Cheryl Holt (13 page)

The only other alternative he could discern was to progress until she felt she’d seen and heard enough. And those unbearable meetings could go one of two ways: Either he could use every fragment of his resolve to keep the discussions on an intellectual level whereby he would end up sexually frustrated, sore, and wretched, or he could advance down the path his body was begging him to walk. He could begin her final seduction.

While he was suffering the discomfort of his musings and his choices, the door opened and his brother, Michael, stepped through. He gestured to the papers he’d earlier laid on James’s desk and asked, “What do you think? Should we cut him off?”

“What is the total of Lord Rosewood’s debt to us?” James was well aware that he should have gotten to the bottom of the stack by now and that, but for his scattered introspection, he would have long ago arrived at the answer himself.

On an exasperated sigh, Michael crossed the room. “What is it with you these days? You’re absolutely distracted.” He flipped to the last page and pointed his finger at the debit column.

James covered a wince that the substantial number had been so easily located. “I just have several important business matters on my mind,” he fabricated. “I’m preoccupied.”

“Right!” His brother snorted in disbelief. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say some new woman has turned your head. . . .”

James stiffened but fumed silently. Given the slightest indication, his younger sibling would guess all. He and Michael had shared much over the years, and Michael safeguarded many of James’s most vital secrets. He was an inestimable friend, a valuable confidant, and the only person in the world James trusted implicitly. But he could not learn about Lady Abigail Weston.

Yet, despite James’s best intentions to hide his involvement with her, Michael stopped in his tracks. “Oh, give me strength. . . .” His voice trailed off, and he shifted so he could look James straight in the eye. “You’re completely smitten!”

“That’s ludicrous.”

“Is it?” He focused in, as though by staring tenaciously he might be able to penetrate to the truth lurking inside. “Is she anyone I know?”

“I tell you: There’s no one.”

“You were always the worst liar.” He stomped to the sideboard and poured a brandy. Facetiously, he inquired, “So, who’s the lucky girl? Will you be bringing her home to introduce her to the family? Seeking Mother’s blessing? Are there wedding bells in your future?” He paused, sipping the amber liquor, as James remained sullenly noncommittal. “I didn’t suppose so,” he muttered. “ ’Tis that woman who came here, isn’t it? Marbleton’s sister. What was her name? Abigail?”

“You’re talking nonsense,” James insisted, but with much less intensity than he’d have liked to exhibit.

Their gazes met and held, and Michael bluntly questioned, “Are you mad? Have you so quickly forgotten how it was the last time you did something this reckless?”

James detested Michael’s ability to so aptly pierce to the heart of the matter, mostly because he knew his brother to be correct: He was playing with a deadly fire, as he had once before, and they’d all gotten charred by the treacherous flames of the debacle his licentious behavior had created. Apparently, he’d learned nothing of import from his
past actions. He was ready—no, eager!—to once again toy with prurient disaster.

As a lad of nineteen, he had disregarded his father’s admonitions and his mother’s warnings regarding the girls of the aristocracy, chasing after any young woman who appeared interested. And they all had been. His father’s oldest, but illegitimate, son, he had hovered on the fringes of their exclusive world, had been seen, known, but not welcomed into it. His good looks and tall physique drew them to his side, but it was his status as an earl’s bastard that held them captivated.

A dangerous boy, he was wealthy and wild, with no detectable scruples. He was the one to whom their mothers insisted they never speak, which only served to make him more desirable in their innocent, sheltered eyes.

Overly proud, rebellious, and heedless of the consequences, he had dallied once too often, been caught, and abruptly found himself wed to the daughter of a duke. Patricia had just turned seventeen. She was a stunningly beautiful girl, full of herself, and assured of her rightful place at the top of the world after a lifetime of pampering.

The golden prize of her Season, she’d been the most unattainable of females, the most forbidden to a man of his low station, so of course she was the one he’d sought out. They’d managed a handful of clandestine meetings, each one causing her to grow more certain that he was the husband she wanted above all others—even though they were virtually strangers.

