by Lily Maxton
“Did you?” Hale didn’t sound like he cared very much.
“Yes! I stepped on it! It was peeking out from beneath the desk…it must have fallen and gotten pushed back there. Can you imagine? I suppose I should tell Uncle. Maybe the other things weren’t stolen, either.” She laughed slightly. “I feel a bit guilty now for suggesting it.”
Robert didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“I would feel guiltier about the letter,” Hale said flatly.
Robert stepped into the room, and the two went quiet. A strange sense of foreboding gripped him. “What letter?”
“Mr. Townsend! Good morning!”
Miss Hale seemed pleased enough to see him. Mr. Hale was staring at him like he’d committed the worst sort of betrayal.
Miss Hale played with the handle of her teacup. “Well, I was having trouble sleeping last night, after all the excitement, you see, so I wrote to a friend about Miss Worthington’s predicament.”
“A friend who will no doubt gossip to others about the matter,” Mr. Hale added.
“I don’t understand. Why not simply discard the letter?”
“Well,” Miss Hale said again, drawing out the word until it became multiple syllables. “The post runner was by, about an hour ago.”
Robert felt the blood drain from his face. If he’d had any hope of keeping the matter silent and possibly avoiding marriage, it was gone with the night.
“I know I acted impulsively,” she said hurriedly. “After I gave him the letter, I regretted it, but it was too late at that point. I’m sorry, Mr. Townsend.”
She sounded sincere enough.
It didn’t matter, he supposed, whether she’d done it out of some sense of malice toward her cousin or if she was telling him the truth and it had simply been an impulsive moment. It compounded the problem, certainly, but Robert had created the problem in the first place. He sank into the nearest chair, staring at nothing.
“Are you quite all right? Here—” He heard the sound of tea pouring. “Oh, Mr. Cameron! Have you already been outside this morning?”
Robert’s head jerked up, and his heart clenched. Ian was standing in the doorway, looking windswept, copper hair tousled and cheeks flushed the slightest pink. He was wearing his kilt today. The attire of the Highlands suited him, Robert thought numbly, but it made him look untouchable, and remote, and so, so far away.
Robert had the strangest, panicked urge to grasp the green-and-brown plaid and hold on tight.
“Aye.”
“You missed all of the excitement last night,” Miss Hale said mysteriously.
“Catherine!” her brother protested.
Ian went to the hearth to pour himself some coffee. He made a vague noise of interest.
“We may be hearing wedding bells at Llynmore soon.”
Ian still didn’t turn around.
Finally, Miss Hale couldn’t contain the news any longer. Robert watched the scene unfold like a carriage wreck. And just like watching a carriage wreck, there was nothing he could do to stop it. “Miss Worthington might soon be Mrs. Townsend.”
No one else would have noticed, but Robert did. Robert knew him too well. Ian stilled. “Aye?”
Miss Hale drew in a breath, but her brother beat her to it. “Mr. Townsend took advantage of her, and that is all there is to the matter.”
Miss Hale frowned at her brother and then took back the conversation by saying, with relish, “They were caught in her bedchamber, in flagrante delicto!”
Robert felt like he wasn’t even in the room at this point. He didn’t mind it. Maybe he would just fade into nothing, disappear like a wisp of smoke.
Ian turned, and his face was so unreadable that icy fear prickled along Robert’s spine. “Is that true?” he asked Robert directly, his voice even.
“Not…not exactly.”
“No?” Miss Hale asked. “Then what happened?”
“Catherine, I think you have said enough.”
She started to protest, but then she paused and looked at her brother. Hale still had the vaguely sick expression he’d worn the night before. Her face softened.
“Very well. I’m done with my breakfast anyway. Gentlemen.” She nodded at Ian and Robert.
And then, somehow, they were alone. They were less than ten feet from each other, and they’d never felt farther apart.
…
Ian took a drink of coffee. He barely tasted it. Maybe it burned his tongue; he wouldn’t have been able to tell, either way.
He felt curiously numb.
“I was putting the things back,” Robert said abruptly. His voice was shaking. Ian watched as his hand curled into a fist on the table, knuckles turning white. “I was putting them back, into the armoire, and everything went wrong. She woke up. And threw a vase at me. Then she fainted. I couldn’t just let her fall on the floor or hit her head. And Worthington, he—”
Robert was in pain, and Ian couldn’t take anymore. “I believe you,” he cut in.
“You do.”
“Aye.” He could see it very clearly. Robert would have decided to take care of it on his own because of his damnable need to be useful. When Miss Worthington woke, when she fell, he would have been too much of a gentleman to leave her there. Ian could see it clearly. And it still didn’t shake loose the painful shards that seemed to be lodged in his chest.
Robert’s shoulders eased. He looked relieved until Ian said, “You’ll marry her, then?”
“I don’t want to,” he said. “But Miss Hale already posted a letter to a friend. There will be gossip. Everyone thinks I’ve ruined her.”
“Then you’ll marry her?” he repeated. Ian’s voice sounded distant, even to himself, like he was speaking through glass.
Ian knew Robert wouldn’t want to marry her. He also knew that Robert could never simply leave someone in distress, especially if he thought it was his fault.
