Page 27 of The Reckless Love of an Heir (The Marlow Family Secrets #4)

A swift knock on Susan’s door gave her a moment’s warning before Alethea burst in.

Susan turned.

‘Henry has come,’ she breathed excitedly. ‘He is in the drawing room, you must come down and give me some solidarity. I cannot stand up to him alone. He must understand his disappearance was unacceptable, and Mama will not let me be mean to him, as I wish to be.’

Susan had been tidying her drawers, merely to have something to occupy her mind. She could not concentrate on a book as Henry interrupted her thoughts too regularly. ‘As he deserves for you to be,’ Susan answered when she crossed the room. As I deserve for you to be.

Yes, she would go down with Alethea to see his expression when they walked into the room – and she would not admit that her heart had leapt at the news he was here, nor that she wanted to be in the room to hear what he said to Alethea.

Susan’s heart whipped up into a hearty gallop when she walked along the landing with Alethea’s arm threaded through hers. She pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. They barely moved; the action was merely a nervous habit.

Alethea let go of Susan’s arm and ran down the last few steps of the stairs.

Nausea clasped tight in Susan’s stomach.

‘Henry! So you have finally crawled out from whatever stone you have been hiding under!’ Alethea said as she entered the drawing room ahead of Susan.

Henry was sitting beside their mother, who had a tea tray in front of her. He stood. His eyes were on Alethea as she walked briskly towards him.

‘Alethea,’ her mother reprimanded as Henry took Alethea’s hands when she offered them.

He would have kissed her fingers, but she pointedly turned her cheek to him, and so he kissed that.

If they were in private, if Alethea had offered her lips, would he have kissed them? The thought lanced through Susan with a sharp pain as jealousy unsheathed its dagger.

He had kissed her only days ago.

The knife turned back upon herself and stabbed at her heart. Guilt.

Alethea pulled her hands free from Henry’s and turned to collect a cup. Henry looked at Susan and blushed.

So he was capable of feeling guilt and embarrassment, and so he should.

Her inclination was to walk over and rain her fists down upon his head.

Hate sliced at her suddenly. She hated him for destroying her happiness.

She had been content with her life. She had known who she was, and the woman she would become.

Then he upset everything. It was his fault she could not cease thinking of him.

It was his fault she could not sleep. It was his fault she had betrayed her sister .

Her skin heated with embarrassment and anger as she turned to take a cup of tea from her mother, very deliberately preventing Henry from making any gesture of welcome.

Where had he been?

Oh, she should not care. But she was so muddled. As much as she wished to hit him, she longed to hold and be held by him – for his embrace to take away all of the pain inside her.

Alethea sat on the sofa next to Henry and twisted sideways a little to speak. Her knee touched his. It spoke volumes without needing a single word. She still liked Henry, perhaps even loved him. He may have deserted her without a word, but she still had feelings for him.

Susan sat down on a chair opposite them and looked at Henry as he looked at Alethea, with pain tearing at her heart with sharp fingernails. She wished to set down her cup and leave now – to stop herself from either screaming at him or clasping hold of him.

His head turned and he smiled at her, but the smile lacked his usual confidence, and he blushed again.

Susan did not give him any sign she welcomed his shallow attention.

He faced Alethea once more, his Adam’s apple moving down as he swallowed. His finger raised to loosen his neckcloth.

Susan’s mother led the conversation from then on, as they drank their tea, avoiding the potentially dangerous topic of, where were you, Henry? While Susan stared at her cup to equally avoid looking at him.

When the teapot was empty, Susan’s mother stood. ‘I will leave you young people to talk. I have duties to attend to. Susan, will you remain with Alethea and Henry, please.’

As their chaperone? That was cruel beyond belief. This was a modern-day torture chamber. How much more was she expected to tolerate?

She wanted to run… Rebelliously or not.

Embarrassment heated Henry’s skin. Susan had not spoken yet, not one word, and apart from when she had first come into the room, she had barely looked at him – and he could barely bring himself to look at her.

Shame. He had suffered many emotions in Brighton, but this was the first moment shame had spun into the mixture.

This was insanity. To sit with one sister, when he had kissed the other just days before.

He had forced his eyes to remain on Alethea and her mother as they talked, while all he wished to do was look into Susan’s eyes and see what she thought of him.

