No. That was unfair. He’d prayed twice in his life that he could recall. Once when his mother had a raging fever and the doctor said she would die. She hadn’t. The second petition to the Almighty had been that day in the pillory when Alethea’s carriage had entered the square. He’d prayed she wouldn’t notice him. She had.
And as for being born into the wrong family? He wasn’t about to show that the admission of inclusion pleased him and made him wonder what the hell had become of his own wilding brothers. No matter how many times he insisted to himself that he didn’t care about his three vanished siblings, he felt the absence of them in his life all the same. Did he have nieces and nephews whom he’d never met? Some part of him lamented the loss. It was as if he had a limb or two missing.
Family. It could not heal all sorrows, but it made them bearable.
Heath leaned forward. “Cheer up, cousin. The story of your sins will not leave our lips under penalty of torture at my sister Emma’s dainty hands. She despises low gossip.”
“Which is no guarantee that others will not speak of your misconduct in public,” Drake was hasty to add.
Devon stretched out his lanky arms and legs. “Actually it’s a guarantee that any and all crimes you commit will be until your dying day subjected to the court of public opinion.”
Gabriel stared, turn by turn, at each one of his blue-eyed cousins. “And you took it upon yourselves, from the goodness of your hearts, to gather in my carriage tonight to deliver this unhelpful advice?”
Heath stared back at him. “I would like to take you somewhere.”
“What if I told you I don’t wish to go along on one of your family jaunts?” Gabriel asked bluntly.
Heath smiled. “I think we should have to persuade you.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Alethea sat uncomfortably in the armchair, sipping a mug of skim milk while her brother and Lady Pontsby questioned her about Gabriel’s startling announcement of their engagement.
“It’s all rather sudden,” Robin said for the fourth time in a row.
Lady Pontsby looked up from her fashion magazine. “They’ve known each other for seven years. I’d venture to say that if they waited any longer this would be a funeral, not a wedding, we were planning.”
“When is the ceremony to be?” he asked Alethea.
She frowned, gripping her mug, thinking idly that it should have contained sherry instead of skim milk. This was a night that called for sherry if ever she’d lived through one. “That’s a good question.”
Lady Pontsby put down her magazine. “The ceremony is to be in London? Is that what I understood?”
“You’ll have to ask my—Gabriel,” she said with a sigh.
Lady Pontsby regarded her curiously. “Well, this sheds a different light on his conduct today. Perhaps he had a good reason for leaving the party. Perhaps he went to the jewelers for your ring.”
Her voice drifted over Alethea’s thoughts, over the storm roiling inside her. She loved him desperately, but at this moment she almost wished she’d kept riding past him that day in the pillory. Her parents had been right.
She had been a girl who ventured where she ought not. All her papa’s efforts at bending her to conform to her birthright had been futile. She had fallen in love with a pillory boy, then pretended to be content when she was betrothed to that immoral wretch Jeremy.
Her parents and Jeremy had died. She prayed their souls had found peace. For she had found a freedom unanticipated and more appreciated than was proper to admit. And with that freedom and impropriety she had also found the heartache that all the paragons of the world had predicted. Was it possible to have love without pain?
“Did you say something?” she asked her cousin with an air of embarrassment. “My mind was wandering.”
Lady Pontsby gazed at her with an indulgent smile. “That you are distraite under the circumstances is understandable, my dear.”
A quarter hour later, when their small party dispersed and Alethea excused herself for the night, her cousin crept into her bedchamber to continue their talk.
“I don’t know what happened today, but I can see there was an upset. I hope you and Gabriel shall overcome it.”
“I’m not sure that’s possible, Miriam.”
“If you love each other it is essential.”
“But you don’t know what happened,” Alethea said.
“I know that he came back tonight and you wanted him to. The rest shall fall into place.”
Gabriel groaned when he realized their destination was a very exclusive bordello on Bruton Street. The infamous Audrey Watson’s heavily guarded house attracted and admitted only the most elite customers from high society and London’s half-world.
