Julia London 4 Book Bundle (2 page)

Julian had seen Phillip’s downfall, he said, but had been too mindful of his pride, too trusting of his strength, too confident that Phillip’s esteem of Lady Claudia Whitney would bring him out of it to do anything about it. He had allowed it to happen, and no argument Adrian or Arthur put forth would convince him otherwise.

But for all of Arthur and Julian’s pain, they had not killed him. Adrian had. As their unofficial leader for more than twenty years, he had let them all down by doing the unthinkable. The infamous control for which he was known had snapped like a twig under the pressure of a little fear and a stunning disbelief at what was happening. The events of the weekend played a
thousand times over in his mind’s eye as he searched for a reason, anything that would help make sense of this horrible tragedy.

It had started so innocently! Sick to death of Phillip’s cheating, Adrian had asked him to stop, plain and simple, and like a fool, had smirked when a drunken Phillip demanded satisfaction. He should have walked away. But his pride wouldn’t allow it, and he had convinced himself that when Phillip sobered they would end their foolish argument peacefully. But Phillip never sobered, and when he had actually
fired
on him, Adrian had turned away with sickening disgust. Lord God, everything happened so
fast
—Arthur’s cry of warning, the shot fired above his head, the frantic lunge for the small stand where his pistol lay, and the blurred moment in which he whirled around and shot Phillip through the heart.

Somewhere in the distance the death knell rang. The gravediggers finished covering the grave and quickly departed with a wary look at the three remaining gentlemen. A fine rain was falling now, but Adrian could not make his feet move from the gravesite.

“Come on, then. It’s over,” Arthur said quietly. Unable to make his legs move, Adrian ignored him. “Albright? The rain—”

“I was a goddamned fool for letting him unnerve me,” he suddenly muttered to no one in particular, his eyes locked on the mound of earth.

Arthur exhaled slowly as he glanced at the grave. “You may have pulled the trigger, but he wanted you to do it. Don’t torture yourself—he wanted it.”

A sharp pain stabbed directly behind Adrian’s eyes, and squeezing them tightly shut, he blurted, “Good God, no one wants to
die
!”

“
He
did,” Julian muttered angrily. “Come on, then,” he said, and put a hand on Adrian’s forearm.

No mercy!
Adrian’s mind screamed, and he angrily jerked away, unworthy of the compassion. “I didn’t see what was happening. That is … I knew he was in
trouble, but I didn’t know he was
drowning
,” he muttered helplessly.

“Neither did I, God help me,” Arthur sighed. “I should have seen it.” He glanced warily at Adrian and Julian. “Look here, we don’t see each other as often as we ought. We should make more of an effort.”

The sentiment of a man who had attended a funeral, Adrian thought blandly. He could hardly fault Arthur. If he had thought this was the last time he would see Phillip—

“Our lives have taken us on different paths, Arthur,” Julian muttered. “It’s not the same as it once was.”

“I’m not asking that it be the same. I just believe … come now, a vow. A vow among us, today, on Phillip’s grave, that we will never allow another of us to slip away. Nothing will go unsaid between us. I vow that at least once a year, on the anniversary of Phillip’s death, I will assure myself that all is well with the two of you, that not another of us will fall,” he said, almost desperately.

“Arthur, you are overwrought,” Julian insisted, and glanced helplessly at Adrian.

“Bloody hell, Kettering, what harm is there in it?” Arthur snapped.

Julian frowned and looked at Phillip’s grave. But Adrian merely shrugged—there was no harm in it, and if it eased Arthur’s anguish any, what difference did it make? Their lives
had
taken different paths, and no graveside vow was going to change that. “I vow,” he muttered. Arthur looked anxiously to Julian.

Julian groaned. “What sentimental folly, Christian,” he complained, and rolled his eyes at the pointed look Arthur and Adrian gave him. With a snort of exasperation, he nodded his head. “All right, I vow, I
vow!
Are you satisfied?”

Arthur’s gaze slid to Phillip’s grave again. “Hardly,” he mumbled.

Adrian winced, too, as he looked at the earthen
mound. He should have paid more heed, but it was too damned late now. Phillip was dead. Suddenly sick, he pivoted sharply and walked away from the gravesite, his cloak snapping furiously about his boots. With a final look, Arthur and Julian fell in behind him.

