“You share it?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know?”
“Robert and I don’t speak. I don’t think even my parents know what he did to cause your lord to challenge him to so many duels. Actually, I think Robert fobbed them off by calling it a ‘trifle.’?”
Gabriel looked angry when he muttered, “Despicable blackguard.”
She wholeheartedly agreed, but she wasn’t going to share that with a servant. Maybe he would tell her what had made the viscount challenge her brother. “What did he do?”
“That isn’t for me to say. I’m sure Dominic will tell you if you ask—actually, you might not want to broach that subject with him, at least not today.”
“So I’m to be tarred with the same feather as my brother?” she demanded. “Is that what I can expect from this meeting with Lord Wolfe?”
“I honestly don’t know what you can expect. But if he sends someone else to find you, neither of us will like the results.Dostart walking toward the house, please.”
She did get her feet moving, though slowly, and triednotto dwell on what was about to happen in that house. She turned to Gabriel for distraction. “You have a lot of family that work here.”
“Not a lot. A few cousins, an uncle, my mother. The Cotterills and the Jakemans have more. Our ancestors lived in and around Rothdale village. You can see it from the west tower, or could, before the tower almost burned down. No one goes in there now. My father was the butler here before he died. He wanted me to take over his position, tried to groom me for it when I was a child, but I was too busy having fun with Dominic to want to spend time doing that! So a new butler was hired after my father died.”
“What caused the fire?”
He followed her gaze up to the tower and said solemnly, “Dominic did.”
“Quite the nasty accident. What was he doing up there?”
“Setting the fire.”
She gasped. “Deliberately?”
“Yes. It was his sister’s favorite playroom when she was a child. The year she died, she took to going up there again, but not to play. She would just stand in front of the window for hours at a time. She died that fall.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We all are. Everyone here loved her.”
“Does Lord Wolfe have any other family?”
“His mother and a few distant female cousins, but he’s the last Wolfe to carry the name—and wants to keep it that way.”
Chapter Eleven
BROOKE WAS STILL DRAGGINGher feet by the time they got upstairs, desperate now for a delay that would keep her from entering that room at the end of the hall. She stopped for the umpteenth time, asking Gabriel, “Why did you put me in a room that connects with the viscount’s?”
He glanced back to say, “As I told Dominic, it will save us the trouble of moving your belongings after the marriage. But I assure you the door is locked—now.”
That would have been a relief if she weren’t so anxious. “Do you know for a fact there’s to be a marriage?”
He didn’t answer. All he said was “One of these family rooms was his sister’s. It is locked and will always be so. One is his old room—”
She interrupted hopefully, “Instead of telling me, why don’t you show me?”
“Perhaps another time. He is waiting.”
He marched ahead of her and opened the dreaded door. She glanced at the one to her room and wondered if she could barricade herself in there. But did she really want to appear cowardly? She was cowardly! No, she wasn’t, she reminded herself.
