And Tobias had answered the door and proceeded to shatter the remainder of his heart:Tough luck, old chap, a lot can happen in a month. While you’ve been grieving your brother and being the heir to a dukedom, she’s been courted and won. She’s engaged.
Grayson remembered every single cursed word. And every single word had been a lie. He felt a compelling urge to leave a volley of fist-shaped bruises on Tobias’s face. He’d only survived the previous year by reminding himself daily, hourly, that she’d found a man without a title to marry.
And if Grayson had to lead a miserable titled life without her, at least he’d know she would be loved. Who couldn’t love Henrietta? Grayson grabbed Tobias’s tumbler, sloshing liquid over the edge.
“Careful, my lord,” Tobias warned. “Don’t waste it. It’s good stuff.”
Grayson, throwing the liquid down his throat, barely heard him
Tobias grabbed the tumbler back and refilled it, then downed the entire thing before pointing the empty receptacle at Grayson. “I’ll repeat myself, though I risk sounding a complete dunce, you know. Why are you here?”
“Because you lied to me.”
Tobias refilled the tumbler and took a thoughtful sip. “So, Henrietta’s not engaged. It changes nothing. You’re still heir to a dukedom. She’s still a tradesman’s daughter. You engaged her, then left her. You, I hear, are now almost engaged to another lady, a duke’s daughter. You’ll get your perfect duchess. Knowing Henrietta was never engaged”—he shrugged—“it changes nothing.”
But it did. When she’d left him alone at Hill House, the letter announcing his brother’s death on the continent during battle burning a hole in his hand, he’d been confused but realized she was, too. He hoped. Everything they’d planned transformed around them into an unrecognizable mess. Even who he was, who they would be together, changed instantly. Of course, she’d panicked.
He could forgive her for panicking. He had forgiven her for it. But when he’d discovered she’d promptly engaged herself to another man, a rich cit perhaps, then he’d known real heartbreak, real rage. Then he’d known she’d never really loved him.
He’d lived with that heavy knowledge for a year.
Now he knew it for the lie it was.
Everything had changed. He no longer ended his courtship of Lady Willow because he still loved a woman who did not love him back; he ended his courtship to win back a woman who might still love him as he did her.
Tobias plopped into a chair. “You can’t argue with facts. I made the right decision. I’ll do what I must to protect Hen. She’s a good girl, the best. I couldn’t have the cad who’d dropped her as soon as he got a title angling after her for her—fucking hell, Gray, why did you want her? To be your mistress?” To an outside observer, Tobias would seem all lazy informality, but Grayson noted the tick in his jaw, the edge to his words. And what words they were.
Grayson didn’t control his emotions like Tobias. He couldn’t. He pulled the man from his seat by the cravat until they stood face to face. “You think,” he said slowly, keeping his tone in check, “I came to London last year on bended knee, pleading, in order to make Henrietta mymistress?”He hissed the last word. It became a knife blade he wanted to slide between Tobias’s ribs. When Tobias didn’t answer, Grayson continued. “I love her.”
“Don’t you mean ‘loved’?” Tobias choked out.
“I came that day to beg her to marry me.”
Tobias, miraculously, still held the tumbler with but a sip left at its bottom. He downed that sip with a steady hand despite Grayson’s tightening grip on his neckcloth. “You’ll excuse me, being the gentleman that you are, if I call you a liar and a coward.”
Grayson slammed him against a bookcase and stalked away, afraid of what he might do. “Me? The liar?” Behind him, books hit the carpet with a volley of soft thumps.
Tobias’s cool voice seemed unphased. “You love Henrietta? Why did you reject her as soon as you gained a title, then?”
“I didn’t.” He ground out the two words, the only words, that made any sense. Then he found three more. “She left me.”
“And you let her go,” Tobias sneered.
“Fuck,” Grayson hissed, then cringed. What would his father say to hear his heir use such language? “I have to talk to her. Right now.”
Tobias sighed. “I do enjoy the rich diversity of language, and so it pains me to find myself shackled to the same words this evening. But, alas.” He sighed again, a dramatic sound capable of carrying across any stage and straight to the audience at the very back of the theater. “What use is talking with Henrietta about any of this? It changes nothing. Must I list the reasons why once more?” Tobias put a hand on Grayson’s shoulder, as if Grayson hadn’t been a twist away from choking the life from him. “Gray,” he said, and a mask dropped from his face, revealing searching eyes and a sorrowful mouth. “I’m sorry. We’re from different worlds. Before your brother died, a marriage between you and Hen made sense. But now …” He shrugged.
“I lost my brother and Hen in one day. Apparently, I lost you, too. Or did you always look down on me, always think me so shallow?”
The mask rose back up over Tobias’s face, and he lifted a shoulder in an elegant shrug. He placed the empty tumbler on a table and strolled toward the door. As he threw it wide, the opening notes of a waltz floated through. “I trust you’ll keep your distance from Hen. If you don’t, well, you know I have an uncontrollable impulse for dueling.” The waltz disappeared with Tobias behind the closed door.
Grayson stared into the fire, thinking of his brother, of Hen. His body grew heavy, and if he hadn’t found a chair to slump into, he’d have sat with a thump on the floor.
A soft knock on the door preceded a softer whisper. “Are you there, Lord Rigsby?”
Was he present? Truly here? He felt very much like an automaton, thoughtlessly completing tasks. Become a good heir. Check. Ask a proper lady to marry him. Check. Find the family heirloom and gift it to his future wife.
“Lord Rigsby?” The voice grew nearer, and he looked up into the curious face of Lady Willow. “We should not be here alone together, but the waltz has started and I—”
