“I should have told ye,” Tavish nodded, wiping away blood from his nose. “Not that it’s an excuse, but Isla begged me not to. She wanted to control how and when ye learned. I think she intended to tell ye this morning, when ye proposed.”
“Your wife, you mean?! When I proposed marriage to yourwife!” Fletch was pacing now.
“Aye. My wife.”
A flurry of footsteps sounded in the hallway. Lord Milmouth appeared in a nightshirt and cap, a banyan loosely drawn around his shoulders and a candle held aloft. The ladies crowded behind him, standing on tiptoe, eyes wide.
His lordship’s gaze flicked between his son still shaking his hand and Tavish dripping blood.
“I say,” his lordship rumbled, “what the blazes is going on? Lady Isla in hysterics and Grayburn in a thunderous fury? And now this?”
Tavish looked at his two friends. Somehow, despite everything, they still understood each other. Fletch jerked his chin toward the door, turning to stare out the window.
“Later, my lord.” Ross politely, but firmly, shut the door in their faces.
“But what happened?!” Tavish heard Miss Crowley say, a bit too loudly. “Why is Captain Balfour bleeding?”
Ross handed Tavish a handkerchief, which he took with murmured thanks. His eye would be properly black and blue by tomorrow. He could already feel it pulsing.
“You knew!” Fletch pointed an accusing finger at Ross.
Ross held up his hands, palms out. “I put the clues together a few days ago, Fletch. I haven’t known long. Balfour requested that Lady Isla be the one to tell ye. I wasn’t going to betray the lady like that.”
Fletch growled and returned to his pacing.
“I’ve hurt my hand,” he muttered, flexing his fingers. “Damn you and your hard head, Balfour. You won’t even permit a fellow the pleasure of punching you properly.”
Tavish watched Fletch as he crossed from the fireplace to the window and back again.
“I still intend to divorce her, Fletch.”
“After that panting display?!”
“She doesn’t want me.”
Fletch laughed. A caustic burst of sound. “If that kiss wasn’t the very definition of wanting, then I haven’t the foggiest notion of what the hell wanting is! She certainly didn’t kiss me like that.”
Tavish flinched, but soldiered on. “I have nothing to offer her, Fletch, as well ye know. I’m no better than a pauper. That hasn’t changed.”
Fletch continued in his pacing.
“Well, at least I know now you’re human,” his friend muttered. “I had wondered at times.”
Tavish dabbed at his nose. “Far too human.”
Human enough to feel the reverberating cracks of the evening’s events.
He was well and truly wrecked . . . in every sense of the word.
Finally, Fletch stopped and faced him. The man’s expression hardened, moving from that of a friend to the fierce colonel the French army had feared.
“I think you and Ross should leave at first light.” Fletch crossed to the door. “After the events of tonight . . . I need some space to ponder my next steps and whether my future will include either of you at all.”
He exited with a loudclack.
Isla pounded onGray’s bedroom door.
“Gray! Speak with me!”
