The Love of a Rogue (18 page)

At her murmured response, his body went taut, the muscles straining the confines of his black coat. His eyes darkened. “What if I said I came tonight because I want you,” he said on a husky whisper that ran through her. Did he intend to shock her? From the moment she’d picked her gaze up and found him grinning down at her in the Marquess of Waverly’s library, he’d robbed her of the ability to be scandalized by his actions or words. He roped his arm about her waist and drew her close.

Her belly fluttered, but she tamped down her body’s natural yearning for him. “Do you know what I believe?” She didn’t wait for him to reply. “I believe your life is no different than one of those Drury Lane productions we took in two evenings ago.” He blanched. “You are not a rogue.” She’d come to that realization in the theatre and now his presence at her side this evening proved him to be more than that feckless fellow. “
In thy face I see the map of honor, truth and loyalty.”

He started and then adopted that false, rogue’s grin—a practiced, deliberate smile. A show. “I most certainly am, my lady.” Alex closed the steps between them and cupped the back of her neck angling her face up to his. “In fact, I can show you just how much of a—”

Imogen ducked out from under his arms. At any other moment, her heart would be racing and she’d be breathless from his deliberate charm. Not now. Not in light of all he’d shared.

Alex released her so suddenly that she careened sideways then quickly righted herself. “You’ll quote Shakespeare and dream the words of romantic poets.” His gaze took her in from the top of her shamefully crimson head to the tips of her slippers, and then back up once more. “Yet you’d be better served if you stayed the hell away from me, Imogen. Have Primly for your husband.”

Pain knifed through her. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do,” he said, the merciless edge to his words sharper than any blade. “You’ve had your heart broken by Montrose. Any of this hero worship you’d heap upon me is not deserved. The only reason I came tonight was at the bequest of my sister.”

Oh, God. She shook her head, incapable of getting words out past the emotion clogging her throat.

“Yes,” he said with a bluntness that made her flinch. “The only reason I shared my… past…” he faltered over those words “…with you was so you might realize why I’ve become the man I am.” Alex stalked over. “Do you know why I’ve been such a, how did you refer to it, doting brother?” He planted his hands on her shoulders, forcing her gaze up to his. “Because my brother, the revered marquess has tired of my gaming, whoring, and drinking.” She flinched. “He threatened to cut me off if I did not do my brotherly duty. I’ve only ever cared about myself.” He released her so suddenly, she staggered back a step.

“I don’t believe that,” she said softly. Did she try to convince herself or him?

“Then you’re a fool and it is no wonder you were too naïve to see Montrose’s true character.”

Imogen jerked back, his words more painful than had he struck her. She’d come to know him too much in this time to recognize this display was nothing more than a mechanism to push her away, a desperate bid to protect himself from further hurts. “Don’t do this,” she pleaded.

“I’m not doing anything but providing the truth.” With a sharp, perfunctory bow, he spun on his heel and left.

A tear slid down her cheek, the silence of the room her only company. God help her. She’d gone and fallen in love with Lord Alex Edgerton, a man so determined to keep the walls up about his heart, he could never,
would
never, love her in return.

Chapter 13

A
lex sat on the sofa in the library of his brother’s townhouse, cloaked in the thick, dark silence of the early morning hours, head buried in his hands. Even with his abrupt departure from Imogen at Lady Ferguson’s ball five hours past, a riot of emotions still churned through him.

He loved her. A hiss escaped his lungs, the slight exhalation of it as it burst from his lips the only sound in the dead of night.

Why are you doing this…?

A lady once betrothed to a duke, now courted by an honorable earl, deserved far more than Lord Alex Edgerton, the broken and battered second son who’d been told with an enduring frequency of his unworthiness. First from the sire who’d given him life and then in all those countless women who took him to bed, wanting nothing more than the pleasure of his body. And those meaningless entanglements had been enough.

Until Imogen.

“May I come in?”

He snapped his head up. “I didn’t hear you enter,” he said, his voice gruff from the tumult of his emotions and the embarrassment of being caught unawares by his ever-perfect, older brother.