Immature and foolish, brimming with nonsensical romantic notions, she’d naively assumed that theirs would be a grand passion to set Society on its ear. How blissfully unaware she’d been of what the future held!

Her first inkling had come at their wedding. Up until the last moment, she’d been convinced that her parents would relent, her transgressions would be forgiven, and he’d be welcomed into the family. She’d been so sure that she would ultimately be allowed the magnificent ceremony of which she’d always dreamed.

Instead, their vows had been hastily and secretly exchanged in a minister’s sitting room, without so much as a vase of flowers to enliven the surroundings and only her father in attendance. The exalted bastard had hovered stoically in the back, then departed directly after, not even pausing to say good-bye or wish them luck.

The closed doors had followed.

While James couldn’t have cared less what others thought of their marriage, she’d suffered profusely. Discouraged and despondent, she’d waited at home for the invitations that never arrived, but no one would see her or speak to her. No one would answer her letters or reply to her inquiries. She was ignored on the street, regularly cut by people with whom she’d been acquainted all her life. The final straw was on a night he’d forced her to attend the theater. They’d encountered her parents and been publicly snubbed.

She’d never ventured out again.

Through it all, Patricia had loudly and continually protested and accused that he was the source of all her woe, that he had brought about every wicked development. He had never denied her charges, feeling that he really was to blame, while silently suffering incredible guilt over the fact that he was a terrible excuse for a husband.

Early on, he’d abandoned any attempts at appeasing her. Her state of wretchedness and her level of melancholy were impossible to tolerate. Struggling to find a resolution that would restore his family’s equanimity, he’d bought a second home and moved her into it, then he’d left her there to wallow in her own peculiar misery.

When he’d received word that she was gravely ill and had been for many days, the news had hardly affected him. She was an unpleasant, dismal woman whom he’d never understood. On her deathbed, while wracked with fever and cough, she’d offered no kind sentiments, no statements of remorse or regret for the way their short union had flashed, then floundered.

After her passing, a physician who had treated her mentioned
that her lung fever hadn’t been that severe and shouldn’t have been life-threatening. That she’d simply faded away, despite his best efforts, as though she hadn’t intended to go on living, and James still believed that she’d died of a broken heart, grieving over all that she had forfeited due to his reckless impulses.

Daily, he thanked his lucky stars that they’d bred no children!

Needing to produce some type of rejoinder, he maintained, “It won’t be like the time I ended up wed to Patricia.”

“How can you make such a guarantee?”

Michael had good reason to worry. Perhaps more than any of them, he had suffered in trying to deal with James’s spoiled, miserable bride. She had directed much of her gloom at him, and the more accommodating he’d become, the more hellish had been Patricia’s demeanor.

“The lady and I have decided . . .” James started to elucidate that part of their arrangement where Abby promised to issue no demands of him should they be discovered, but, recognizing how ridiculous the pact sounded, he checked himself.

“Oh, really?” Michael scornfully jumped into the void left by James’s conundrum. “What have you agreed? Not to compromise her? Not to offer for her once you’ve utterly shredded her reputation? Not to wed her once she’s increasing with your child?”

The cut was deep, incisive, firmly thrust. The idea that James might leave a woman with a bastard child was inconceivable. They both realized it. Having witnessed how their mother struggled to raise two boys on her own, they had both vowed that they would sire no illegitimate offspring.

“We haven’t done anything,” James ultimately said.

“And you won’t?” Michael mocked. More gently, he cautioned, “Have a care, James. If you won’t think of yourself, then think of Mother and what it would be like for her to endure another vicious scandal.”

“I have, and I give you my word—”

“Oh, spare me,” Michael interrupted. “When you’re reasoning with your cock, your word means nothing. Less than nothing.”

Angrily, they regarded each other, the tense quiet playing out. James felt like a chastened boy, and he despised his brother for displaying such disdain, despised himself for his uncontrollable desires. The lust he harbored for Abby was precarious. It threatened and overshadowed everything—their family’s harmony, their peace of mind, even their livelihood.

Aspiring to ease the strained confrontation, he promised, “I’ll be circumspect.”