The delights provided within her private rooms cost a pretty penny. For those gentlemen who did not seek sexual gratification the house also offered an excellent selection of wine and food, and the conversation and company of gifted guests. Artists, poets, and politicians often graced Audrey’s salon. Gabriel had once craved the privilege of entry and the voluptuous pleasures of her house.
Now there was only one woman he desired, and she did not belong here. She belonged with him, and he had to believe that her association with Audrey did not have any dark significance.
“Is this a joke?” he demanded of his cousins.
Drake shot him a rueful grin. “You brought my wife here once to play a trick on me, as I recall.”
Gabriel grinned reluctantly. God, he’d been a rotten devil. “It turned out well, didn’t it?”
“No bloody thanks to you,” Drake replied without rancor.
“Hurry up, Gabriel.” Heath reached to open the door. “The rest of us are married, and this little excursion of ours will make the papers if we aren’t discreet. Go around the gate to your left. A guard will escort you up a secret flight of stairs. Audrey is waiting. We’ll collect you in an hour.”
Within a few minutes he was escorted up the bordello’s private stairs into Audrey’s inner quarters—a suite of chambers cluttered with scented letters, books, two poodles, and a young man who was ushered out as furtively as Gabriel was granted an audience with the seraglio’s proprietress.
“Oh, Gabriel,” she murmured, languidly subjecting him to a head-to-knee inspection. “Love has given you a sultry look I really cannot resist. Did Alethea do that to your eye?”
He flung up his hands, not answering, then paced a spell before settling down on the only unoccupied space in the room—on the couch beside her. If she thought he’d be embarrassed or insist upon standing, he had another thing to tell her. He wasn’t deliberately being rude, he was simply a man so at his wit’s end that he didn’t give a damn that he’d been summoned to the private chamber of one of London’s most sought-after courtesans.
She frowned, almost as if she had read his mind. “For heaven’s sake, Gabriel, could you at least pretend to pay me attention?”
His gaze traveled over her in slow perusal. “Forgive me,” he said, sighing heavily.
“How is your mother?” she asked, taking his chin in her hand to turn his face into the light.
He pulled away. “What?”
“That bruise is darkening by the minute—your mother—la duchesse. I had so wanted to attend her wedding. After all, how many French ducs shall I meet in my lifetime? You did not go?”
“Not only did I not go, I did not know—my mother is married? To a French duke?” he asked, his shock genuine enough to supplant all his other woes. At least for the time being. He laid his head on the brocaded cushion. “Am I to understand that you brought me here to congratulate me on my mother’s marriage?”
“Am I to understand that you were spying on me today at Grayson’s party?”
“Well, what of it? It was a party. You were talking in the garden, not a confessional booth.”
“It was a private conversation.”
“And I, as Alethea’s future husband, insist upon being privy to the nature of your ass
ociation with my wife.”
She pursed her lips, not quite hiding a smile. “Your future wife. And she loves you. That was the gist of what she and I discussed.”
“It seems to me that there’s a great part missing from that simplified explanation…such as how you came to know each other, and why Alethea was seen visiting this house last year.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Who told you such a thing?”
“So she did visit you.”
“I admitted nothing of the kind,” she said acerbically. “I have stated only that she loves you.”
Gabriel nodded. “Yes. But I cannot help wondering how many other men she might have ‘loved’ before me.”
Audrey’s half-smile neither confirmed nor soothed his fears. “Does it matter? Would you desire her less for being the sort of woman that you not long ago found irresistible?”
His mouth tightened. “This is different. I want to marry her.”
“How much?” she asked, her head cocked in curiosity.
“Enough that I will never return here, nor look at another woman again as long as I live.”
A wistful laugh escaped her. “A Boscastle in love is a terrible force indeed. You are very forceful, Gabriel. I believe I shall dream of this conversation tonight. Why is it you Boscastle men have a way of warming a room?”