And some insidious part of him wondered—couldn’t help but wonder—if it wouldn’t come as a relief to Robert, maybe not now, but someday. A forced marriage to Miss Worthington, the choice being taken out of his hands. Life would be…not easy—life was never easy—but it would certainly be easier than this. Easier than him. Easier than forever looking over his shoulder and forever keeping secrets from the people who loved him.
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is that simple.”
“I don’t want to,” Robert said again, sounding helpless.
“Ye already said that.” He set the empty cup down on the table, gaze sliding to Robert’s face and then away. He wanted to reach out and touch him, but he knew it was useless, at this point. “It probably would have happened anyway.”
Robert stared at him blankly. “What do you mean?”
“Marriage. This was never going to be indefinite, was it?” Ian wasn’t saying it to hurt Robert. He was saying it to help him. The pieces were set around them, and Robert was torn in two directions. So Ian would push him in the right one.
Sometimes one had to be cruel to be kind.
Robert drew in a sharp breath. “But I don’t have any feelings for Miss Worthington,” he said.
“You like her, don’t ye? It wouldna be…” Here, he paused, the first outward sign that he wasn’t as composed as he wanted to appear. He hoped Robert didn’t pick up on it. “If I married, it would be a lie, but it wouldna be a lie for you,” he finished.
And it was true, wasn’t it? They weren’t the same. Marriage wasn’t a possibility for Ian, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t still be one for Robert.
“Why are you acting like you don’t care?”
Care? If anything, he cared too much. His chest felt like a bleeding wound, and he would have liked to blame Robert for it. He would have liked to hate him for it. But hating Robert had never been an option for Ian. Lord knew he’d tried.
It took everything in him to lift his shoulder casually, to stare down at Robert coolly. “You’ll be happier this way.”
�
�I don’t know how you can say that.”
“You won’t have to hide your relationship from your siblings. You would have hated it, eventually.”
“Is that so?” Robert said, his tone strained.
Ian folded his arms over his chest, as if that might somehow protect him. “It’s obvious how much you love them. You feel guilty for not telling them you’re a writer, Robert. This…it would have eaten you alive.”
Ian wasn’t saying anything that wasn’t true, but Robert shot to his feet. “No,” he said. “You don’t just get to decide all of this for me. It would bother me. I know that. I can admit it. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be worth it.”
Ian stepped back. He couldn’t stand here any longer. Not so close to Robert, not with this invisible, irreconcilable space already between them. “It doesn’t matter anyway, at this point. You’ll marry her.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re too kind not to.”
Robert’s mouth twisted wryly, and for too long a moment, they simply looked at each other, neither willing to give.
“Nothing has been decided yet,” Robert finally said. Softly. Quietly. Like all he wanted was for Ian to believe him, even if he wasn’t certain he believed himself.
Ian didn’t know what to say—was he supposed to agree with him? Tell him he’d wait for him? Tell him he still wanted him?
He did still want him, but he couldn’t say any of those things, couldn’t turn his heart out like that for someone else to see. Not when they were on such a thin ledge. Not when all he saw when he closed his eyes was Robert with someone else, loving someone else, marrying someone else.
Maybe not ever.
And still, caught in the light of Robert’s whisky eyes, he couldn’t deny them, either.
In the end, he simply nodded (like an idiot), and left, everything unresolved and unspoken between them balanced too precariously to hold for very long.
Chapter Nineteen
A handful of days later, when Alice Worthington’s ankle was healed enough for her to venture from her bedchamber, Robert met with the woman and her parents. And it was about as awkward as one might expect. They all sat at the round table in the library, while Mr. Worthington glowered at Robert and more or less ignored Alice, who, in turn, wouldn’t even look at her father.
Outside, the day was misty and gray, and inside the hearth burned with a healthy fire. It might have been cozy if Robert hadn’t felt like his world was ending.
“I think it would be best to wait to draw up the contract and perform the ceremony until the earl returns.” Robert forced the next words out as though they cut his throat like shards of glass. “As the head of the family, he would no doubt like to take care of this matter personally.”
He hated invoking his brother’s name like that—it made him feel like he was the helpless younger brother who always needed the elder to come along and clean up his messes—but he could think of no other reason to delay the marriage. And he was not quite ready to run out to a blacksmith’s and get married over the anvil.
He still hoped…
He didn’t know what he hoped for. Whenever Robert shut his eyes, he saw Ian, standing there, looking down at him with such an implacable expression that Robert couldn’t believe the other man had ever writhed against him, vulnerable and boneless with desire.
And those words—it wouldn’t be a lie.
Robert liked Miss Worthington. Maybe he would grow to love her, eventually, with time and with distance.
But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be a lie.
All of his thoughts, his feelings, his lust, his heart were consumed by Ian, and he thought Robert could just move on, as easily as that? How could that not be a lie?
But if Ian didn’t already know that, Robert didn’t know how to convince him.
“And when will that be?” Worthington asked, cutting into his thoughts.
“By the end of the month, unless there is some unforeseen delay.”
