“Presumably that is also why you are marrying this Lady Annabelle Beaumont. For the same reasons you chose Madeline?”
Cecil was pale now, sweat beading on his forehead, but he held his ground. “I need to know you won’t stand in my way, Jacob. Let me have this one thing.”
Jacob snorted. He was too drunk for this. The world spun around him and so many things he had once kept inside him finally broke past the dam. “Let you have this one thing, Cessy?” He tutted. “You have had everything since the day you were born. But me? There was just one thing I wanted, dear brother, and that was Madeline.” He bared his teeth in a smile that was more like a snarl. “But as always, she chose you over me. I asked her to marry me, you know. Once I realised I loved her.”
Cecil’s cheeks seemed to hollow. “You did?”
“Yes, I asked her to break it off with you and choose me instead. You would find someone else, I knew, but she was the only girl I would ever love. And she told me no.” He pushed himself to his feet, swaying a little. “She told me she would rather have your riches and your position andyouthan someone like me.”
Cecil was silent, his throat working, and Jacob wanted to hate him. He hated the world. His hatred was a dark thing inside him that consumed everything good, that he could only tame with his boxing and his drinking, and even now he could feel it swelling inside him, demanding he hurt. Demanding he break something.
He thought of Lady Annabelle and the sweet, innocent way she had kissed him back. And that disgust in her eyes when she had come to her senses.
“And then her father discovered her affair with me,” he continued, “and he threw her out of the house. I would have taken her in, protected her as far as I was able, married her, but she still ran to you first. You could have had her, Cecil, if you’d wanted, if you hadn’t been so proud. So don’t tell me I should give you this one thing.”
“I’m sorry—”
“For what? For ruining my life?” Jacob laughed harshly. “Fear not, brother. I’ve made it my mission to ruin yours too.”
Cecil’s throat bobbed. His eyes glistened. Five years they’d been pretending they hadn’t hurt one another and Jacob was tired. The darkness inside of him had been released, and there was nothing he could do to force it back inside again.
“I thought you seduced her because you hated me,” Cecil said eventually. “Because I am . . .”
I am our father’s and you are not.
Jacob did not know if the rumours were true that he was a bastard, begat of some unknown, but he knew his father believed it. In the end, it had been a relief to think he might not belong to the man he had learnt to hate.
Cecil had belonged, and Jacob had never quite forgiven him for it.
“I approached her to spite you.” Jacob gave a careless shrug. “I never expected it to get so far, and then it became about far more than just you. But after you turned her away?” His nostrils flared. “I despised you as much as our family name.” And himself. Because even for Madeline, who had lain in his arms and let him plot their future like constellations in the sky, he had not been enough.
Cecil stared at him as though he was seeing him for the first time. And Jacob had never, not once in his life, wanted to hate his brother more.
From the location of Madeline’s body, she had been on her way to Jacob after Cecil had turned her away. All this could have been prevented if she had come to him first. Or if Cecil had shown a morsel of mercy and allowed her to stay even one night.
“I should leave,” Cecil said, taking his hat from the side table. “But for what it’s worth, Jacob, I would have wanted to be your friend if you would only let me.”
“A little late for that, don’t you think, brother?” Jacob asked, turning to his drinks cabinet to pour himself a scotch. When he turned back around, Cecil was gone.
Chapter Four
“He has not come,” Annabelle’s mother said, directing her words at Annabelle as though she was personally responsible for the Marquess of Sunderland not calling. It was now three days after the ball, and though she had received other calls from other gentlemen she had done her best to repress, there was no marquess. Despite his promise.
Annabelle wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed.
Relieved because she had never wanted to marry, and one conversation had not changed that, even if he did like reading and books and, presumably, libraries. Disappointed because he had promised to bring her a book and she was keen to see what it was.
And, of course, it would be nice to havesomeoneto discuss her love of books with, seeing as the rest of her family didn’t quite understand.
Then again, after finishingFanny Hill, Annabelle was not entirely sure she could count herself as a proponent of literature any more. Certainly, the book had been . . . illuminating. In several areas. Some she thought were distinctly more realistic than others, although she would certainly not be running to Theo for clarification.Thatwould just have to be one of those never-ending questions that existed within her.
But it was not, categorically not,literature. It was a gaudy pretence, flimsy once one stepped behind the bindings and looked at the words and content. Not literature. No.
But enlightening, in its own way.
She controlled her blush. The book was stored under her bed until such a time as she could return it and never speak about it again to any member of her family.
She would, certainly, never think about the way a certain dark-eyed man had briefly made her feel a little like Fanny was described as feeling in the book. On fire.
