The Wild One (29 page)

Gareth swallowed, hard, and looked away.
He did not deserve her. He was everything Lucien said he was,
and
he did not deserve her.

He put his hands over his eyes, overcome
with shame and self-disgust.

You are lazy, feckless, dissolute, useless.
You are an embarrassment to this family, and especially to me.

He bent his head to his balled fist,
seeing all the stupid things he had recently done, seeing Juliet —
his sad, woebegone little Juliet — standing trustfully in that
church once again.
Oh, God...
He did not know how long he
stood there, rocking silently back and forth in his self-imposed
agony. But when he finally looked up, the scene was gone, and he
and his brother were alone in the deep quiet of a Lambourn night,
the stars pricking through the black sky that arced up over the
downs, the insects humming all around them.

Charles was staring out over the downs, his
hawkish profile dim against the night sky. And then, for the first
time since this strange journey had begun, he spoke.

"You have two choices," he said, quietly.
"You can either abandon your pride and go back to Lucien — or you
can make something of yourself." He turned then, his clear,
intelligent gaze holding Gareth's own. "Whatever you do, I trust
you not to let her down."

They stood looking at each other for a long,
silent moment, two brothers, two friends.

Then Charles turned and walked down the
hill, leaving Gareth all alone. And this time he knew he could not
follow.

He stared after that scarlet-clad figure,
growing smaller and smaller, now fading into the darkness. Tears
rolled down his cheeks. Pain gnawed at his heart. And now the
wakefulness he'd tried so hard to reach was starting to drag him
away.

"I'll prove myself!" Gareth shouted into the
darkness that had swallowed up his brother. "I swear it, I will!
I'll prove myself worthy of Juliet's loyalty, her trust, and her
hopes for me! I'll be a good husband and a good provider! By God
and heaven, I will, no matter what it takes!"

He opened his eyes. The dream was still very
near, Charles's quiet words still ringing in his head. For a moment
he lay there in the darkness, disoriented. Then he heard the rain
drumming on the street outside. He felt the cold, hard stone
beneath his back, smelled the pungent aroma of horses, and knew
that he was still in the mews, where he'd been all along.

And Gareth suddenly knew what he must
do.

A finger of early light was just creeping
toward him through the open doorway, stretching across the dirty
hay scattered across the floor, the patches of bare stone, and bits
of litter until it finally glowed against a crumpled white wad that
lay several inches from Gareth's face.

His heart pounding, he reached out and
picked it up.

It was the card that Snelling had offered
him earlier.

Chapter 23

"
I
think you should go straight back
to the duke," the Dowager Countess of Brookhampton declared,
setting down her teacup with an abrupt clatter. "Here it is, nearly
two days since he dumped you here, and where is that reprobate you
married? Probably lying drunk in a gaming hell somewhere — or in
the arms of some woman of sin. You'll not see the likes of him for
another fortnight, I tell you!"

Perry's mother had come round on the
pretense of a social call, but Juliet knew that was just an excuse;
like the dozen or so other nosy harridans who'd called at de
Montforte House since word had got out that the Wild One had
married, Lady Brookhampton and her daughter wanted to glean
information for the gossip mill, see for themselves the woman Lord
Gareth had wed, and take the opportunity to malign him to his new
wife.

Lady Brookhampton was a particularly
unpleasant creature, and her daughter, Lady Katharine Farnsley — a
tall, icy blonde whose beauty made Juliet feel shadowed — was
equally mean-spirited. As they all sat down to take tea, it became
glaringly obvious that Perry's sister had set her own cap for Lord
Gareth — and was deeply resentful that Juliet had got to him
first.

"I suppose it's just as well that
you
married him," Lady Katharine mused, stirring sugar into her cup and
eyeing Juliet's plain clothes — and baby on her knee — with raking
contempt. "After all, Lord Gareth
did
ruin his share of
young women, and he's not likely to change. Better you have to
worry about him than me, is that not so, Mama?"

"Indeed, my dear. You can do much better
than that libertine."

"I understand he's currently having an
affair with Lord Pemberley's wife."

Juliet smiled tightly. "Not anymore he's
not."

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that ...
after all, he's not here with
you
, is he?"

