Shackled to him. As if he were some sort of beast rather than one of the wealthiest men in England, bearing a title almost as old and as noble as the Queen’s. “I doubt she’ll find it a persecution. She will be a duchess.”
“Your duchess,” Harry spat, bitterness underscoring his angry tone. “Have you forgotten what became of the last one?”
The barb hit him with the precision of an assassin’s blade. He supposed he deserved that as well, but the reminder of Millicent’s death coupled with the tumult of the day undid him. The rushing in his ears returned with a vengeance. His gut compressed, a fresh wave of nausea assailing him.
But he couldn’t allow the darkness to overcome him. Not now. He had to see this through first.
“I have not forgotten.” He forced the words to emerge.
“I’ll marry her.” Harry’s face twisted. “I’m in love with her, damn it.”
Perhaps his brother did believe himself in love with Lady Boadicea Harrington. But a lady did not love a man when she kissed another as she had Spencer. She had burned in his arms, blooming for him. Perhaps she was inconstant, perhaps fickle, or worse, an unfeeling flirt. He didn’t know her well enough to determine the source of her overwhelming reaction to him, but he did know that he was equally afflicted, and he could not allow Harry to marry her in his stead.
“No,” he said. “I ruined her. I’ll marry her.”
Harry’s lip curled into a sneer, and for a beat, he swore his brother would raise his fist against him. But he did not. “I understand why Millicent was so desperate to escape you, Spencer. You’re bloody heartless.”
Yes, he was. That sentimental organ had been torn from his chest long ago. It had no place in his life. Nor did emotion, though he knew a twinge of something foreign as he stared at his sibling. Remorse? Sympathy? Self-loathing?
It little mattered.
He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I’m sorry, brother.”
Harry recoiled as though he’d been struck. “Go to hell.”
He didn’t respond as he watched his brother leave the library, slamming the door with so much force that the paintings on the walls shuddered. It was a matter of course that hell was a place he’d gotten to know quite well over the last few years.
Spencer retrieved his glass and stalked to the sideboard.
More whisky was in order.
reckoning.
That was what this was, Bo thought.
“The Duchess of Cartwright was quite firm in her assertions,” Alex, the Marquis of Thornton, doting husband to her sister Cleo, informed her. His expression was grim. He pinched the bridge of his nose.
He wasn’t the first person she’d ever given a headache in her life, and she was reasonably certain he wouldn’t be the last. She got into scrapes. She got herself out of them. Surely this wasn’t any worse than the time she’d flung a forkful of aspic into the coiffure of the detestable Lady Thistledowne.
“Her Grace was mistaken.” Bo kept her voice calm and unshakeable. The Duke had kindly granted them the use of the green salon for this unwanted and unnecessary meeting, presided over by her brother-in-law and sister.
She loved the pair of them dearly, but everything about this was wrong.
“Bo,” Cleo interrupted in her older-sister voice, “the duke was clear as well when he had his interview with Alex. Whatever happened in the library, the Duchess of Cartwright has no intention of keeping this secret unless you wed Bainbridge.”
“Why should the Duchess of Cartwright care that the duke assisted me with an overturned ankle?” she asked, incensed at the woman’s self-righteous meddling.
“Dearest, you haven’t been limping,” Cleo pointed out.
Oh.
Perhaps she’d forgotten to continue her act, given the flurry of nonsense that had assailed her from the moment she’d left the library. This was why she detested country house parties and sanctimonious prudes both. Not to mention the Duke of Bainbridge.
Yes, this had all begun because the arrogant lummox hadstolenher book.
“I have a hearty constitution,” she argued. “I heal remarkably fast, you know. Why must my good fortune be suspect?”
“Bo.” Cleo frowned at her. “This isn’t the time to be glib.”
