“Now wait just a moment. You’re making me spill everywhere,” Charles sputtered.
“Clarissa is in danger, and I have no time for this. You can drink it in the carriage.” Every moment of delay coiled the tension in his chest tighter.
“I’m sure the carriage isn’t ready yet, and I just need a moment.” Charles had a point. Readying the carriage took time, and there wasn’t a thing David could do about it. So he paced behind his brother, watching him sip with agonizing slowness.
As soon as Charles drained the last drop, David clapped him on the shoulder. “Let us be off. We’ve no time to spare.”
Fortunately, the carriage was pulling up as the two of them rushed out the front door. The ride to Effingham’s seemed to take an eternity, even though the streets were nearly empty and the driver was driving the team as fast as he dared.
How was he going to gain entrance? Effingham’s staff would certainly turn them away, and while he was willing to threaten Effingham himself with violence, he had no desire to terrify innocent bystanders. Perhaps his brother could help.
“Charles, how can we get him to let us inside?” It irked him to ask for his brother’s assistance, but what choice did he have?
“Slip his butler a fiver, and he’ll let you right in. Effingham hasn’t exactly been paying his servants on time as of late.”
“Thank you. Perhaps there’s hope for you yet.”
Charles chuckled. “Not likely. I rather enjoy being the family scapegrace. But when you’re miserable, you make everyone around you miserable too. I’m merely acting out of self-interest.”
David took a long, hard look at his brother. Charles’s rueful smile failed to hide a touch of fondness in his bloodshotgaze. “Does she make you happy?” Charles’s question made David’s insides churn.
The fact of the matter was that she did, but he was so unaccustomed to the sensation that it made him want to flee to the hills. And the fear of losing that precious connection almost overwhelmed the connection itself.
Charles reached out and touched his shoulder. “She isn’t Laura. Knowing Effingham, I doubt Clarissa left willingly. In fact, I’d bet my life on it. Not that my life is worth much.” He paused. “She was angry. Magnificent woman.”
Were David’s thoughts so plainly written on his face? “I know it isn’t the same, but I can’t help thinking that she…that I drove her to… that he…” No matter how he tried to phrase it, he couldn’t bring himself to put words to his worst fears.
“You aren’t the easiest man to get along with. I should know. But this mess was not of your making. Nor was Laura, for that matter. I know you blame yourself for driving her away, but she wasn’t well. It was plain to everyone but you that she was fleeing her own haunted mind, not your marriage.”
David pressed his face into his hands. The last thing he wanted to do right now was revisit the dreadful demise of his first marriage. But Charles wasn’t wrong. After she had Timothy, everything changed. She was a different person. All the sunshine left her, and she slipped deeper and deeper into doldrums that refused to lift. She’d been changeable before they wed, but after she became a mother, her behavior grew increasingly erratic until she ran away that fateful night.
He’d tried. God knew he’d done everything in his power to draw her out, but there wasn’t a thing he could do that would lift her from her misery. But what if the problemwashim, and nowhe’ddriven Clarissa away?
No, he refused to wallow in self-pity. That villainous wretch couldn’t have her. He had to save her at all costs. “How much farther?” He peered out the window at the dark streets.
“He’s just around the corner up there.” Charles pointed. “So pull yourself together and go rescue your lady love. You deserve a bit of happiness in your life. God knows someone in this wretched family does.”
It moved him more than he could say to have his brother standing by his side in his moment of need. “You deserve it too, you know. Someday, happiness might come along and surprise you.”
Charles shook his head. “Some of Lady Clarissa’s barmy optimism must have rubbed off on you. I’m a hopeless cause, and you know it. Don’t think that just because I’m standing by you in your hour of need that I’m ready to reform my wicked ways.”
“You promise you’re not going to switch sides on me the moment I walk through Effingham’s door?” David didn’t want to believe the worst of his brother, especially when he was being kind for once, but he needed to know.
“Pfft.That wheyfaced git? I’m as loyal to him as he is to me, which is to say not at all. He’s always treated me like dirt on the bottom of his shoe.”
“Then why do you spend time with him?” It made no sense.
“Birds of a feather, as they say… And we’re here.”
The coach jolted to a stop, and David bolted out of the carriage, his gaze on the windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of Clarissa, but he saw nothing, even though several of the windows shone brightly despite the late hour.
Shaking his head, he strode up the front steps, with Charles behind him, and banged on the door.
A large, muscular grunt of a man in ill-fitting livery opened the door and scowled. “Go away, or I’ll smash your face in.”
Lovely. David didn’t doubt the man could do it, with those meaty fists. He fished in his pocket and pulled out a fiver, as his brother had advised. “I have business with Effingham, but I have no quarrel with you. Will you let me in?”
A greedy glint appeared in the man’s gaze as he snatched the bill away from David. “A bit of back pay at last.” He opened the door wide. “His lordship is in his study. It’s down the hall to the left. Last door.”