“Just tell me the truth.”
“I did, Gabriel. She loves you. It’s quite simple, isn’t it?”
“Damnation, Audrey. You know what I’m asking—did she come here for work? Did she sleep with any of those men I passed downstairs? Or that I sit across from at a card table? I have to know.”
“You must ask her then.”
He stood, frustrated, afraid and yet—he needed the truth.
“I believe you have always loved her,” she said quietly as he turned his back. “And now she returns your affection. It remains to prove yourself her hero.”
“Her hero?” He glanced around, shook his head. “I am leaving your presence, madam, more confounded than I entered it.”
“You do not have to leave at all, Gabriel,” she said with an engaging smile.
But he was gone before she could elaborate.
Chapter Thirty-six
He hurried down the central staircase, propriety the last thing on his mind. Well, not his propriety, at least. Alethea’s association with Audrey Watson remained a mystery to unravel. But as Audrey had pointed out, he had lived on the edge of polite society for as long as he could remember.
Gambler. Blackguard. In debt up to his eyeballs one day, his pockets bulging with cash the next. His stepfather had hit him across the head, shouted how worthless he was in his ear so many times that he was partially deaf on one side and suspected he’d sacrificed some brain function on the other.
Yet he’d survived. From his Boscastle father’s strength of will and his mother’s stubborn French blood, he’d managed to become a good cavalry officer, a damned unbeatable gambler, and part and parcel of the infamous London branch of the family.
And Alethea had not banished him from her life, a blessed miracle considering that she’d seen him at his worst, and had not given up on him, for reasons he would never fathom. He loved her. What man in his right mind would not? What did she see in him? He was suspicious, devious, impulsive, and scarred into the bargain.
He only knew that when he was knocked down, he got up, often reeling, too numb or dumb to do otherwise. The day he died would be the day he could not lift his battle-hardened body from the ground. Life assaulted him. He assaulted it, and himself, back. He’d never had any aspirations to be a hero, except perhaps where Alethea was concerned, and if she thought him brave, well, he’d done a damned good job of fooling her, that was all.
He descended the stairs to reach the ground-floor vestibule, staring upon a scenario that had appealed to him in what might be termed his previous life. The courtesans in attendance boasted a refined beauty; their skills were legendary in London. He recognized a prominent member of the War Office, a secretary in the East India Company, a viscount who had made his name known as a portrait painter. He heard his name called; he hung back in hesitation until a darkly clad figure detached itself from the sideboard, raising a glass of brandy in acknowledgment.
“It’s past midnight, Cinderella. I have to return home a married man.”
He and Drake walked together in companionable silence to the door, whereupon Mrs. Watson’s stiffrumped butler bowed and snapped his bony fingers in the air. Two footmen appeared bearing torches to light the men’s way to the waiting carriage.
“Is there anything I might do to make your return journey home more comfortable, Lord Drake…Sir Gabriel?” he inquired, as tightly wound as a Continental clock.
Drake brushed past him. “We’re fine for the night. If I may give—”
Gabriel looked down at a newly arrived guest, who loitered upon the lowest step to the house, and his gaze immediately hardened in contempt. He stopped as Drake continued toward the carriage.
The man in the leopard-lined evening cape glanced up at him with a wry smile of recognition. “Ah, Sir Gabriel, I see we meet again—at yet another whore’s house.”
Drake pivoted on the pavement, his handsome face darkening. “I beg your pardon, sir? Are you addressing my cousin?”
The subtle shift in Drake’s posture must have conveyed a message. Within moments his brothers Heath and Devon Boscastle had joined him on the sidewalk, their coachman and two footmen a step behind. Gabriel glanced at the ominous-looking batons his cousins held, then firmly shook his head.
This was his fight.
“Lord Hazlett,” he said in a cold voice, “I had actually hoped that you and I would find each other again. There is something unfinished between us.”