Juliet bounced Charlotte on her knee and
leaned sideways so the baby couldn't make a grab for her teacup as
she picked it up. She was not naive; it was evident that these two
troublemakers wanted nothing more than to sow dissent in the
newly-tilled garden of her marriage. Still, she could have done
without their taunts. She had seen neither Gareth nor his friends
since that rainy night he'd brought her here, and she was worried
enough about his safety without these two giving her something else
to be concerned about. Surely the man who had made such tender love
to her — she blushed even now, just thinking about it — on their
wedding night would not be in the arms of another woman. Surely he
had not abandoned the wife and daughter he'd gone through hell and
high water to wed, in favor of someone else.

Had he?

Juliet said, "You misjudge my husband. He's
a fine man."

"A
fine man
?! Ha, did you hear that,
Katharine? Ha, ha, ha, she says he's a fine man!" Perry's mother
raised her brows, much affronted, and turned her stare on Juliet.
"Let me tell you, gel, I've known the Wild One since he was a
little boy, and he hasn't changed one bit!"

And with that, Lady Brookhampton related the
tale of a summer afternoon nearly seventeen years before, when Lord
Gareth had been a mischievous blue-eyed prankster who'd been
anything but innocent. The duchess had come by for tea in the
garden, bringing Charles and Gareth with her; Charles had sat
cross-legged on a blanket beside them, studiously reading a book
while Gareth and Perry had gone off to play.

"Oh, I can still see it all so well!" Lady
Brookhampton said, holding her cup out so that Juliet could pour
more tea. She went on to describe the scene: the duchess pregnant
with Nerissa, smiling and rubbing her swollen tummy, her nanny
suddenly charging up the lawn, skirts high as a strumpet's and
screaming that little Lord Gareth had tumbled into the pond and
disappeared beneath the water. The alarm was raised. Mass confusion
and chaos had ensued, with servants — even those who couldn't swim
— leaping into the pond, dashing to get the small boat, racing this
way and that. Even her husband, the Earl of Brookhampton, had come
running, shedding his waistcoat and diving into the brackish water
in search of the boy, and as he'd come up for air, Lord Gareth —
with Perry following reverently behind — came strolling out from
behind one of the ancient yew trees, soaking wet, and laughing at
having tricked some fifty people into thinking he had drowned.

"He should've been
whipped
!" Lady
Brookhampton declared vehemently. "But the duchess wouldn't hear of
it; why, I doubt he got anything more than a gentle admonition not
to do such a thing again. Had she punished him as she ought to have
done, perhaps he would have turned out all right, but no, he was
her favorite, you know, her wild child, and he could do nothing
wrong. She didn't even punish him when he turned six and shocked
everyone in Ravenscombe by offering threepence to any of the
village girls who would let him look beneath their skirts!"

"What about Charles? Did she ever punish
him
?" Juliet asked, with faint sarcasm.

"Of course not, Charles never did anything
wrong. But Gareth — he was too charming, too full of naughty,
sparkle-eyed innocence for anyone to take him seriously … or remain
angry with him for too long. He'd do something awful, and his
mother would just smile and say that the years would cure him of
his uncontrollable ways. But they never did. If anything, he grew
more daring, more outrageous the older he got — especially after
the duchess died."

"Perhaps he did those 'awful' things for
attention," Juliet said flatly, her teacup coming down a little too
hard. "Especially as everyone seemed to pay more of it to his
brother."

"That is because his brother deserved
it!"

Charles, she was told, had remained
studious, serious-minded, and unfailingly polite, but Gareth had
become the black sheep of the family, the bane of the Lambourn
Downs — and, much to Lady Brookhampton's dismay, Perry's closest
friend.