Gabriel shoved the door closed behind him then strode over. Then in a manner eerily reminiscent to an exchange that had taken place in this very room just recently, Gabriel paused at the foot of his seat. Alex reached for the full bottle of brandy and the empty glass alongside it. His brother covered his hand with his own, staying the movement. “You don’t want that.”

He did. Desperately. So he might find a liquid resolve. “What the hell do you know of it?” A wealth of questions buried within the one. At one time Gabriel had known. With the passage of time, he’d forgotten what they’d shared.

“If you truly wanted it, you’d have consumed nearly half the bottle. As it is, it’s been untouched.”

Alex tightened his fingers about the rim of his glass, hard enough to shatter the tumbler. He lightened his grip, damning him for being astute, seeing everything, and yet at the same time, seeing nothing. “What the hell do you want?”

“May I?” he motioned to the seat beside Alex.

“Surely the powerful marquess needn’t ask permission to be seated in his own library.” Did he imagine the spasm of pain to contort Gabriel’s face? He scoffed. In spite of his protestations in their earlier conversation, Gabriel had ceased being human the moment the devil had taken him under his wing and provided tutelage to the revered heir.

Wordlessly, his elder brother flicked the tails of his jacket and claimed a seat. Then, in the first shocking act he remembered of the always proper, unyielding marquess, Gabriel swiped the bottle of brandy. He made use of Alex’s untouched glass, pouring himself a drink. “You certainly left Society talking last evening with your showing at Forbidden Pleasures,” he said without preamble.

Alex’s public defense of Imogen would, of course, have been remarked upon and fast become fodder for the gossips. However, he’d not believed his exchange with Rutland would have circulated with such rapidity. Rather, he’d hoped it wouldn’t. “The lady is a friend of our sister’s,” he said, in a bid to protect the truth of Imogen’s hold upon him. “Then, I’d not expect you to understand matters of loyalty.”

Gabriel winced and yet had proved far more resilient through the years. “I hardly expect it should matter to you what one such as Rutland says of the lady.”

“It doesn’t.” The lie was automatic. He rolled his shoulders.

“Yet you defended her.” His brother took a slow, deliberate sip. “Out of the lady’s connection to Chloe?” Skepticism underscored those questions.

A volatile force of emotion brought Alex to his feet. “Is there a question there?” His brother arched an eyebrow. “Rutland is a master manipulator,” he said defensively. “He’d have the
ton
believe there is more there than actually is.”
Liar
.

Ever imperial and unaffected, Gabriel leaned back in his seat. “Perhaps.” He draped an arm along the back of the leather sofa. Of course, he’d not let the matter be. “I’m sure it was merely gossip and lies that claimed you’d defended the lady’s beauty.” A wry smile pulled at the other man’s lips. “Though, the gentleman, doth protest too much, methinks.”

He’d grown accustomed to a world in which Gabriel didn’t know his interests or hopes or fears. Yet, for everything that had come to pass, he still remembered Alex’s love of Shakespeare. A flush burned his neck. “You take the same twisted glee as our great sire in ferreting out one’s weakness, but you’re wrong on this score. I do not care for Imogen Moore.”
I love her.
Two very, very different sentiments.

Gabriel went still, a flash of pain sparked in his eyes. “Is that truly how you see me? As an extension of our father?”

Bloody hell, he did not wish to have this discussion again with his brother. Dredging up their dark past was futile. No words could put to rights the rift between them. “We’ve already said everything there is to say about our…” His lip peeled back in a sneer. “
Father
.”

Gabriel surged to his feet. With a furious step, he stalked over and planted himself before Alex. Of like height, he stuck his face close. “Do you think you’re the only one who suffered? Do you believe that when he took me under his tutelage I was somehow spared from his viciousness?” For the first time since he’d been a young, angry boy forgotten by his elder brother, hero, and protector, a niggling of doubt twisted about his brain. “I wasn’t,” he said with an almost gleeful delight in correcting Alex’s erroneous supposition. “I was still a victim of his abuse. I still bore the blunt of his fist, his hand, or that damned birch rod whenever I faltered in the lessons he imparted.”

If those words were truth, then it would mean everything he’d believed these nearly two decades had been wrong. He shook his head dumbly. No. The world would cease to make sense if his brother spoke the truth.