Guy stared past him into the candlelit vestibule of the seraglio. He had the cruel face of a man of privilege, accustomed to using others, a man who truly believed he had the right to do as he pleased. Now, as he stood before Sir Gabriel Boscastle and his cousins, he seemed to assume that they would share his demeaning views of women, and the world, in general.
“Gabriel,” he said with a patronizing smile, “we are gentlemen who share the same weaknesses. I would be remiss if I did not confide in you that Alethea Claridge is no better than the girls within Mrs. Watson’s house.”
Gabriel saw Devon step forward as if to guard him. He gestured sharply, and his cousin fell back. “What are you telling me, Hazlett?” he asked quietly.
Guy glanced around as if he’d just noticed that he and Gabriel were not alone. “Are you bewitched, my friend? Don’t be. My brother was prepared to marry her—he’s already broken her in for you. I’m sure that you will appreciate not having to initiate another virgin. I understand she put up a fight at first.”
If Guy said anything else, Gabriel could not hear it for the roaring of blood in his head. He stepped down, his fists clenched. He felt someone, Drake or Devon, putting a hand on his arm, trying to stop him. But he wouldn’t be stopped. He understood that they only meant to stand up for him. But he had spent his life fighting his own fights.
The truth was, he had never fought for anything that mattered as much to him, except perhaps for his mother. He hadn’t felt this much passion even at Waterloo.
He hit Guy right under the chin and heard the satisfying crunch of bone snapping. He might have broken his own knuckles, but he couldn’t feel anything. Guy’s groan of pain indicated that he’d suffered at least a fractured jaw joint, which ought to keep his mouth shut for a month or two.
“Come on, Gabriel,” Drake said amiably over his shoulder. “It isn’t nice to commit murder right before your own wedding. Wait a week or two.”
Gabriel straightened with the intention of demanding that his cousin bugger off and mind his own business when Guy leapt up and punched him in the eye.
Gabriel saw lights explode behind his right eyelid as he staggered against Drake’s hard frame, only to be shoved back toward Guy with a mutter
ed incentive from Drake. “Give him a good one in the stones for me. That was a dirty blow, hitting a man when his head was turned. If I were in your place—”
Those words of encouragement took hold in the fertile earth of Gabriel’s festering anger. Benumbed to the throbbing ache of his eye, ignoring the bloodied flesh that hung from his knuckles, he cuffed Guy again. And again. He attacked until when Hazlett finally staggered back and collapsed on the steps, he did not make any attempt to rise.
It had taken a moment for Gabriel to realize what Guy had said. Now a darker insinuation spread across his mind like a shadow. He’s already broken her in for you. Men made crude jokes about sex all the time. Brothers shared secrets about their conquests, exaggerated their exploits to outdo the other. Half the time the remarks were only ballocks and inflated boasts to enhance one’s idea of manliness.
But Guy’s taunt had hinted of cruelty and violation. And now, all of a sudden, Gabriel understood, or thought he did, why Alethea hesitated to speak Jeremy’s name. Why she had accused Gabriel of coming back too late.
Make me forget, Gabriel.
Forget what? Oh, God.
He had not been there to protect her. She had been degraded so profoundly she could not admit it to anyone. Idiot that he was, he hadn’t made it easier for her to be honest about her humiliation. He had handled everything poorly, without consideration or honor.
It wasn’t too late, though. He and Alethea might be broken in parts, but they belonged to each other, and always had. Together they would make a whole being.
He understood now that he had hurt her with his jealous accusations today instead of grasping what she and Audrey had not said. He swallowed the bitter taste at the back of his throat. He’d left her with an image of himself that was no better than that of the bastard who’d wounded her.
“Gabriel. Gabriel.” A male voice, then a firm pair of hands upon his shoulders penetrated his bewildered fury. “Come on, into the carriage. You have made your point most eloquently. Look at me, cousin. How many fingers am I holding up?”
Wicked As Sin Page 17