KEALING PARK, NORTHAMPTON, ENGLAND

     
A
DRIAN LEFT JULIAN
and Arthur at the road to London and headed north, racing fast and hard from Dunwoody and the unspeakable thing he had done. But there was no place he could run to, no refuge from his guilt. London was out of the question—he had no desire to face the
ton
after what he had done, or his father, whom he knew to be there. Kealing Park was the last place he
should
seek refuge. But it was the family’s home, the one place on earth where he was capable of finding a measure of peace. Not that he had any hope of that.

He rode mindlessly, feeling as if his entire being had been scattered in a thousand different directions like the leaves his stallion, Thunder, kicked up. He relived every moment from the time they had arrived at Dunwoody until the fatal morning, searching for an explanation that would enable him to put the pieces back together again. He saw every turn of card in his mind’s eye, and now questioned if Phillip had been cheating at all—perhaps
he had just been losing badly. Perhaps, for once in his life, Phillip had not been cheating.

In the village of St. Albans he was forced to a halt by market traffic, and as he waited, he happened to see two gentlemen. One was golden-haired, just like Phillip. And he walked with that same easy gait, twirling his hat absently on one finger as Phillip used to do. A cold shiver ran through Adrian, and he had shouted after that man, only to have his heart plummet. Of course it wasn’t Phillip. Phillip was dead.

He rode quickly from the village before anyone could see the madness he was so certain had overcome him, his heart pounding against his chest. Was he losing his mind? Could he be so ridiculously sentimental?
Phillip was dead!

Phillip, who had arrived at Dunwoody with a flask of whiskey under one arm and a particularly notorious woman on the other, signaling the start of a weekend of debauchery so typical of their gatherings. Phillip, who was so drunk that night that Adrian could recall marveling at his ability to remain standing. “Then why did you sit for cards?” he asked himself aloud. The bastard always cheated, the severity determined by the amount of liquor he had consumed.
Why hadn’t he just walked away?

He would never know why, but he hadn’t, and the next thing he knew, the accusation had tumbled out of his mouth. Then Phillip was unsteadily on his feet, a dark, strangely victorious look on his face. Or had Adrian just imagined that was so? “You insult me, Albright. I demand satisfaction!”

That had stunned him completely—it was the last thing he had ever thought to hear from Phillip’s mouth. He had not meant Phillip to take offense. God, no, he had never meant that. And when he had tried to laugh it off, to make light of Phillip’s intoxicated state, his cousin had looked him squarely in the eye and demanded, “Are you a coward?”

Adrian moaned and shook his head. Thunder was
beginning to labor, he noticed, and he pulled up on the reins, slowing their pace. As the horse slowed to a trot he recalled the whirlwind of unfamiliar emotions that had unbalanced him that night: a desire to hit Phillip in his fool mouth; absolute horror at what his friend was apparently doing; gross confusion as to
why.
“Wh-what?” he had stammered stupidly.

“By God, I think you
are
afraid! You are a bloody coward, Albright!” Phillip had shouted, and by so saying, pushed Adrian and his foolish pride into a corner.

But even then he had no intention of dueling him. “All right, Rothembow. Pistols at dawn,” he had shot back, and heard Arthur’s gasp as Julian jerked around and stared at him as if he were insane, which he certainly must have been.

As he certainly must be now. Adrian pressed a gloved hand to his forehead, seeing in his mind’s eye only that strange, dark smile on Phillip’s lips. “Marvelous,” his cousin had drawled, and grabbing Tina’s wrist, pulled her along with him as he quit the room, presumably to wait for dawn.

Would that it had ended there, Adrian thought miserably. But no. Dawn had come all too quickly, and incredibly, Phillip had not changed his mind. Nor had he sobered any.

Standing in that field, Adrian had felt like he was the lead actor in some sort of bad dream. Everyone in their party had come out, along with their valets. Their cheerful laughter indicated that they, too, thought the so-called duel was far more entertaining than it was dangerous. But disbelief and fear had muted Adrian, and only Arthur and Julian had seemed as fearful as he was as they desperately tried to reason with Phillip. But the man was unrelenting, his determination bordering on macabre. So Adrian had gritted his teeth, swallowed his pride, and had selected a dueling pistol, frowning darkly at Fitzhugh when he had laughingly offered his new pistol before carefully stuffing it into his holster. He then had taken the requisite twenty paces, silently cursing
Phillip and vowing to beat his cousin within an inch of his sorry life for putting him through this. Then, when the mark had been called, he had fired into the air, deloping.

