“Is that the only reason you care she’s left?” Xavier jolted down the stairs at Josiah’s back, his voice a bark in Josiah’s ear.
No. No. Something else, damn him.
“I told her we would marry,” Josiah said, incapable of answering his brother’s question. “And she refused. If you roar at anyone, roar at her.”
Xavier’s hand on Josiah’s shoulder stopped him near the bottom of the staircase, and Josiah curled his fingers round the polished, dark oak banister and turned with the speed of molasses dripping from a dish to face his brother. Xavier didn’t flinch away, though Josiah knew rage sparked in his eyes. For slowing him down, keeping him from going after her.
“Youtoldher?”
Was Xavier going deaf?
“You can’t tell a woman like that what she is and is not going to do.” Xavier groaned and scrubbed his palms over his face before looking at Josiah like he was the world’s biggest nodcock. “Last year she wore a wig and domino and followed Sarah about on a series of dares that could have ruined them. Almost did ruin them! She has her own money, her own home, and you think she’s going to bow to you and say,As it pleases you, Mr. Evans, when you tell her what to do?”
Josiah’s hands became fists, and his ribs became a vise. Not because of the insult but because Xavier was right. He’d mucked up good. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“That’s clear.”
“I want her.” No, more than that. “I’ve wanted her for quite some while, but… she does not fit into my plan.”
“Plan?” Xavier grasped Josiah’s shoulder and dragged him down the stairs, pulling him into an empty sitting room just off the foyer. “Hell.” The curse a grouchy mumble. “I’m supposed to be hanging mistletoe and ribbon and greenery and smiling and singing right now. Sarah wanted tonight’s ball to be perfect, andthisnodcock mucks it all up.”
“Nodcock!”
Xavier pushed Josiah into a chair. “Explain this plan of yours.”
“To improve the estates. Starting here. Moving on to your northern estate, then—”
“I told you it was a bad idea, Josiah.”
Josiah jumped from the seat, paced to the fireplace, needing something to warm his icy bones. “But I have good ideas.”
“I know. I’m well aware. But you’re a man, not an automaton, and—”
“I want to make it up to Mother.”
Xavier froze, then inhaled slowly, nodding his head as he focused on a point far across the room. “Ah. I see. That I do understand.”
Of course, Xavier would understand. He’d spent the years since their mother’s death becoming a better man, too, the kind of man who would make her proud, protect his family. Josiah wanted—no needed—to follow in his brother’s footsteps. Not his father’s. Never his father’s.
Josiah braced his elbows on the white mantel above the fireplace and rested his forehead on its sharp edge, closing his eyes, listening to his heart, trying to calm his thoughts, order them. “Georgiana will never live here, and I cannot do my work in London. But there’s something between us, some leaping flame that ignites whenever we’re in the same room, that draws us toward one another through a crowd. I’ve kissed her. She’s kissed me.” They’d done more than kiss, and God, he wanted to do more than that. “I would marry her in a heartbeat if I could. Demanding she marry me is the only way I can have her. If she has a choice, she’ll choose London over me. Choose independence.”
Josiah turned to gaze out the window. Snow was falling faster now. How far along the road had she gotten before the snow had started? Does the driver know how to navigate the roads in such weather? Every nerve in his body felt frayed and deadly.
“You didn’t give her the choice to decide, though, did you? And truly… must she choose?” Xavier kept his place across the room, and dressed impeccably in buckskins, bottle green waistcoat, hessians, and jacket, he seemed the epitome of the country gentleman. His size and the scruff on his jaw were the only signs of the brute he’d once been. A transformation willingly done for the woman he loved.
Xavier was a happy man, a man who had everything he’d ever wanted and many things he’d not known he desired. Until he met Sarah, a daring, determined, outspoken, passionate, rebel of a lady. She’d certainly not been in his plan. The soft rug beneath Xavier’s feet stretched across the room in pinks and greens until it ended at the tip of Josiah’s scuffed boots. It seemed an ocean between them, between the man who’d bent for love and… Josiah who did not.
He would not. He could… not…
A blanket of freezing certainty fell over him so thick and cold and suffocating it might as well have been an avalanche, and when it melted, it left him with a burning purpose.
He strode for the door. “I must go.”
“After her?” Xavier trotted behind him.
Josiah nodded. “When did she leave?”
“Not more than an hour ago while you slept like a babe. Take a horse. You’ll catch her easily, but the roads—”
