Gareth: Lord of Rakes (32 page)

He managed to draw her out in conversation, even as he had no doubt they were being followed. Not only by the two footmen who had appeared several respectful yards behind them when they’d left the house, but by at least two others. They weren’t mere idlers out to watch a pretty girl feed the ducks, either. The two Holbrook had spotted were exchanging discreet nods and glances, and the Worthington footmen were oblivious to them.

Beside him, Astrid chattered on about the amount of gore and impropriety found in the Bible, and how she had always thought it a wonderful punishment to have to copy verses out of the Old Testament.

“Miss Astrid, I believe you could find entertainment in almost anything, so creative is that mind of yours, but I would like you to stroll along casually while you attend me closely.”

“I can do that.” For her age and inexperience, she was quick and canny.

“I noticed you took not one but two sturdy footmen with you when we left the house, and those fellows are fairly close at hand, which is a good thing, for we have company in addition to your staff.”

“What sort of company?”

“I don’t know,” Holbrook said, patting her hand when what he wanted was to retrieve the knife from his boot. “I’ve spotted at least two other men, working in concert, who are observing our every move. I think it prudent we cut this excursion short, and you not return here on foot.”

Astrid looked out over her duck pond longingly.

“It
was
such a lovely day. These fellows you see are probably just more of old Heathgate’s foot patrol. He has them keep a close eye on Felicity and me, though she hasn’t left the house in days.”

“I thought you said your sister sent Heathgate packing?”

“She did, or he cut her free, or whatever. They do not associate anymore, but Heathgate was advising us on some matters of business, and so…” Astrid fell silent a moment. Two months ago, she would not have paused to choose her words. “They do not associate, but he is concerned for our safety, so he has his minions keep an eye on us. I hardly notice them anymore, but I suspect they are still about.”

Now this was interesting. Heathgate advised the ladies on business matters, provided them bodyguards, and was no longer willing to associate with them directly.

It made absolutely no damned sense, no damned sense at all.

***

Andrew regarded the unshaven, gaunt specter that was his older brother and suppressed a shudder. If the servants were to be believed, Heathgate paced the house at all hours of the night, decanter in hand, and spent the days dozing and drinking still more. He growled and barked without even a pretense of manners, and had raised his voice at Brenner when that man had insisted on some direction from his employer.

Brenner had taken it upon himself to ask Andrew to call. When Andrew joined his brother in the library, he felt a moment’s shame Gareth had come to this state and Andrew had been too “busy” to notice.

“So who was it that went whining for you? Either Hughes or Brenner, I’ll wager. Well, you’ve seen me. I am upright—more or less—and you may now depart. You’ll pardon me for not offering a drink, but you’d have to swill from the bottle, and I’ve appropriated this one for my exclusive use.”

Time to have a word with Hughes. Andrew moved toward the door, Gareth’s voice stopping him.

“Don’t look so prim and prissy, little Brother,” Gareth said, bitter humor in his words. “I merely smashed the glasses in a little tantrum. It’s easier this way anyhow,” he said, taking a swig of brandy. “You get drunk faster than if you sip like some old woman.”

Andrew glanced around the chaos on his brother’s desk. “Getting drunk has become a consummation devoutly to be wished?”

“Why no, Brother of mine, utter oblivion would fulfill that objective, but that would leave you brotherless and titled, and even I wouldn’t purposely do that to you,” Gareth quipped, drinking again.

The decanter went flying as Andrew pitched Gareth against the wall, an arm across his throat.

“Don’t you
ever
,
ever
jest about that again,” Andrew hissed, applying a savage pressure to Gareth’s windpipe. “You may make me brotherless in spirit with this dramatic display of self-pity, but render me brotherless in fact, and I will follow you into hell to take my revenge.”

Andrew’s forearm prevented Gareth from breathing, and Andrew saw the moment when Gareth welcomed the impending oblivion.

Fear replaced disgust as Andrew released his arm and backed away, leaving Gareth to stagger as he regained his breath and his balance.

“You reek,” Andrew observed neutrally. “Your clothes are clean because the servants are loyal, but your person is unwashed, and you are drinking yourself into illness. If Felicity is worth this great excess of feeling,
my
lord
, she is also worth a hot bath and a decent meal. Why are you abusing yourself this way when you know it would pain her greatly to know of it?”

