He found the gentleman in question. An ex-army man, Huffington was in his forties, tall, dark-haired with cold, dark, onyx eyes. It spoke of a man who had seen too much darkness in his life to count the light.
“Huffington,” he greeted him. “May I have a minute of your time?”
“Your Grace,” he inclined his head to a quiet corner. “What can I do for you?”
“I have it on good authority that you used to mentor a man named Frederick Wycliffe, the current Viscount of Marchwood. Do you know where he is?”
Huffington gawked at him as if William had asked him to fetch cheese from the bottom of the ocean or pluck it from the moon. Uneasy, William waited for his answer.
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?” William asked.
With a muscle in his jaw clenching, Huffington ground out, “I told that daft boy not to push himself too hard, I warned him, but he did nae listen. Already hell-bent on winning that fortune for himself and his sister, he stepped into the ring with themasked marauder,withyou—twice.”
Dread began to settle in William's gut, and it built until it clogged his throat with a lump the size of a West Indies Island. “With me?Twice?”
Huffington’s response came as a silent nod.
The entirety of his world seemed to dawn on him all at once. “Wait. Do you mean… do you meanRickywas—”
“Frederick,” Huffington affirmed lowly. “An alias of his he acquired in the army. And you, good sir, put him down for good a month ago.”
Horror and disbelief made caustic rounds in his breastbone and almost took his knees out from under him. Slapping a hand to the wall, he swallowed over the bile racing up his throat while his vision splintered in two.
The memory of Ricky falling over, frothing at the mouth made his blood chill and acid burn right through his stomach.
He had killed Bridget’s brother. Unknowingly and unintentionally of course but that did not negate the fact that his blow to the chest had sent the man to his grave.
How could he tell Bridget? Should he tell her at all?
“Don’t take it too hard, Your Grace,” Huffington muttered, clapping William’s shoulder. “As determined as he was and as foolhardy as he was, someone else woulda’ landed the blow. It was only a matter of time.”
Huffington’s cold comfort did not make much of a difference; in his mind’s eye, William could only see over and over the distress and hatred radiating from Bridget’s eyes when he told her. A heated spear jammed itself in his heart at the thought. What curse was this?
He could not tell the lady he loved he had murdered her brother.
She would hate him to the day he died and in the life after.
Was it not just yestereve she wished she hadn’t asked of you to look for her brother? Was it not that moment she was about to choose you over him?
It did not matter a whit. Frederick was her brother. Didn’t family ties trump a marriage?
“I buried him in a pauper's grave in Highgate Cemetery.”
“I—I—” William raked fingers through his hair and grabbed the roots in confused frustration and grief. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Get a drink,” Huffington advised. “Some of the good stuff. It’ll help.”
No, it won’t.
Teeth grit, William went to change; he needed to work off sudden aggravation.She is going to hate me to the day I die, and I do not think my love for her will be any balm. I will just have to prepare myself to lose her. After tonight.
CHAPTER 28
“The ballroom?” Bridget asked in shock at the footman of a sprawling estate in Mayfair mansion. “Can a prizefighting bout be held here?”
“For the major patron of the Circuit, yes ma’am,” the footman bowed. “Now, please.”