“That’s something, I guess,” his brother concluded, accepting James’s attempt at conciliation, and the acrimonious moment dissipated. They were too close, and had endured too much, to be at odds. “And what of Lord Rosewood?” Michael asked, indicating the papers once again.

“He’s finished at our tables,” James concurred. “Have him sent to me.”

Michael went to fetch the earl, and James stayed at his desk, calming himself as he waited for the aristocrat to arrive. Many minutes passed before Rosewood rapped on the door, and James almost felt sorry for him. The man would have no idea what was coming. Considering their protracted history, Rosewood, no doubt, would assume he’d been summoned to the back of the establishment for some type of dubious entertainment, the likes of which the two of them had partaken of on numerous occasions.

But, as the poverty-stricken earl was about to learn, James was a ruthless man of commerce. Friend or no, acquaintance or no, the business was always his first priority. His family relied on its steady income, and with James, his family’s needs were paramount. By devoting himself to their welfare, he’d resolved to never be like his father who had tossed them aside with nary a backward glance when he and Michael were just lads. James was determined that his behavior toward those who depended on him would always set him apart.

“Rosewood.” James nodded his acknowledgment of the earl’s presence, as he waved away the servant who had brought him to the office.

Wanting only to be finished with the dreadful chore as rapidly as possible, he commenced with no preamble, explaining the man’s exorbitant debt and watching as the nobleman became perturbed by the audacious airing of his finances. This wasn’t the first such appointment James had had, and it wouldn’t be the last, and he exercised a wellcontrolled, practiced patience. When James reached his final point, informing the disreputable earl that he wouldn’t be welcomed inside again, Rosewood seethed with fury.

After much blustering, the discussion fell to the level to which they all descended. With no method of paying his bills, and no leverage to pressure James into changing his mind, the earl sank to using threats—just as James had known he would.

“I’ll see you ruined for this!” the angry earl declared, but James didn’t flinch. Even as the man voiced the warning, they both knew it to be idle posturing. Poverty had a wonderful way of making them equals, of stripping a fellow of much of his power. As the earl stormed off in a huff, James let out a long, slow breath, massaging at the headache forming behind his eyes.

Unmoving, he stared at the clock, calculating the time it would take for Rosewood to depart the premises. Michael would be discreetly observing to ensure that he left without causing any trouble. Exactly fourteen minutes later, the office door opened and Michael entered once again.

“Any problems out front?” James asked.

“None,” Michael answered. “How about in here?”

“More of the same.” James shook a finger and mimicked the earl’s stem tone. “He’ll ’see us ruined for this’!”

“Cheeky bastard, isn’t he?” Michael rolled his eyes in disgust, then glared down at the papers that detailed Rosewood’s outstanding debt, one they would be forced to carry for years, one that they most likely would never even partially recover.

“No worse than any of his kind,” James responded.

“High praise, indeed,” Michael declared, and they both chuckled. He walked to the sideboard and poured two brandies, then handed a glass to James and toasted. “To the earl’s financial improvement. May it be substantial, and soon.”

James angled his glass in return, adding, “And may we be the first creditors in line for repayment.”

“Here, here,” Michael said.

A silence began, lingered, grew jarring. James squirmed in his chair. “I must get out of here for a few hours.”

“So . . . go.” Michael shrugged.

“You’ll be all right?”

“Of course.”

He always was, but James invariably felt it necessary to inquire. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

“Don’t hurry,” Michael advised. He downed his beverage, then headed for the door and the gaming rooms. “Dawdle until your mood has improved, or at least until your cock is limp. I’d like to hope you’ll be more sensible by the time I encounter you again. Stay gone a few weeks—if that’s what it takes.” His farewell remark deftly delivered, he hustled away rapidly, so he missed the several snide comments James muttered in his wake.

The lamp sputtered out, and James hunkered in the neardark while he considered his next move, and without any laborious cogitation, he concluded that there was no reason to obsess over Abby—no, Lady Abigail. Their relationship, as it presently existed, was the sole extent of what would ever occur between them. They could never become friends or paramours. They were two people who had come together under odd circumstances, for an invalid purpose, and who would part forever when that purpose concluded.