"Perry's a grown man now; of course, I
cannot keep him away from your husband's corruptive influence. But
I
can
ensure that everyone who's anyone knows how wicked he
is — a crusade I started after I found he'd dragged my darling
Perry into some den of corruption where wild orgies were held every
Saturday evening, and duels over the loose women who inhabited the
place erupted at least once a fortnight. And do you know how I know
about those duels, gel? I know because Perry was involved in one
last February, and I heard all about it over tea at Lady Waltham's
the following afternoon. Enough was enough, I said. Right then and
there, I vowed that the duchess's wild son would never again darken
my door." She picked up her tea and eyed Juliet with something like
malicious triumph. "Oh, don't look at me like that. I know he's
handsome; I know he can charm the maidenhood right out of a virgin
— and no doubt has. But if you married him thinking he'd make a
decent husband, you're going to be sorry til the day you die. The
only thing he'll make you is miserable, I tell you. Miserable!"

Katharine said, "Charles was the better of
the two, don't you think, Mama?"

"Absolutely. He was a credit to his family,
to his rank, and to his country. Went out of his way to help
people, was always good and kind and giving —"

"Lord Gareth is just as kind and generous as
Charles was," Juliet said tersely.

"How would you know? You never even met
Charles, whereas my daughter here was promised to him since birth.
We
knew both brothers quite well. As for Lord Gareth, ha!
Everyone
knows he is nothing but a useless wastrel, a
rake!"

"Actually, I did meet Charles," Juliet
returned, concealing her shock at Lady Brookhampton's announcement
and resisting the urge to add,
And I knew him in a way you never
did
. "And as for Lord Gareth, he is my husband, and I resent
how everyone seems to feel a need to say something cruel about him
or compare him to Charles. It's not fair, and it's not right — to
either
of them. They were two different people."

"Yes. Of course." Sipping her tea, Lady
Brookhampton stared out the window at the pigeons walking on the
roof of the opposite town house. "Chalk and cheese, they were.
Sometimes I wonder why the good Lord took the one instead of the
other."

"Lady Brookhampton!" Juliet cried,
horrified. "What a wicked thing to say!"

"Is it? Well, I can't help it, that's the
way I feel," she snapped. "It's all Gareth's fault that my poor,
dear Perry is wrapped up in that dreadful Den of Debauchery
business, Gareth's fault that Perry goes to drunken parties and
orgies, Gareth's fault that Perry's involved in daring midnight
steeplechases, sabotaged hunts, and the ruination of decent women
—"

Juliet felt her temper rising.

" — and here I am, a God-fearing mother,
trying my best to teach my son morals and good behavior, but
despite all I've done, Gareth has ruined everything and turned
Perry into the worst sort of rogue. If it weren't for him, my Perry
would be home, looking after his mother and sister and being a
dutiful son, not running wild through London, getting up to the
worst sorts of mischief and socializing with all manner of unsavory
characters. Oh, I can't help but think how my son would have turned
out if he'd never met that ... that scoundrel!"

Juliet bit back the retort that was itching
to escape her lips. With this termagant for a mother, meeting "that
scoundrel" was probably the best thing that could've happened to
Perry. God knew how he might have turned out if he
hadn't
!

She leaned over Charlotte and reached for
the sugar. "You speak as though your son had no choice in the
matter. Are you saying that Perry, a grown man, doesn't have free
will to do as he pleases?" she asked, feigning innocence.

"I'm saying that Gareth has blinded him to
what is right and wrong. Gareth was a wicked child, and now he's a
wicked man, and you might as well face the fact, gel, that he's
never going to change."

"Lady Brookhampton," Juliet said firmly,
"from the moment you arrived, you and your daughter have been
saying terrible things about my husband. You'll forgive me, but I'm
beginning to question your motives."

"Motives?" Lady Brookhampton, taken aback
about being so directly confronted, gave a nervous little laugh.
"Oh, we have no motives, do we, Katharine?"

"Indeed not, Mama. We just want his wife to
be ... prepared."

"I don't need any
preparation
,"
Juliet said sharply.

"Oh, but you do. That rogue you married will
break your heart, I can tell you that right now. Is that not so,
Mama?"

"He will indeed, Katharine."

Juliet, fuming, had had enough. She slammed
her teacup down so hard, it nearly cracked the saucer. "I don't
know the man you're talking about, but the one
I
married
risked his life to save me — and a coach full of other innocent
people he didn't even know. He sacrificed his own future to do
right by his dead brother, and he defended my honor when it would
otherwise have been compromised. If you cannot find something nice
to say about him, I think it's time you both leave."