“On account ofourfoolishness,” Monty interrupted indignantly. “Torrie was a part of it, you will recall. Racing was his idea.”
She compressed her lips. “As you say.”
“Because it is true, by Satan’s chemise,” Monty insisted.
“Lord Torrington cannot recall,” she pointed out. “He did not even recall his own name when he awoke. Given the circumstances, I hardly think you are in a position to ask Hattie to wed you. Or to expect her to accept your proposal if you have the daring to make one.”
“Of course she will accept me.” He scowled at her. “I am a duke.”
Catriona sighed. “Dukes do not impress Hattie.”
“I am also the Marquess of Ashby,” he countered. “And the Viscount Lisle. She may take her pick of any of my other titles if a duke will not do.”
“Hattie is not impressed bytitles,” Catriona elaborated, taking pity on her brother, who seemed genuinely perplexed by the notion Hattie would not leap into his arms immediately upon the delivery of his proposal. “She has had her choice of suitors, but none of them have suited her.”
“Fops, all of them,” Monty growled. “Lord Hayes has a beak of a nose, and the Earl of Rearden is a scoundrel.”
Monty knew the names of Hattie’s most recent suitors?Interesting. Very interesting indeed.
“Youare a scoundrel,” she pointed out.
“One who owes her brother a debt of honor, having been the man who did not stop him from drinking the last of the blue ruin and who raced him instead,” Monty countered.
“You truly believe you can somehow rectify the events of yesterday by wedding Hattie?” Catriona knew without a shred of a doubt that her friend would never have him.
“I do not merely believe it,” her brother said with complete confidence. “I know it.”
“You were also once convinced you could make a flying machine,” she could not help reminding him. “I will never forget the sight of you on the turrets at Castle Clare, with those wings fastened to your back.”
“It was an excellent idea,” he argued. “I have simply never had the opportunity to test subsequent models. If the wind had not caught the wings prior to fastening them to me, they would not have flown down to the courtyard and become hopelessly mangled. Marrying Miss Lethbridge will be a far easier achievement to accomplish than flight.”
She well recalled the sight of the wings crashing to the ground. Their father had been furious when he had learned what Monty had been about.
“Hattie will not have you, Monty,” she felt compelled to tell her brother. She knew her friend. There was simply no means through which Hattie would ever agree to marry Monty, who she regularly dismissed as a scandalous jackanapes.
“Of course she will,” he argued with complete confidence. “She harbors a secrettendrefor me. Has for some time, I daresay.”
Surely it was the laudanum and not Monty speaking now?
She studied him. “Has someone given you whisky?”
“No.”
“Gin?”
“No.”
She thought for a moment. “Brandy?”
“Damnation, Cat,” he roared. “It is just the bloody laudanum. And it is time for me to have more, I am certain of it. My pain grows worse by the second.”
“You may have more after the wedding,” she said, quite certain Monty had received his dosage already and that he was not due another for several hours.
“Would you have me in severe pain when I give my only sister to the black-hearted, half-Spaniard who shot me?” Monty demanded.
“How is your wound?” she asked.
Though a few weeks had passed since the ill-fated duel which had set in motion the events of today, the accident may well have caused him to reinjure himself.
