Page 25 of The Reckless Love of an Heir (The Marlow Family Secrets #4)

Henry leaned back in his chair and tossed his cards onto the table, in anger and frustration. ‘I am done. I give up. I am having horrible luck, so why play?’

Harry laughed and squeezed the waist of the woman who sat on his knee.

‘And I am having great luck. Show me your cards, Fred, I’m calling you.

’ Harry’s speech had become slurred but so had Henry’s.

They were all three, or perhaps four, sheets to the wind, and the sheets were dancing on a strong breeze.

Fred lay down his hand of cards face up. Harry leaned forward, pulling the woman with him, and set down his cards.

‘You damned well win again!’ Fred declared, in a voice that resounded with annoyance as he picked up his glass. He drained it in one quick swallow, then stood up, swaying a little. ‘Fuck you,’ he grumbled, reaching into his pocket, then tossed his promised bets onto the table.

Harry leaned over and picked up the money Fred had dropped, and the money left by the others who had bowed out earlier in the game.

Harry gave Henry a broad smile, then pulled the woman he held more fully onto his lap and pressed a kiss on her lips before saying against her mouth, ‘Are you ready to celebrate with me, darling?’

Henry looked away and lifted a hand to obtain the attention of a woman on the far side of the room. When she looked at him he pointed at the empty bottle on the table and lifted his glass. Her smile suggested she would give him far more than another bottle of brandy.

Today he just wanted the brandy. His stomach turned over at the thought of her offer.

What the hell was wrong with him?

When the woman set the bottle on the table, she leaned forward so the top of her breasts spilled out from the loose bodice of her dress.

Henry leaned back as revulsion sailed through his blood. These were new emotions. He had never turned a woman away through lack of interest before. Perhaps when he had been too drunk and incapable, or too tired, or not in the right mood, but never out of a lack of desire.

But his ailment was not about a lack of desire.

The woman ran her fingers down his cheek and trailed them lower as she leaned further forward to whisper in his ear.

Henry caught a hold of her wrist and pulled her hand away before it could descend to his groin. ‘No, thank you.’

‘Oh, come on, my lord, play with me…’

He turned his head away as she tried to kiss his lips. ‘I said no.’

He was not interested in any of these women. He was interested in one woman, one he ought not to have any interest in.

When the woman walked away, he leaned forward and filled his glass with brandy.

He immediately drank it all down. He’d come to Brighton to escape the emotions which kept kicking him in the gut.

But the unbidden feelings and thoughts would not stop.

All he could recall was what it felt like to look into Susan’s eyes, those glorious pale grey eyes he had once dismissed… and to kiss her.

He should not have kissed her.

He poured another glass of brandy as Harry laughed when the woman sitting on his lap stood up. Harry slapped her backside in a careless gesture, then held his hand out for her to pull him up and lead him to a room upstairs.

He threw Henry a smile. Henry smirked in return. He was not jealous. He was merely… in pain.

Lord, he longed for that life of carelessness that Harry still lived. Nothing had worried him. Nothing had disturbed his thoughts. That was why he had lain with these women, because there had been no need to consider past or future.

Now he could not stop his thoughts from racing ahead, and the emotions… To care came at a cost. A burden of bitter-tasting feelings that were ripping him apart.

‘I seek Lord Henry Marlow. I was told he is here. Have you seen him?’

Bloody hell! Henry immediately stood. He swayed and lay a palm on the edge of the table to hold himself up as he looked across the room. The room swayed too.

His father! He stood at the entrance to the room.

‘And Harry Marlow, is he here?’ Uncle Edward was here too, and Peter’s father.

What was wrong? His mother… Someone in the family…

Some of the liquor cleared from Henry’s head with a sudden rush of adrenaline. He strode across the room, although he walked a little askew. ‘What is it? What has happened?’ he asked of this search party.

‘As if you care…’ his father stated, his frown deep. ‘I have co me to take you back to London. There are people waiting for you there. A respectable woman, the daughter of my friend.’

Henry’s brow scrunched in confusion. His father had come to drag him out of brothels before, but not since he had left Oxford.

‘Harry!’ Edward yelled across the room, his eyes looking beyond Henry.

Henry looked back at Harry, the liquor stealing his balance a little as the room swayed again. Harry had heard. He was halfway up the stairs. He said something to the woman then let go of her and turned around. He jogged down the stairs. Harry was the epitome of uncaring.

