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The only time a gentleman pictured himself on his knees before a lady was with a ring in hand, not pushing up her gown to perform intimate acts that would scandalize most ladies.

A gentleman wasn’t possessive and half-crazed.

Shakespeare had it right after all. Romeo saw Juliet, and that was it. She was in his heart—no, she became his heart. In fact, she became the center of his universe.

The truth dawned on Joshua slowly.

If Livie was the center of his universe, then she was more important to him than anything else.

If she was the still center of his world, then he had to fight for her with all the ferocity with which he fought any other battle. She hadn’t asked him to dishonor himself.

She had only begged for help.

“I asked her to marry me,” Frederick said casually.

The words clicked in Joshua’s mind like the hammer of a flintlock. He started to his feet.

“Merely for the sake of family honor,” Frederick added lazily, waving one hand in the air. “I hoped to salvage a bit of our dignity lost by our father’s embarrassing adulation of his new title and your equally embarrassing—and prudish—adulation of your so-called honor.”

Joshua’s hands curled into fists. “You asked Livie—my Livie—to marry you?”

“Even a drunk doesn’t like to see a woman crying,” Frederick said. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and rose to his feet. “Naturally, I was rebuffed. One has to assume that she has more discerning taste in bedfellows than I.”

“She refused,” Joshua exclaimed, relief flooding his body. “She wants me.”

“Not any longer. Not after your pusillanimous—that means ‘cowardly,’ by the way—pusillanimous rejection of her plea for assistance.”

“I was wrong,” Joshua said. “I’ll marry her before her father is convicted and take her with me to battle. Major-General Sale takes his wife everywhere. The Lady Grenadier, they call her.”

His brother raised an eyebrow. “You? Marry a traitor’s daughter? That bright military future of yours would be destroyed. No ‘Major-General’ rank for you.”

“I don’t give a damn,” Joshua said. “Actually, I do care, but not as much as I care for Livie. I will not leave her alone to face the grief and shame that lie ahead.”

“What if you’re forced out of the service? You’ve played with tin soldiers from the age of four,” his brother pointed out. Frederick was leaning against the wall, but miraculously, he didn’t appear to be drunk.

Joshua shrugged. “I’ll buy some land and farm it.”

“And how will you convince Livie to give you a second chance? She doesn’t spit on hearing your name, but I reckon that’s only because she was raised a lady.”

“I’ll give her the diamond that Mother—”

His brother interrupted. “She doesn’t want a diamond, you fool.”

“I’ll beg,” Joshua said, “I’ll promise to put her before all others, in sickness, in health, in happiness and grief—”

“In spite of treachery,” Frederick put in. He gave Joshua a wry grin. “And so goes the story of my brother who sacrificed all for love. Bound to be a bestseller with the ladies. One day our hero is slaying foes in thrilling acts of derring-do, and the next he’s raising potatoes. Our father, by the way, will disown you for that marriage.”

“I don’t need him or his money,” Joshua said. He and Livie faced huge challenges, and yet his heart was suddenly filled with joy. “I’ll take Oates-Plagitt.”

“Absolutely not!” Frederick snarled.

Joshua grinned. The moment he chose Livie over his job, over the polite world, his melancholy fell away. “I need him more than you do.”

“That is true,” Frederick said. “He’s waiting for us downstairs, by the way.”

“Why?”

“I prevaricated a trifle. Looks like the traitor may be a man named Cassio—quite Shakespearean, though I believe it was Iago who betrayed his general, Othello.”