness. He was so still that she had initially thought he was asleep—but he wasn’t. Instead he was lying flat on his back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. A chilling blankness had settled over his face, and he looked the epitome of a broken man.
“I threw a book at the last person fool enough to disturb me,” he rasped, hooking his fingers around the decanter of liquor that rested on the floor beneath him and dragging it to his mouth.
“That was not well done of you, my lord,” she said disapprovingly.
“There’s nothing well done of me these days,” he replied, and his voice was cold and dead. “I lost anything that was good of me years ago. And I didn’t even know it.” He let the decanter slip through his fingers and it fell with a thud to the rug on the floor. “I destroy lives. I destroypeople.”
Well. That was true enough, she supposed. But he had announced it with such a wealth of self-recrimination that she could not help but be affected by it. Whatever small part of her that existed that had once loved him, that mightstilllove him despite all the suffering he had inflicted upon her, suffered alongside him.
“You cannot change the past,” she heard herself saying, “but you can change what is yet to be.”
He made an agonized sound, a groan of anguish deep in his chest. “God save me from trite platitudes,” he snarled. “You have no idea—none—of who I am. Of what I have done.”
Claire only just suppressed a snort.
“For just a moment,” he said, and his hands fluttered above his head ineffectually, as if snatching for something that evaded his grasp, “I had the slightest fraction of hope. And now there is nothing. And now I find I cannot decide which is worse—the knowing, or thenotknowing.” He let his hands drop once again, and the left one dangled off the couch. “Nothing matters any longer,” he said. “She’s gone. She was dead and gone years ago.”
Her pulse pounded in her head, and the word escaped before she was even aware of it. “Who?”
“My wife,” he said. “Catherine.”
It shouldn’t have hurt. After so many years, it shouldn’t have hurt. But it did, and she felt the misery of it straight to her toes. The piteous part of her that had nurtured that fragile love she had once shared with him gave a keening wail of despair and fell silent once more.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and the sound had been dredged up from the aching pit of her soul.
“I don’t want to think about her,” he said, and his voice was very nearly plaintive. “As much as I wanted once to remember, now I only want to forget.”
The words didn’t quite make sense, but she chalked that up to a brain addled by enough whisky to kill a horse.
With a tired, longsuffering sigh, he said, “Say something impertinent.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Say something. Anything.” He cast his arm up and laid his palm over his eyes. “Give me just a few moments where I’m not thinking ofher.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know what to say.” What was onesupposedto say to one’s former lover, who had held one in so little esteem that he’d forgotten her entirely and was now despondent over his wife’s passing?
He gestured vaguely with his left hand. “Tell me where you go on your half day off,” he suggested.
Her spine straightened, and she drew in a swift breath. “That is none of your business,” she said crisply.
“I suppose it isn’t.” He huffed his dissatisfaction. “Your given name, then. I’ve never heard anyone use it.”
That, too, lodged a splinter of fury in her chest, for he of all peopleoughtto have known it. “My lord, you ought to be abed. I’m certain you’ll regret this in the morning. And you will owe Sukey an apology, besides, for casting a book at her.” She injected just the right amount of firm reproach into her voice—the same level she reserved for fools and small children.
“She shouldn’t have interrupted me,” he said sulkily, but the snap of command in her voice had worked, and he began the arduous process of peeling himself off of the couch. Or perhaps he had simply recalled his promise to Mrs. Cartwright not to give her any trouble.
In either case, he swayed on his feet and tripped over his discarded boots as he meandered toward the door, shading his eyes against the influx of light coming in through the hallway.
Briskly she said, “Mr. Bradshaw is having one of the maids prepare you some willow bark tea. You will drink it, and you arenotto throw anything injurious at whoever brings it.”
“Impertinent,” he mumbled as he stalked into the hallway and toward the foyer. But the word, which should have sounded like a rebuke, instead sounded almost fond. The stairs challenged him, and she hurried to brace him as he stumbled up them.