“Yes,” Gabriel spoke in a deadened tone that could only come from another who’d shared in the hell of Alex’s youth. He scoffed. “Come, you are smart, surely you noted the attention Father showed you after he’d separated us and began grooming me for the role of marquess?”

With a confounding sluggishness, he ran through the childhood years, rolled past the bitterness, resentment, and pain he carried at his brother’s defection. As a small child, the beatings handed out had occurred with a shocking frequency. They’d never stopped.

“I couldn’t stop him completely, Alex.” Gabriel rubbed his chest as though in pain. “I was never that strong and in my inability to do so, I became the failure you’ve found me to be.” He met his gaze square on. “But you were never the only one to know that pain. I don’t want you to believe you were different or less worthy merely because your position of birth. Chloe, Philippa,” Gabriel sucked in a jagged breath and then his face tightened. He shook his head as though unable to revisit the horrors known by even the young Edgerton girls. “He’d have taken a piece of your flesh regardless, because that is what monsters do.”

The world dipped and swayed and Alex found purchase on the edge of a winged back chair. “You protected me.” He didn’t recognize the hoarse declaration as his own.

Color filled his brother’s face. “Don’t have me be a hero. I’m not. If I was, I would have stopped him, maintained your friendship and cared for Chloe and Philippa and…” His words trailed off and he dragged a palm over his face. “I’ve not come to again raise memories of our past. The day he died, I swore I’d never again mention his name.” He cast a hungry look back at the bottle of brandy atop the table and it occurred to Alex just how great the demons Gabriel himself battled.

Alex held his hand out, calling his brother’s attention back away from those spirits that would not truly provide any escape from the past. He knew as one who’d tried. “I…” He cleared his throat tight with emotions too long buried.

Gabriel placed his hand in his and held tight. “I know, Alex. I love you, too.” His brother stared at their clasped hands and then with the alacrity of one who’d been schooled in concealing any and all emotion released Alex’s fingers. “Your Lady Imogen,” he began.

A grin pulled at the right corner of his lips. “You’re unrelenting.”

“You may believe she’d be better with a titled gentleman, but she nearly had the Duke of Montrose. And what has that brought her?” The words were eerily reminiscent to those spoken by the lady herself in Ferguson’s office. His brother coughed into his hand. “I’ll leave you to your thoughts.”

He nodded. “Gabriel, I’m—”

“Don’t,” he commanded, cutting into a futile apology that could never right the wrongs done by Alex, the lies he’d allowed himself to believe, and worse, for consigning his brother to the same loathed column as their father. Gabriel patted him awkwardly on the shoulder and then with stiff, jerky movements started for the door. At the entrance, he froze and turned back around. “There could be far worse things than giving your heart to a respectable lady who’d take care of that love.”

And with that, he left.

Alex’s shoulders sagged. He’d spent years hating his brother for having abandoned him, when in truth Gabriel had sought to shelter him, to hold the marquess’ attention for his own, and through that redirect the madman’s ire away from his younger siblings. He was humbled by the shame of his own self-absorption, for failing to see the truth that had always been there, if he’d only glimpsed past his own self-centeredness to see the truths painted before him.

Another knock sounded at the door. Woodenly, he picked up his head.

“May I come in?” Without waiting for permission, Chloe slipped inside the library.

He mustered a grin for his youngest sister. “Of course you intended to do so regardless.”

She smiled. “Indeed.” Then she winced, touching her fingers to her temple. Alarmed, he hurried over but she merely waved him off. “It will take more than a megrim to weaken me.” He believed that. In all she’d endured and triumphed through, she was stronger than any gentleman he knew.

He motioned her over. “Sit.”

With a sigh, she walked slowly over and then sank into the wide, leather sofa he’d occupied earlier. The old folds of the seat swallowed her diminutive form. In this moment, she may as well have been the same girl who’d dogged his footsteps and made it a disastrous habit of imitating her older, incorrigible brother’s poor behaviors. Chloe drew her knees up and dropped her chin atop the top of her modest, thick, cotton wrapper. “I overheard your discussion with Gabriel.”