“Don’t say that name to me,” Gareth rasped, rubbing his throat.

Andrew regarded him with growing consternation, and an odd thread of hope. “Why shouldn’t I use the lady’s name, Heathgate? Do you hate her so much?”

Gareth made a noise that might have been a laugh from a more sober man.

“No, dear Brother. It isn’t that I hate her so much, though I would if I could. It’s that I miss her so much. You understand the distinction, I trust? For sometimes,” Gareth concluded in quiet bewilderment, “I confess I do not.” He sat on the cold stones of the hearth and dropped his forehead into his palm.

Gareth Alexander had gone from being the butt of Society’s cruel gossip to being the man so oblivious to gossip, Society gossiped about his indifference. He’d turned around an ailing marquessate, taken on responsibility for what remained of their family, and was in every way an exemplary brother.

Seeing that same man scruffy, bewildered, and inebriated, Andrew had the sense his brother’s confusion and loss were even greater than they had been a decade ago. He sat next to Gareth, not knowing how to offer comfort.

“You are the envy of all who know you,” Andrew said, though Andrew had never envied his brother. “The women want your escort, the men want to be you. You are wealthy, handsome, titled, and a law unto yourself, Gareth. You are successful—”

“Get away from me,” Gareth protested wearily. “I stink,” he added with the simple honesty of the grape.

“You do, and that can be remedied with soap and water, but this other, Gareth… You scared me badly enough when you latched onto that Hamilton woman and her ilk, but if this is what association with a decent woman does to you, then I shall have to hire you a troupe of opera dancers. I cannot bear to see you like this.”

Though the problem wasn’t association with a decent woman, it was apparently the absence of that same lady.

“Spare me the opera dancers, please. I thought you were off to Constantinople.” Gareth’s gaze went to where a calendar ought to have been hanging on the wall. The spot was bare now, the desk itself a sea of random papers, a white quill pen atop the mess. “Why don’t you take yourself off, if I’m such a disappointment to you?”

Andrew got up, fished about in the chaos on the desk until he’d found the calendar, and pinned it back in its proper place. “I can’t very well leave my properties in the hands of a sot, can I?”

“Oh, very well,” Gareth replied, waving a hand. “Ouch, that hurt. There, now, are you happy? You’ve proven conclusively I am not yet numb. One must resign oneself to diligence when it comes to inebriation.”

Diligence was also useful when planning a trip one didn’t want to take. “You are a damned funny drunk. Not fragrant, but funny.”

“Funny now, am I? Funny and successful?” Gareth scrubbed a hand over his face, then seemed surprised to notice he was well on the way to growing a beard. “What I am, dearest Brother, is lonely. When I was with Felicity, I was… not lonely.”

Andrew sat beside his brother again, put an arm around him, and rubbed a hand between Gareth’s shoulder blades.

The man was too skinny.

“Is there anything I can do?” Andrew asked, surprised Gareth didn’t heave him across the room for his impertinence. “I’ll drag the lady over here, serenade her from the street with you, and even order you a bath, but I hate to see you this way. I cannot lose you too, Gareth. I simply could not bear it, not even for Mother’s sake.”

“I was such an ass, Andrew.” Gareth dropped his forehead to Andrew’s shoulder. “Not only with Felicity, but ever since the accident, I’ve behaved like the most spoiled, arrogant, worthless embarrassment—not to the title, but to the family. How did you stand to be associated with me?”

What
on
earth?
“It was endless work,” Andrew said. “All that dash and carefully cultivated sexual allure, the casual wealth, the sophistication. What fellow wants to be associated with that? Shall I see about that bath?”

Gareth glanced around the office which, compared to the order Andrew usually saw here, was a shambles. The ruins of the decanter lay near the desk, cold ashes spilled out of the hearth, and the scent of expensive brandy perfumed the air. “I suppose so. I can always resume drinking when I smell better.”

Andrew gave his brother’s shoulder a pat. “That’s the spirit. A fellow has to pace himself if he’s to pursue true ruin, but, Gareth?”

