Giles flinched. No, he hadn’t imagined their meeting. He hadn’t even held Katherine and Clarissa in the same thought. Theywouldbecome forever joined in gossip and scandal with him at the center. They’d be planets doomed to revolve around his sin and his mistakes.
Could Katherine bear any more shame? And Clarissa. Vivacious Clarissa… He had always cared for her in his own way, though neither had held any illusions about the kind of marriage they would have had. Practical. Expedient. Dynastic. When he’d broken with her, he’d known her heart was intact. He hadn’t considered that his actions would leave her open to the kind of speculation that had so devastated Katherine.
“Is there not,” Giles swallowed, “an impending announcement between Clarissa and the Duke of St. Alden?”
“You are a fool, Brom.Istarted that rumor. I was tired of watching her standing on the outskirts of every assembly. Tired of hearing the talk of her that was swiftly halted when I walked into the room.” Rayne rubbed his brow. “At least now the bucks have some other bit of gossip with which to occupy their limited attention.”
Giles stared as Rayne came in and out of focus. So many wrongs and disappointments. He cast about for a line to hold him still. In all of this, there was still the matter of an innocent.
“I am—” He halted. “Again, I apologize if I harmed your sister in any way. And I will do whatever is within my power to make amends…but you must leave.”
“Hypocrite,” Rayne accused. “This display is more than a little disingenuous. Lady Julia is not even your sister.”
Giles’s gaze sharpened. “You tread on dangerous ground. You will leave now, or I will reveal the exchange I overheard to Markham. You know as well as I, your choices would then become the parson, or pistols at dawn.”
“You will not alert Markham,” Rayne sneered, “because if you do, I’ll tell your beloved about a little card game where you bet the whole of your inheritance and somehow ended up betrothed to her instead.” Rayne rubbed his chin. “Markham goaded you into taking the harpy off his hands, didn’t he?”
Rayne had read his vowel pledging the estate, of course. He must remember everything else on Rayne’s part was speculation.
“You don’t have to confirm; the truth is plain enough on your face. Markham was so desperate to rid himself of his spinster, he traded the possibility of owning Bromton Castle. That should have told you something.”
“I told you to leave,” Giles repeated. “Julia may be intemperate and inexperienced, but she was, until tonight, untouched. You will go, because youknowyou are in the wrong.”
“Iam in the wrong? All I did was allow a relentless minx to hound me into a single kiss, after which, I sent her directly to bed, virtue intact. Which, by the way, I did nothaveto do. I wager she would have let me lift her skirts right there on the landing…and I am sure I would have found her wet and—”
Fury exploded behind Giles’s eyes in a sea of red. His fist met Rayne’s jaw with a jarringthud.
Rayne squeezed his eyes closed as he shook off the impact. “Remember that feeling.” His voice was gravel and sand. “Remember the moment that cost you this friendship.”
Giles could hardly breathe. “Go back to The Pillar of Salt, pack your bags, and go home.”
“Home to my devastated sister?”
“Go to London,” Giles growled. “Go to Moscow. Go as far as the Gobi Desert, for all I care. Just stay away from Lady Julia. I will not ask you again.”
“You do not have to,” Rayne replied. “It’s withdeep pleasurethat I abandon you to the bed you’ve so poorly made. You can cast us all aside. Lady Bromton. Clarissa. Me. But you cannot outrun truth. Soon enough, you’ll stand alone, and then you will finally understand the cost of discarding people as if they were dirt beneath your boots.”
Rayne’s footfalls echoed down the hall. Giles remained still until he heard the sound of Rayne’s horse galloping into the night. Then, he sunk down into the nearest hard chair, rubbing his stinging knuckles.
Rayne may have gone, but he’d left behind a mirror crisscrossed with cracks and spots. Rayne’s mirror was macabre, but the reflection he saw was not wholly inaccurate.
When Giles held Katherine, he could not believe everything had fallen so beautifully into place. When he had faced his mother, and now, Rayne, he could not believe how twisted he’d become.
He held his forehead, and his skin singed with heat. Means and ends and justification aside, which version of himself would win?
In the dark of his soul, the hellhounds raised their noses, once again catching his scent.
…
The garden bench where Katherine and Julia sat might as well have been made of ice instead of stone. Cold seeped through Katherine’s petticoats, stinging her thighs. She’d joined Julia at least an hour past, but her presence had failed to provide any comfort. Markham, at least, accepted the explanation that Rayne had been called home to attend to family business. Julia, on the other hand, had stalked outside, and had yet to utter a word.
Katherine wrapped an arm about her sister. Julia remained stiff.
Julia must have felt cold, too, but, if she did, she showed no sign. Instead, her eyes remained fixed on the horizon, with a resolute expression that made her look as if she were making a mystical attempt to conjure Rayne. Katherine could almost feel the incantations rising out of Julia’s heart.
She’d been this way all morning.
Katherine smoothed her sister’s hair. “You’ll have to speak sometime,” she said gently.