He wanted to see that awe-struck look he had seen after he kissed her on the night of Sarah’s ball.

Then she had looked up at him expecting him to speak – to say all the things they knew they ought not to voice. But he had not dared.

Today, he wanted to shout the words. His heart felt tied to her, not her sister.

The moment she had walked into the room, his stomach had become as wobbly as aspic and his heartbeat had doubled its pace, while the emotions flooding his chest had swelled with the force of a tidal bore.

When Aunt Julie walked out of the room, his conversation ran dry, the words draining from his mind. He looked from Alethea to Susan, who sat still and silent, staring at her cup.

She must be longing to scream at him – or to simply rebel and leave him in this room to suffer the fate he had created.

He had never lacked confidence before, but now he had no idea how to act or what to say. This was a knot caring had tied about him. Carelessness was such an easier choice – but this was not about choice. He had no choice in this. The emotion within him had grown of its own accord.

Susan’s skin reddened. She set her empty cup down on a low table beside her chair, then folded her hands together in her lap. All without looking up at him or Alethea.

Alethea turned a little more sideways on the sofa, drawing his attention back to her as her knee brushed against his. Her eyes said he was about to be held to account, and yet the position of her body told him his desertion had already been forgiven.

‘Where did you go, Henry?’ It was the question that had been hanging in the air for the last half hour.

‘To Brighton, I thought you knew.’ He looked at and spoke to Alethea, fighting his desire to look at Susan and see her response.

‘I only found out the day before yesterday. But I did not mean to which town. I meant to where in Brighton? Or rather why? What was there?’

Henry swallowed. ‘To a gentleman’s club, with my friends. We had a curricle race?—’

‘When you nearly killed yourself doing so before!’ Susan complained. His gaze spun to her. She had sat forward in the chair, her hands clasping each arm, expressing anger.

Their gazes clashed and melded. He could see her feelings towards him were unchanged. The knowledge yelled out within his senses. Now he wanted Alethea to go away; he wanted to speak to Susan and dispel the agony within him, and her. He could see the equivalent turmoil to his in her eyes.

‘You should not be so reckless, Henry.’ Alethea held his hand, drawing his attention back to her again.

Her eyes shone with a desire to please and amuse him, but there was no fire, no heart, or…

who knew what it was between Susan and he, but the sa me emotions were not engendered when he looked at Alethea.

‘Well, I am back now.’ He looked at Susan, speaking for her benefit. ‘And I survived and am healthy, as you see, regardless of the risk.’

Susan made a face at him, then stood.

Damn, was she going to run and leave him with Alethea? No. He moved to stand, but Alethea’s hold on his hand kept him seated.

‘I have not thanked you for the flowers yet,’ Alethea said.

‘Flowers?’

He glanced at Alethea then back at Susan. Susan had turned her back on them and walked to the window.

‘The flowers you sent me…’ Alethea prodded in a voice now full of annoyance. She widened her eyes in a look that said, you do not even remember.

Oh. Damn. The flowers. He set up the arrangement with a florist for the whole period Alethea was to be in town.

What did Susan think of that?

She was looking out of the window not at them. She did not even appear to be listening to them any longer. But perhaps that was pretend.

Her hand lifted and her fingers pushed her spectacles higher up her nose. He wanted to take off her spectacles and kiss her, with his fingers about her nape and in her hair.

‘Why did you go, though?’ Alethea asked, her fingers squeezing his hand.

He looked back at her. ‘To race, I told you.’

‘But why leave me?’

His desertion had insulted her. But she would be a hundred times more insulted if she knew the truth.

At least Susan had not bowed to the pull of honesty.

He was certain she would have fought hard to resist it.

The guilt within her must be leagues deeper than his.

He swallowed back his own battle with the truth.

‘It was a lark, Alethea. An amusement. I fancied a distraction. Life can become monotonous in town, and things do not always go as one plans .’ He raised his voice for Susan’s benefit. He wanted her to know he was hurting too – especially because she had not come to speak to him in Bond Street.

‘If we marry, would you disappear on a whim like that?’

His mouth dried. He would never marry her.

But… He looked at Susan’s back, as she looked through the window. ‘When I marry I will live a very different life, but until then…’

Susan made a scoffing sound as she turned from her observation of the street and glared at him.