“Youmay havecompromised her, or youdid?” Gill asked.
It would seem they had both been acting the scoundrel this house party. Who would have believed it? Not him.Bloody hell, what was the matter with them? Perhaps they were more their father’s sons than either of them had realized.
“I did,” Ash admitted with a grimace. “It was unintentional, I swear it, and nothing untoward occurred. Well, actually, it did, but that was before we were discovered.”
Sadly, his brother’s words resonated, for they were all too familiar.
“Nothing you are saying is reassuring me,” Gill said as it occurred to him that both he and Ash had compromised Winter sisters at the same house party. Perhaps even on the same day.
Lord God have mercy upon them.
“It is…complicated,” Ash told him. “Suffice it to say, the lady took a fall in the snow, and I was left with no recourse but to help her disrobe so her garments would dry.”
Was it wrong of him that for a moment he wished something similar had befallen himself and Christabella? A well-timed fall in the snow, the necessity of removing a wet gown…
Yes, he told himself. It was wrong of him to think. Such thoughts ought to be beneath him.
What a shame they are not, whispered a hideous voice within.
A voice he promptly quashed as he pinned his brother with a look of disapproval. “Ash. Tell me you did not seduce her.”
“I did not seduce her,” Ash said quickly before raking a hand through his hair. “That is the truth. At least, not in the moment when we were discovered. But never mind that. We were in the false ruins, and my garments were quite sodden as well. I had no recourse but to join her beneath the fur, and then we—”
“Bloody hell, Ash!” Gill burst out. “Did you have to tup the sister of the woman I want to make my wife? Could you not have waited until the damned wedding night?”
“We fell asleep!” Ash was indignant until the remainder of Gill’s words apparently hit him, and his expression changed entirely, as if he were just fully grasping the situation for the first time. “The woman you want to make your wife? Youdowant to marry the hellion.”
“She is not a hellion,” he felt compelled to defend this time around.
She was beautiful and seductive. Silly and wonderful. She threw snowballs at him and tickled him. She kissed him. She made him long for her desperately.
He had spent most of his life locked away from feeling and emotion, much the way his father had locked him in that chamber so long ago. He did not even know if it was possible for him to love a woman. He loved his brother, but that was not the same. They shared blood and a haunted past. They were all each other had.
Christabella, however…she was different.
Ash started laughing then. Uncontrollably. He carried on until his maniacal laughter produced tears in his eyes and he was forced to withdraw a handkerchief from his coat and dab at his eyes.
Gill was just about to ask his brother if he was feeling well when Ash spoke again at last. “What a pair we are. Perhaps I was right when I said there is something in the food here. A poison that rots men’s minds and makes them more susceptible to matchmaking.”
There was a poison afoot indeed, and Gill was fairly certain what it was, much to his dismay.
“The poison is love,” he decided, his grim mood returning.
For what could love be but a poison if it existed only as a source of torment? If a man found the woman he wanted to marry and she told him no?
Twice, curse it.
“But is love a poison, or is it a cure?” Ash stroked his jaw as he appeared to contemplate the question himself. “It seems one could argue either way.”
Gill sighed. The way he felt when he was with Christabella—if it was indeed love—more than made up for the suffering. And yet knowing he may have lost his heart to her whilst there remained the very real possibility she had only been flirting with him and kissing him out of boredom or—worse—curiosity, stung.
“One could, indeed,” he finally allowed reluctantly.
He and Ash were silent for a moment, a tacit acknowledgment passing between them.
“Let us hope it is a cure,” Ash decided.
Gill was certain it was the poison. It sure as hell felt that way now, festering inside his gut, threatening to be his undoing.
