“What’s troubling you?” Jack asked.
He was the only person Luke knew who was better at reading people than Luke was.
“Have you ever loved anyone?”
“You mean besides my mum?”
Luke was dumbfounded as he stared at Jack. He knew his friend’s story. “She sold you when you were five.”
Jack shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t love her. Just means she didn’t love me.”
Sipping his whiskey this time, Luke pondered Jack’s words. He’d always assumed because he loved Frannie that she loved him back. Could love have only one side to it and still be love?
Had anyone ever loved him before he was unofficially adopted by Feagan and his merry brood? If they had, wouldn’t he remember?
“That night you found me in the alley, behind the garbage, did I say anything?”
“Like what?”
Luke ran his finger around the rim of the glass. “Something that might have given you a hint as to what I was doing there.”
“I didn’t need you to say anything to give me a hint. It was obvious. You were dying.”
“But how did I come to be there?”
“Looked to me like someone had kicked you out. You were skinny, your clothes torn. Do you really want to know the truth of it?”
Luke rubbed his forehead as pain began to throb. The late hours, the encounter with Catherine were taking a toll.
“You’re not thinking you’re really Claybourne, are you?” Jack asked.
Luke shook his head. Claybourne, the real Claybourne, would have been worthy of Catherine. Something Luke would never be. She was a lady, and he was a scoundrel.
“Has Lady Catherine taught Frannie what she needs to know?” Jack asked.
Luke sighed. “It’s as though she’s taught her nothing.”
“Is that why you look like a man who’s lost his best friend?”
Leaning forward, Luke dug his elbows into his thighs and held the glass between both hands, studying the few drops that lined the bottom. “I’ve been with several women through the years, Jack. No matter what I did with them, I never felt disloyal to Frannie.
With Catherine, I feel disloyal to Frannie by simply speaking with her.”
“No harm in just speaking to her.”
He wasn’t going to confess that he’d done more than speak to her.
“Sometimes I worry that Frannie doesn’t love me, and just doesn’t know how to tell me.” He studied the way Jack drank his whiskey. “If that were the case you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? If you knew? You wouldn’t leave me to make a fool of myself.”
“Love is a stranger to me, Luke. Other than my mum, no woman has ever held my affections.”
“Not even Frannie?”
“I like her well enough, but that’s not love, is it?”
Luke was fairly sure that Jack was lying. He certainly wasn’t being honest about something.
Luke set his glass on the desk and stood. “No. Like isn’t love.”
