With that, he left, fully intending to search the entirety of London if he had to, to find his brother. As for his wife—he did not know when he would be ready to face her again, knowing that their entire marriage was built on a mistake. And just when he had begun to accept that he was falling in love with her, too.
Max sat in a smoky corner of Dalton’s Gentlemen’s Club, nursing a measure of brandy. His eyes itched with fatigue, his heart heavy, his shoulders slumped as he struggled to ignorethe chatter all around him. He had searched London for hours, visiting all the friends of Dickie he could think of, but no one had seen him. Either that, or they were keeping his whereabouts a secret.
It was all a ruse. She really did want to face the scandal, and I blundered in with my righteous attitude…
He leaned forward, holding his head in his hands.
Was it any wonder that Caroline had been so frosty with him at the very beginning? Was it any wonder that she had seemed so furious, and had resembled a cornered animal when he had proposed to take Dickie’s place? Max had ruined her plans. Max had judged Dickie so fiercely for not doing his duty. Max had not stopped to think that there might have been something more to the wedding situation. Now, it had all become a tangled mess, and he could not even begin to unravel it.
“Max?” a nervous voice spoke.
Max lifted his head, rubbing his bleary eyes to make sure that he was not seeing things.
Dickie stood on the other side of the small, circular table, his arms behind his back, his head bowed, the very portrait of contrition. He looked tired and had lost some weight, but otherwise himself.
“I heard you might be looking for me,” Dickie said. “Rather, I heard what happened and figured it might be time for me to show my face.”
Max cleared his throat. “How did you know I would be here?”
“A friend sent word that you were searching for me, so I assumed you would pay this place a visit,” Dickie replied. “I had intended to wait here, but you arrived ahead of me.”
“What friend?”
Dickie shook his head. “That is not important. All that is important is that they said I ought to talk to you.”
Clearly, one of the friends that Max had visited had not wanted to reveal the secret of where Dickie had been residing, but at least—whoever they were—they had spared Max from any further searching.
Max nodded slowly. “What did you hear exactly?”
“That the truth has come out,” Dickie replied, finally taking the seat opposite his brother. “I am relieved, in all honesty. I could not bear reading all of the lies in the scandal sheets, knowing that you were not at fault. I doubt I have ever felt guilt like it, though I know I have plenty to feel guilty about.”
Max raised his glass of brandy. “Congratulations, Dickie. You are once again the greatest rake in England, despite my best attempts to keep your name out of the mud.”
“Max, if I had known that you would marry Caroline in my stead, I would have been there,” Dickie said in earnest, his tone more solemn than Max had ever heard it. “I suppose I should have known that you would step in, but I was not thinking. I was only thinking of myself and how glad I was to have escaped marriage. It was not until afterward, when the news came out, that I realized what I had set in motion. And I could not face you, Max.”
Max sniffed. “Caroline told me that you were willing to proceed with it. She said you protested against her plan.”
“She is too generous,” Dickie replied with an awkward laugh. “I did not protest nearly enough. But… Ididagree in the end because I thought I was doing what was best for my friend. I never meant to hurt the two of you. I never meant to put you both in that position.”
Max shrugged and took a sip of his drink as he leaned back in his chair. “It cannot be undone now. None of it can. I have been sitting here thinking of ways to fix everything, and I cannot think of anything. It is a new feeling, and I do not care for it.”
Dickie’s explanation of the events sounded more like what Max would have expected, but that did not lessen the fact that Dickie had tried to do the dutiful, responsible thing. It was Caroline who had stopped Dickie, and it was Max who had turnedeverything upside down, thinking he knew best. And, in the end, it did not matter—Caroline was back in the same place she would have been if he had not married her.
“Ihave a solution,” Dickie said, squirming in his seat. “Ihave a way to make things right again. It cannot save my reputation or Caroline’s, but it might ease the derision we receive.”
Max downed what was left in his glass. “I am listening.”
“I will do what I should have done in the first place,” Dickie said, his head bowed. “If you get an annulment from the archbishop, I will marry Caroline myself. I doubt you will have any trouble gaining the annulment, considering the gossip that will undoubtedly be in the papers tomorrow. I am ready to take this burden for you, Max. I am sorry it took me so long to be the brother you raised me to be.”
She is not a burden,Max wanted to say.She is… a rare and precious bird that I foolishly caged.
But he could not speak that aloud. He could not show that he cared when Dickiewasoffering the best possible solution. If she married Dickie, she would be married to a friend who would do anything to fulfill her wishes, instead of someone who could not even admit that he loved her. More than that, Dickie would be able to guide her through the storm of scorn to come, in a way that Max was ill-equipped to do.
It is the only way to save them both…Andthatwas the most important factor of all, regardless of what it meant for him.
“I will seek out the papers in the morning,” Max said quietly, a crack opening up in his heart that he feared would never close again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