Would that it had ended
there.
But Phillip, damn him, had chuckled nastily, and weaving unsteadily, raised his pistol and fired.

Something died in Adrian at that moment. Phillip had actually
fired
upon him, and he had turned away in disgust, striding toward the tree stump where he had left his gun, his only thought to be gone from Dunwoody and Phillip.

Arthur’s fierce cry had raised the hackles on his neck. Adrian jerked around to see Fitzhugh on his rump and Phillip pointing that fancy pistol at him. At his
back.
He had no time to think; he dove for his gun as a bullet whizzed over his head. It was blind instinct, the sort of mindless reaction one draws upon when attacked. Somehow his hand had landed on the pistol. Somehow he had cocked it as he rolled onto his back, and somehow he had fired it with deadly aim before Phillip could fire again.

Adrian yanked Thunder to a dead stop and pressed his knuckles against the burn in his eyes. The vision of Phillip, knocked from his feet by the force of the bullet, would haunt him all his days. But … but had Phillip actually
fired
on him? Or had he purposely shot over his head? Had Phillip actually cocked the pistol to fire again, or had he just convinced himself of it? Adrian tried to remind himself that he had had no choice—Phillip would have killed him. He kept telling himself that, desperate to believe it, but he could not erase the image of Phillip’s eyes. Jesus, his
eyes.

He suddenly spurred Thunder again, pushing him into a gallop in a vain attempt to escape the burning in his soul. His heart, dear God, his heart was positively bursting with the ache of having lost one so dear to him. He had not felt so empty since his mother died almost twenty years ago. No, that was not quite accurate. He
had not
felt
since his mother’s death. Archie had seen to that.

Archie, as he disparagingly thought of his father, was Archibald Spence, the Marquis of Kealing—tyrant, misogynist, and coward. To the country set and the
ton
he was a shining example of what a peer of the realm should aspire to be. No one outside their little family, save a few longtime servants, knew of the vile contempt he had heaped on Adrian’s mother, Lady Evelyn Kealing, and on him, his oldest son and heir, day after miserable day.

Adrian’s earliest childhood memory was of him and his younger brother, Benedict, cowering in the nursery as words like
whore
and
slut
filtered up to them through the chimney shared with the green drawing room below. The verbal abuse was a constant barrage it seemed, and was sometimes backed with Archie’s fist. On those occasions, the young fool that he had been, Adrian had tried to fight for her, only to be beaten and called every invective that came to his father’s demented mind. Those were the days he had begun to teach himself not to feel.
Feel nothing, feel nothing, feel nothing.

There was never a reason for the abuse, no particular incident or misdeed that Adrian could recall. Archie simply despised him, had despised him from the moment of his birth, apparently, and Adrian had sought his refuge in the quiet solitude of the hills and streams and valleys of Kealing Park.

But his mother was trapped and she died a broken woman when Adrian was only twelve. Archie turned the full brunt of his abuse on him then, but as Adrian grew older Archie could not affect him with his words and fists as he once had been able to do. So he had taken to banishing him from the Park for one infraction or another. The first time had been for fighting on Phillip’s behalf. On that particular occasion he had not allowed Adrian to come home during the Christmas season, and the boy had spent the holidays at Eton with the dormitory housekeeper. He had been all of thirteen years old.

The last time had been five years ago when Adrian had refused to invest in his father’s newly acquired coal mine. He abhorred the conditions in the mines, particularly when owners like Archie enjoyed obscene profits at the expense of the children who labored there. But Archie complained that his profits were not as great as those of other mines of similar size and demanded that Adrian supply him with an infusion of cash. When Adrian refused, Archie had angrily banished him from the Park.

And Adrian, of course, had responded as he always did—by enlarging his holdings again. It was the one thing he could do that Archie couldn’t. Since he had come of age he had invested wisely by joining ventures he knew to be sound. He bought a majority holding in a Boston shipyard, and as a result he now enjoyed a reputation for building the fastest and sturdiest clippers that skimmed the Atlantic between England and America. His partnership with Arthur in the manufacture of iron was earning beyond his wildest expectations. Everything he owned was of far greater value and earned much higher profits than anything Archie did—because Adrian spent almost every waking hour making sure of it.