“Apparently, I’m no better at keeping my word than our father was.”
Their father had not been a good or kind man. He’d been selfish and greedy, and he had compromised their mother to secure her dowry for himself, only to carry on with a string of mistresses after he had what he wanted. Pamela couldn’t blame their mother for her bitterness, but neither did she want to believe her brother was anything like their sire.
“Your lack of control is appalling,” she agreed coolly. “Truly, Ridgely. Could you not have found one of your light-skirts and dallied with her instead?”
“I am a scoundrel,” her brother said. “It is one of the reasons, I dare say, why my own family reviles me.”
What tomfoolery was this? Despite her vexation with him for his failures where Lady Virtue was concerned, Pamela loved Ridgely dearly.
“We do not revile you,” she denied.
“Mother does,” he argued.
Their mother was an unhappy dragon, the product of her life with their father and the loss of her favorite sons, Bartholomew and Matthew.
“Mother reviles everyone,” Pamela pointed out.
Ridgely quirked a brow. “I challenge you to find someone she reviles more than I.”
“Why are we speaking of our mother when the subject at hand is your egregious conduct?” She sighed and shook her head, turning her mind to where it was better served—limiting the spread of the damaging fire about to burst forth. “Tongues will wag quite furiously. Everyone will assume you have ruined Lady Virtue.”
“Let them wag.” Ridgely waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t give a damn about gossip. I never have.”
Naturally not, being a man. But Pamela did. She had to, as a widow with nothing to recommend herself save her good reputation. One she had been doing a quite excellent job of ruining on her own without this added muddle.
“ButIdo,” she countered. “Of course, you have not thought of the effect this news will have upon Lady Virtue or myself. I have been acting as her chaperone, and I have failed quite abysmally at the task of keeping her safe from you. She will be scorned in polite society if there is the slightest whiff of scandal.”
“She will be a duchess,” Ridgely said. “Surely that will ameliorate the pain of having to marry a rogue. As for you, no one will find fault with you for the match. You have performed your duty as chaperone well, and you’re a paragon of virtue. Everyone will have no doubt I am to blame.”
Her cheeks went hot as she thought of the reason she had failed as a chaperone—her own wayward yearnings and a man she couldn’t resist. Perhaps she and her brother were not so very different in that sense. For she could not seem to keep her distance from Theo any more than Ridgely had been capable of being a gentleman with Lady Virtue.
“I do try, but I am far from perfect,” she conceded. “I fear I have been remiss in my duties.”
“You have hardly been remiss. I am at fault. Not you.”
“Nonetheless, it shall reflect on me.”
“I will do everything in my power to make certain no hint of scandal taints either of you,” her brother vowed. “You have my word.”
She believed him. Ridgely was many things, but liar was not amongst them. Still, a sudden compromising and an unplanned marriage between himself and Virtue…she loved her brother, and she had grown to care for her charge very much. She wanted happiness for them both. She wanted for them the love and contentment she had known with Bertie, only she didn’t wish for it to end abruptly in sadness and grief.
“You will make a good husband for her, will you not?” she asked Ridgely.
Her brother swallowed, looking more serious than she had seen him, even on the night when the mysterious man had broken his neck falling down the staircase. “I shall try.”
“Try?” She resumed pacing. “That is hardly reassuring.”
“If you intend to throw something, please reconsider,” Ridgely drawled in an attempt at a jest. “I’ve only just replaced the inkwell.”
“I was overset when I threw the inkwell,” Pamela defended herself, though she did regret her hastiness and flare of temper. “And it was your fault then,” she added for good measure. “Just as this is your fault now.”
Ridgely had returned to his vigil at the window, and he stood there, hands clasped. “As we have already established, I am a rogue.”
His calm acceptance of whatever it was that had transpired between himself and his ward nettled. He did not have to be a rogue. He chose to be one. Just as Theo did not have to keep his secrets. He chose to do so. Why did men have to be so blasted stubborn?
“And one who is utterly without compunction,” she told her brother tartly. “Where is Virtue now? I will need to speak to her.”
The magnitude of what faced them—a wedding to plan, scandal to avoid—hit her just then.
