He shook his head slightly. “Oh, sweet, you can’t promise me that. Not once you know. But you need to know. So there’s no avoiding it now.” He scrubbed a hand through his beard, and then he said, “We were friends in school. Close friends. We snuck out of school grounds together, we gamed together, raced our phaetons together.”
“Sounds like a sobering influence,” Lizzie said with an arch of her brow.
“I wasn’t looking for sobering influences, my dear,” he said with a brief chuckle. “And Gareth and I brought out the worst in each other. He started talking about this woman about a year ago. I didn’t pay much attention. I was rather annoyed, truth be told, when he rambled about her. I wish now I had paid more attention.”
Her brow wrinkled. “Why? What happened?”
He shifted. “I had spent the night with a…a…er…a willing lady.”
Lizzie fought not to flinch. She knew what kind of life Morgan had lived before. She had no cause to be jealous of his past.
“I woke to banging on my chamber door. Wild banging and loud yelling. My servants were trying to keep the intruder back but he managed to get past them. It was Gareth. The woman I was still naked in bed with was—”
Lizzie clamped her hand over her mouth. “The woman he’d fallen in love with.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“And you didn’t know it was her?” Lizzie asked. “Was she disguised?”
“No, I just was a terrible friend. Gareth had asked me to meet her a few times, but I always found some excuse to get out of it. I wasn’t interested in his happily ever after because I was an ass more interested in my own pleasure and fun. So when this woman approached me, I had no idea who she was.”
Lizzie tried to wrap her head around it. “Did she know who you were?”
“Oh yes.” His voice got bitter. “She made that very clear as Gareth tore my chamber apart. She’d seen me from afar.”
“Why would she do that?” Lizzie gasped. “Why would she be so cruel?”
He shrugged. “Some people just…are. She and Gareth had had a quarrel, it seems. She was angry and wanted to hurt him. She took her revenge by bedding me…and making certain my friend found out about it so he could catch us.”
“She destroyed your friendship,” Lizzie whispered.
Morgan nodded. “And a great deal more. Gareth called me out. That was how Robert got involved in my life initially. He heard about the planned duel, raced back from the continent where he and Katherine were touring around and stepped in to try to right the situation. But Gareth has been angry with me ever since.”
“That was why you spiraled out of control this last year,” Lizzie whispered. “You were mourning what you’d done. What you’d been a puppet in creating.”
“Yes,” he whispered. “The night I went to gaol, Gareth joined our table in a hell for cards. I kept letting him win. I let him win and win and I drank and drank to keep from seeing the hate on his face. I woke up in Newgate. But whatever else happened that night, it must have renewed his hatred in me. Hearing that I’d taken a respectable job, that I was starting over…”
“It must have triggered his need for a revenge he doesn’t feel he has truly taken.”
“Because he didn’t get his duel. He never evened the score.”
Lizzie shook her head. “Oh, Morgan. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” His brow wrinkled. “I’m the one who did this.”
“This woman, she’s the one who did it. Would you have bedded your friend’s lover if you’d known her identity?”
“Of course not. I’m a libertine, but I have a code,” he said immediately.
She almost sagged in relief at his reaction. He was the man she thought him to be. He was the man she loved, indeed. “But she knewyouridentity and pursued you in order to hurt Gareth. That is on her.”
He sighed. “Perhaps, but it doesn’t matter. My friend is clearly not finished with his punishment. My actions have created danger for your family. For you. Embarrassment for you all, thanks to his attack coming at your ball. I’m certain your brother will wish to discuss it with me further later today. And he’ll likely sack me.”
She flinched. That was possible. Hugh was an honorable man—he might see Morgan’s actions as dishonorable, no matter the explanation. And to protect those he loved, he might, indeed, let Morgan go. He would leave and she would possibly never see him again.
“Morgan, I did come here to ask you about the attack,” she whispered. “But it was more than that. I came here because I want…I need…”
“Elizabeth,” he whispered, cutting her off. “You can’t say it.”
