Page 114 of Rogue of My Heart
“But he didn’t cause the accident,” Colleen said. “Benedict might be a complete arse, but he knows of what he speaks when it comes to carriage wreckage.”
Marie, Shannon, and Chloe all turned to Colleen, and all three of them managed to ask in unison, “Benedict?”
Colleen’s face flushed puce. “Lord Boleran.” She cleared her throat. After a split-second of guilt, she burst into anger. “Oh, never you mind. You have your secrets and I have mine. But before you chastise me, I hate the man, and nothing half as wicked as what Marie and Lord Kilrea did has happened between the two of us.”
“But you wish it would,” Chloe said, then dissolved into giggling snorts.
The sisterly exchange was enough to send bursts of light through Marie’s whole body. Everything had changed, and yet some things would always remain the same. Her sisters were a steady force that she could always rely on. They were bold, brave, and powerful when it came to determining their own futures.
She would be bold and brave too.
“I am not going to sit idly by and let four people’s lives be ruined by this foolish marriage,” she said, standing. “Lady Aoife is in love with Lord Garvagh. I am in love with Christian. If it’s the last thing I do, I am going to see that the right people marry each other, even if I have to break a hundred carriages to do so.”
“Perhaps that isn’t the right analogy for the time,” Shannon said in a scolding voice.
Marie’s cheeks heated. “Perhaps not, but my intention is the same. I am going to make things right, and I am going to start by convincing Christian that he deserves just as much love as any other man and all the happiness life can provide him.”
Ten
Unlike a large number of men of his acquaintance, Christian had never shied away from emotions, even intense ones. But as he sat beside his mother’s bed, brushing her face lightly with a damp cloth to clean away the last traces of the broth the nurse had fed her for supper, he wondered if men who eschewed emotion had the right idea after all. His heart twisted in his chest at the sight of his proud, strong mother looking so frail. Her dark hair was streaked with grey and fanned out over the pillow, and her skin was pale and papery as she slumbered on. There had been a few encouraging signs that day, moments when it had almost seemed like she would awaken, but they’d come to naught.
The ache he felt at seeing how old and helpless his mother had become was nothing to the half dozen or more kinds of guilt he felt, though. The days-old guilt that lashed him over his part in the accident still throbbed deep in his chest, but newer, sharper forms of shame skated over top of that now. He shouldn’t have shouted at Marie that morning. She was only trying to help him. He’d been too consumed with grief to allow that the world around him was still moving and happiness still existed. He felt guilty for experiencing a moment or two of that happiness. Being close to Marie had warmed parts of him that had frozen over. He felt horrible for wanting more of that, wanting her. Which made him miserable, because he still believed he had a duty to marry Lady Aoife. Except, he now questioned whether he really had that duty or if it was just an echo of the way his father had always lashed out at him for being a terrible son. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life haunted by his father’s ghost, but a large part of him still craved the man’s approval.
“I don’t know what to do, Mama,” he whispered, putting the damp cloth aside and taking his mother’s thin hand in both of his. “I just want to do the right thing, but it’s become so muddled. I don’t know what the right thing is anymore.”
No answer came from his mother’s prone form, but somehow Christian knew that his mother was full of advice, and that she wanted nothing more than to be able to give it to him. He longed painfully for the moment when he could hold his mother in his arms and the two of them could weep together over the loss of the other half of their family. Even if his father and Miles hadn’t been open or loving with either him or his mother throughout their lives, they were still family, and they were still gone.
“My lord, if you don’t mind, I’d like to settle Lady Kilrea for the night,” the nurse spoke behind Christian.
Christian drew in a breath and stood. “Yes, of course. Thank you, Nurse Brannaugh.”
He bent to kiss his mother’s cheek, closing his eyes and saying a quick prayer for her, then straightened and backed away. For a few moments, he stood near the doorway, watching the nurse tend to his mother, but the sight pierced him with even more guilt. His actions were what had landed his mother in the state she was in now, after all.
He gave up watching and turned to leave, striding down the hall toward his bedroom in the other wing of the house. As he walked, he unbuttoned his jacket and waistcoat, loosened his tie, and tugged his shirt out of his trousers. By the time he reached his own room, shut the door, locked behind him, and lit a lamp, all it took was a few quick movements to toss his clothes aside. He sat in the chair by the empty fireplace to remove his shoes, then kicked off his trousers and drawers as well.
Once naked, he stood and crossed to his bedside table, where a half-empty bottle of whiskey from the night before still sat. He grabbed it and pulled out the cork with his teeth—like he used to do with any wine or spirits bottle that reached his hands while carousing his way through Europe—and tossed the cork on the table. He took a long draught that seared his throat and made him cough before wondering whether drowning his sorrows was really the best idea. At least the whiskey warmed his insides, which had felt numb since the accident.
He took one more swig before setting the bottle down and crossing back through his room to pick up the clothes he’d carelessly shed. There was no point in making more work for the poor sod who’d decided to be his valet. He didn’t need a valet, but Gordon had worked for his father for years, and Christian felt yet another shade of guilt over the idea of sacking the man.
He’d gathered all of his clothes and tossed them into a hamper in his wardrobe when a sharp knocking made him jerk and whip toward the door, his brow shooting up. The knocking hadn’t come from the door, though. After a second knock, he whipped the other way, only to discover it’d come from the window.
It was dark and dreary outside, and he’d only lit the one lamp. Even so, he could clearly make out the form of Marie on the other side of one of his bedroom windows. He gaped at her as he hurried across the room to unlatch the window and thrust it up.
“What in God’s name are you doing, woman? And how did you get up here?” he demanded. His heart ricocheted around his chest, and he couldn’t decide if he was happy to see her, shocked that she was at his window, or furious with her for being there in the first place.
“My, my,” she said, her wide eyes sweeping his naked form. “You do like to walk about in the altogether, don’t you, Lord Kilrea?”
The urge to laugh bubbled up in him so quickly that the effort to suppress that laughter made him dizzy. “A gentleman can walk about naked in his own bedroom,” he said, then rushed on to, “How did you know which room was mine, and for God’s sake, what are you doing on that ladder?”
“You’re answering your own questions, you know,” Marie told him, pushing him back and climbing up the last few rungs of the ladder that she’d brought from heaven only knew where to reach his window.
She hoisted her leg gracelessly over his windowsill and pulled herself into the room. At the same time that she reached for him, probably to steady herself, Christian stepped back, intent on giving her the room she needed to climb in. The result was that she lost her balance with a muffled shriek and tumbled to the floor, arms and legs sprawled. She groaned, though Christian couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or injury.
“What sort of hellion brings a ladder to an earl’s house and climbs through his window in the middle of the night?” Christian asked, finding her shoulders in the tangle of skirts and limbs and hefting her to her feet.
“A wicked one,” Marie answered, meeting his eyes with a fiery look. “And it’s not the middle of the night. It’s barely ten o’clock. There are parties throughout the county that are only just beginning at this hour.”
“Parties you should be attending rather than being here.” Christian knew that he should turn her around and push her toward the window so she could climb out again and be on her way. At the very least, he should take his hands off her and step back. He couldn’t seem to do either, though. All he could manage was to hold her and rake her with a gaze.