“Like adverse weather.” Worthington’s voice dripped with sarcasm. It didn’t slip anyone’s mind that the unpredictable Scottish weather was what had driven the family here in the first place.
“Like adverse weather,” he replied calmly.
Robert studied Alice, whose face was pale, her eyes bruised. She didn’t look like she’d gotten much sleep, either, these past few nights.
But she sat with her spine straight, her hands folded calmly. There was a strength to her, a sort of quiet practicality that he admired. Ian had a similar practicality—a refusal to bow under the weight of outside circumstances—a core of steel. Maybe that was part of the reason Robert liked her.
Except, for Ian, this trait wasn’t only a strength, it was also a weapon. When he felt too vulnerable, that unyielding nature turned to ice and stone. Robert couldn’t forget how inflexible Ian had been the last time they’d spoken.
A hot anger rose in Robert’s chest every time he thought about it. And anger was good. Anger was fine. Anger didn’t hurt, or if it did, it hurt in a more superficial way. But it never lasted.
When it inevitably died away, the empty space it left behind was filled with guilt and something too deep and dark and sorrowful to name. He was reaching for something that was already slipping away. But still, he couldn’t keep himself from grasping for it, all the same.
“But you’ll marry her?” Worthington’s next words echoed Ian’s so closely that Robert flinched. “You’ve never said it, and I want your word as a gentleman.”
Underneath the table, Robert’s hand clenched.
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Townsend alone,” Alice said suddenly, voice never wavering.
Mr. Worthington opened his mouth, to protest, no doubt, when his wife cut him off. “Very well, dear.”
She put her hand on her husband’s elbow and stood, and he had no choice but to follow. Robert could hear them arguing as they walked down the hall, but eventually their voices faded, and Robert and Alice simply looked at each other.
“Why were you in my room?” she asked, startling him.
Robert hesitated, but in the end, he didn’t feel like he could do anything other than tell her the truth. When he was finished, she looked drily amused.
“My mother mentioned that she’d stumbled across the stockings and assumed they must have been misplaced. When she heard everything else had been uncovered, too, she told Father he should apologize. But he refused, in light of recent events.” She shook her head. “All of this because of a cat?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“But you were right about one thing. I don’t think my father would have believed you if you’d simply told him. Pride and sheer stubbornness have always been his downfall.”
Robert didn’t feel much better, even knowing she didn’t blame him. They sat, for a little while, in silence.
“I always hoped I would have a love match,” she said, slightly wistful.
“You still could.”
She tilted her head, not unkindly, but as though she found the statement naive. And Robert suddenly felt naive. He felt like he was stupid and young and drowning in his own naïveté. And this was all his fault. He’d caused this. He’d ruined the first real peace he’d ever found, and he didn’t know if Ian would ever forgive him.
“It’s unlikely,” Alice said. “You know how it is once these rumors spread.”
Robert did know. He would gain a reputation as a rake, perhaps, but he wouldn’t suffer any lasting repercussions. Society’s memory tended to be short when it came to men’s transgressions with the fairer sex. Alice, however, would be ruined, through no fault of her own.
“But you don’t wish to marry me.”
“I like you. Though I admit…I wanted someone to choose me. Just me, for no other reason than they wanted me as I am.” She looked down at her hands. “It’s silly to think of now. We’ll get on well together. That is enough. That’s more than many people have.”
“That’s true.�
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“And I think…I would like to have something of my own. A family and children. I would rather have those things than not have them.”
Regardless of how the marriage started, regardless of whether she and her husband were in love with each other. She was telling him, in so many words, that she’d made her decision. And Robert, who had gotten them in this situation in the first place, who had ruined her chances, didn’t feel like he could do anything other than acquiesce. Not if he wanted to keep his conscience intact. Not if he wanted to act with honor.
Robert’s chest was tight. So tight that he could barely breathe. So tight that it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.
Saying the words would irrevocably break something between him and Ian. He had no doubt of it.
But he also didn’t feel like he had a choice.
“Then will you marry me, Miss Worthington?”
She nodded. “I’ll marry you.”
There was no kiss. No laughter. Not even a smile or a touch. There was only the agreement between two people who respected each other that they would do their best to salvage a hopeless situation.
…
Robert delayed seeing Ian, telling Ian, because he still held on to the fast-vanishing hope that there might be a way to resolve everything that didn’t involve a marriage of convenience.
And then, suddenly, he did think of a way. He was on his way back from a long ride when it struck him in a blinding flash—Hale. Abruptly, all of John Hale’s little looks and actions came together in a vivid picture—the way he’d glanced at Alice during the game of billiards, the pain on his face after Robert had been caught in her bedchamber, the discord between Hale and his uncle—it all pointed toward one thing.
Near Llynmore, he came across Georgina, walking by herself on the trail.
“George!” he gasped, reining the horse to a stop before he swung down.
“Are you all right?”
He probably looked a fright, but he didn’t really care. “Hale is in love with Miss Worthington, isn’t he?”
Georgina blinked. “Isn’t that obvious?”
He stared at her. Obvious? He didn’t think there was anything obvious about it. But then again, his attention had been taken up by someone else whenever they’d all been together.