Henry smiled at his father’s small group.

Harry walked past Henry, steadier than Henry was. ‘Go away,’ he growled in a low voice at his father.

They were Henry’s sentiments exactly. He smiled at his own father.

‘I am not a boy to be dragged out of brothels any more,’ Harry continued.

‘You ought to be in your barracks.’

‘I shall be by six, and no one gives a damn where I am until then. Oddly enough I am a man and able to manage my time and my life without your oversight, Papa. Go away.’

‘Henry.’

Henry faced the diatribe awaiting him in his father’s expression.

‘My sentiments are the same as Harry’s,’ he slurred. ‘Go away.’ He swayed.

His father grasped his arm. ‘You were supposed to spend this time escorting Sarah and Alethea – clearly you have forgotten the promises you made.’

‘I attended their balls and I have not forgotten, believe me.’ Of course he had not forgotten.

How could he damned well forget? He had attended Alethea’s ball and found his eyes, his awareness and his soul constantly drawn to the wrong sister.

Then at his sister’s ball he had ceased arguing with his urges, acted upon them and kissed the wrong sister.

Who had then expressed her judgement by leaving him standing in a street obviously alone in his obsession.

And his obsession had not abated! Of course he remembered. He remembered and cared!

His father’s glare intensified.

‘Go away, Papa,’ Henry said. ‘I have no idea why you thought coming here would benefit anyone.’ Henry would have turned away but Lord Sparks gripped his arm before he could.

‘Where is Peter?’

‘In bed, enjoying the sport, I should imagine.’

‘As I will be, the moment you go away,’ Harry added, looking at his father.

‘Damn you, Harry,’ his father complained.

Lord Sparks let Henry go.

‘Goodnight, Father. Enjoy your journey home.’ Harry walked away, to return to his bird of paradise.

‘Goodnight to you too, Uncle; Lord Sparks!’ Harry called, capturing the attention of every man and woman in the room.

When Harry reached the stairs, he looked back.

‘Oh. Shall I tell Peter you were looking for him? I am happy to, if you like, Lord Sparks?’

Henry looked at his father’s group, a smile pulling at his lips.

Lord Sparks had turned puce. He was not amused by Harry’s mocking comment. He looked as though he was about to go upstairs and throw open every door until he found Peter, whereupon he would drag him out of whichever bed he was in.

Henry’s smile broadened, because the thought of Peter’s father dragging him from a whore’s bed was amusing. They were grown men. Yet their fathers constantly struggled with that fact.

‘And you, Henry…’ his father said. ‘You began this, from what I have heard, even though you had obligations in town. Is there a woman upstairs?’

His father’s image swayed. Obligations… He hated that word.

‘My obligations…’ Henry slurred. Obligations that were created for him from the day he was born.

Obligations that had not been his choice, and were no longer his preference.

Obligations he had been slowly and firmly trapped into throughout his childhood.

How could he have known as a child – when he had not refused his father’s or Uncle Casper’s desire for him to wed Alethea – that there were undiscovered emotions that would defy obligations, sense and morality?

He had been a child – how was he supposed to know he should say no?

He stepped back to lean on a table, but caught the round table at the wrong angle, lost his balance, and fell to the floor, like a heavy sack of wheat.

He had become a drunkard, but he would rather liquor claimed him.

It silenced the fighting going on in his head. A fight between obligation and desire.

‘Harry!’ Uncle Edward shouted. ‘Tell us which hotel Henry is staying in!’

‘The King’s! They are all there!’ Harry called.

Henry woke with a hammer thumping against the inside of his skull. The Devil. He rolled onto his side. His stomach spun, with a bilious sensation. The air stank of vomit.

He opened his eyes.

His father sat in a chair facing him. Henry was no longer at the brothel but in his bedchamber in the hotel, and on the floor beside the bed was a soiled chamber pot. He had no idea how he had got back here .

‘Have you any idea what a mess you appear?’ his father stated.

Henry did not particularly care, except it did not feel good to think his father had been taking care of him in this state.

‘May we not be rid of that chamber pot, if you do not wish me to be ill again?’ Henry groaned.

‘I have a mind to leave it there, to make you ill again. It may teach you a lesson. You have never learned anything from me, neither from what I have said, nor what I have done.’

Henry rolled onto his back, and his arm lifted, so the back of his hand lay on his brow. He felt like death.