“Hmm?”

“Why in God’s name don’t you just go to Felicity, tell her you’re a changed man and you need her by your side no matter what? I doubt she’d turn you down cold, though she might put you through some tribulation first.”

Gareth gave Andrew a thoughtful, wary look.

“The difficulty, Andrew, lies in the nature of the change you perceive in me. What if the change is temporary, an aberration from a course set years ago? What if it simply isn’t in my nature to be a faithful husband? Felicity Worthington has a particular aversion to the notion that a man should enjoy variety in his pleasures.”

He pushed a shard of glass away with the toe of his boot and continued more softly. “One doesn’t like to disappoint, you know, and it’s quite possible I am having this dramatic display, as you describe it, only because the lady would not entertain the usual sort of liaison.”

And Andrew was nearly certain Gareth had not even offered that sort of liaison to her, either. The seed of hope in Andrew’s heart germinated, even as he resolved to stop talking about a tour of the Continent and start putting his plans into effect.

“I leave that imponderable for you to soak on,” Andrew said. “It seems to me, though, the issue is not so much whether Felicity could rely on you, as whether you could rely on yourself. You’ve disappointed the decent women and proud papas of good Society for years without batting an eye. What you are loathe to do is admit disappointment in yourself.”

Upon which topic, Andrew himself was an expert.

Gareth made a disgusted face. “My little brother is now a philosopher. I am not the only rank thing in this room.”

“I’ll leave you, since you are back to flinging insults, and I am thus encouraged you will eventually make a full recovery to your obnoxious self.” Andrew bowed and kept his tone light. “Do you need my help, or can you make it up the stairs by yourself?”

“Out, whelp,” Gareth said, rising off the hearthstones. The left side of his seat was streaked with ashes, his hair was rumpled, and he sported at least three days’ growth of beard, but a hint of his typical imperiousness had asserted itself. “Tell Hughes I want the water scalding hot, for I must wash off both my own stench and that of your interfering, meddlesome, presumptuous, pontificating self.”

“I’ll tell him to make it boiling,” Andrew called over his shoulder.

Feeling ninety-four years old, Gareth made his way upstairs to his chambers, rooms he’d been avoiding for almost a month. As he pulled a green ribbon from the remains of his queue, the footmen trooped in with the tub, buckets of hot water, and a tray with hot tea, scones, and butter.

Gareth went through the motions of bathing his person and washing his hair, drank three cups of strong, hot tea, and dressed himself in clean clothing. When he’d shaved and forced himself to eat some scones—with lots of butter—he gave orders for the office to be put to rights, and summoned Brenner.

This process of going through motions when there was no point, of doing the next appropriate thing when he wanted to howl out his misery, was familiar. Gareth knew what would follow—more of same, and more after that. Grieving for his family had been like this, an exercise in deception that eventually tried to become an exercise in self-deception. The servants would see him as regaining his dignity and getting on with life. He would try to see himself that way as well, but inside, where he’d almost succeeded in closing off his heart, he knew the pain of a loss of this magnitude really never went away.

Never.

***

David Holbrook had the gentle persistence of a parson’s wife intent on recruiting bachelors for the spring assembly. He teased, he small-talked, he smiled, and he kept coming around until Felicity had agreed to drive out with him, mostly to get him to desist with his offers.

And the outing hadn’t been awful, even if she’d spent most of it glancing around in futile hopes of spotting a certain marquess looking splendid in his riding attire.

When Felicity returned from her drive in the park with David—Mr. Holbrook, that is—she found Astrid had decided to go off to feed ducks on her own again. Unusual, perhaps, but not alarming, because she’d taken a footman and timed her walk for the park’s most crowded hours.

Felicity poured herself a cup of tea and considered the growing conundrum that was her younger sister. Perhaps she and Astrid should travel before cold weather, as Gareth had suggested weeks ago.

“Miss Felicity, Miss Felicity!” Crabbie’s voice was raised in panic. The older woman came bustling forward from the back of the house. “You must come quick, please. Young Tolliver is come back without Miss Astrid, and he needs the surgeon!”

Felicity dashed into the hallway where Mrs. Crabble was wringing her hands in her apron.