“Sixteen.” Jack raised his head and stared unfocused toward the ceiling. “Don’t you remember the summer you were sixteen, Amelia? You were engaged to Poste. Hugh and I, we spent the whole summer up here at the gatehouse, plotting to stop the wedding. We may have been only thirteen and twelve, but we were blood sworn to never surrender you to that decrepit troll. We made black-powder grenades to create a diversion, a catapult …” He gave a hollow chuckle. “There was some strategy involving riled-up chickens, as I recall.”
Tears welled in Amelia’s eyes, even as she laughed to imagine the confluence of chickens, black powder, and a catapult interrupting her wedding. Old Mr. Poste would have likely expired on the spot. “What valiant plans. You must have been gravely disappointed when I cried off.”
“No.” His gaze met hers—utterly devoid of cynicism or deceit. “We were relieved, Amelia. Not just me and Hugh, but everyone. You deserved so much better. That’s why …” He cleared his throat. “It’s damned miserable, knowing I’ve driven you to marry Morland now.”
“Jack, that’s completely different. Spencer is nothing like Mr. Poste. I love him.”
“You love everyone, no matter how undeserving. He’s still not good enough for you. No one is.” He shook his head. “If Hugh were alive, we’d have found a way to interrupt that wedding, too. Chickens, black powder, whatever it took.”
Had they laid siege to all Bryanston Square, she doubted Spencer could have been dissuaded. If he wouldn’t stop the wedding to answer murder allegations, a homemade catapult wouldn’t have stood a chance.
“Of course,” Jack said, “if Hugh were alive, everything would be different, wouldn’t it?” Her brother tipped his head back against the wall and stared up at the leaking ceiling. “We spent our boyhoods in this crumbling heap. Couldn’t bear to come back here, after. Thought I’d be relieved to see it sold, but …”
Her heart squeezed. So that’s why she hadn’t been able to get Jack out here last year. The same memories that comforted her were simply too much for him.
“I should have gone with him. I hated Laurent for buying Hugh a commission, and not me. I always followed him everywhere.”
“I know,” she said. “But you can’t follow him now, Jack. Not to the grave.”
“Can’t I?”
“No,” she said forcefully.
Water dripped slowly from the rafters. Plink, plink, plink. And then a realization exploded inside her.
“My God. That’s why you’re just sitting here, isn’t it? You want to be found. You want Spencer to call you out.”
Again, he said nothing.
Her brother wished to die. It was an admission that should have wrung her heart till it hurt—and it did. But it also angered her beyond belief.
“Have you considered anyone but yourself, with this plan of yours? I know you loved Hugh. We all loved Hugh. His death devastated the entire family. So now you would inflict that devastation on us again, by goading my husband into a duel?” Her voice shook. “I tell you now, that will not happen. Spencer is not a murderer, and I won’t allow you to make him one.”
She smoothed Claudia’s hair. “And this girl is fifteen years old, Jack. I don’t care whose idea it was, or what assumptions you were laboring under when you took her from the house. Nothing excuses this.”
“I know, I know.” Jack hugged his own knees and rocked himself. She thought she heard him weeping.
The sound only frustrated her further. Her brother wasn’t the frightened, ill-used, powerless child in this room. That role was Claudia’s, and in his self-centered myopia he’d done nothing to help the girl. For God’s sake, she was pregnant, terrified, chilled through with rain, and Jack was keeping her huddled in this drafty tower. He hadn’t even offered her his coat.
Strangely enough, Amelia was glad of it. That small example of thoughtlessness might be inconsequential compared to his other misdeeds—but it was this final ounce of selfishness that tipped the scales. For many months, she’d believed she could save her brother if only she loved him hard enough. But she saw her error clearly now. She’d accused Spencer of being insular, but Jack was the one incapable of seeing beyond his own grief. Other men lost brothers, friends, even children and wives—and still avoided abject dissolution. Why Jack had stumbled into the chasm when others managed to skirt it, she would never know. But she finally understood it was beyond her power to pull him out.
She murmured to Claudia, “Do you feel well enough to stand?” At the girl’s nod, Amelia hooked a hand under her elbow. “Come, then. I’ll take you home.”
“What about me, Amelia?” Jack asked weakly. “What becomes of me now? You’re so fond of telling me what to do.”
She shook her head as she helped the girl to her feet. “I don’t know, Jack. I truly don’t know.”
Chapter Twenty-two
In the final black hour of night, Spencer crested the ridge of forest and began his descent toward Briarbank. The moon shone brightly now, though a mist still hung over the earth, blanketing the ground with moisture.
The scent of powder clung to his clothing. His boots were spattered with blood. His limbs were boneless with fatigue, and the early morning air was so humid, he felt as though he were swimming through it. Struggling, flailing. Drowning.
One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)
Tessa Dare's books
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