“I don’t know how you can say that.”
“You won’t have to hide your relationship from your siblings. You would have hated it, eventually.”
“Is that so?” Robert said, his tone strained.
Ian folded his arms over his chest, as if that might somehow protect him. “It’s obvious how much you love them. You feel guilty for not telling them you’re a writer, Robert. This…it would have eaten you alive.”
Ian wasn’t saying anything that wasn’t true, but Robert shot to his feet. “No,” he said. “You don’t just get to decide all of this for me. It would bother me. I know that. I can admit it. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be worth it.”
Ian stepped back. He couldn’t stand here any longer. Not so close to Robert, not with this invisible, irreconcilable space already between them. “It doesn’t matter anyway, at this point. You’ll marry her.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re too kind not to.”
Robert’s mouth twisted wryly, and for too long a moment, they simply looked at each other, neither willing to give.
“Nothing has been decided yet,” Robert finally said. Softly. Quietly. Like all he wanted was for Ian to believe him, even if he wasn’t certain he believed himself.
Ian didn’t know what to say—was he supposed to agree with him? Tell him he’d wait for him? Tell him he still wanted him?
He did still want him, but he couldn’t say any of those things, couldn’t turn his heart out like that for someone else to see. Not when they were on such a thin ledge. Not when all he saw when he closed his eyes was Robert with someone else, loving someone else, marrying someone else.
Maybe not ever.
And still, caught in the light of Robert’s whisky eyes, he couldn’t deny them, either.
In the end, he simply nodded (like an idiot), and left, everything unresolved and unspoken between them balanced too precariously to hold for very long.
Chapter Nineteen
A handful of days later, when Alice Worthington’s ankle was healed enough for her to venture from her bedchamber, Robert met with the woman and her parents. And it was about as awkward as one might expect. They all sat at the round table in the library, while Mr. Worthington glowered at Robert and more or less ignored Alice, who, in turn, wouldn’t even look at her father.
Outside, the day was misty and gray, and inside the hearth burned with a healthy fire. It might have been cozy if Robert hadn’t felt like his world was ending.
“I think it would be best to wait to draw up the contract and perform the ceremony until the earl returns.” Robert forced the next words out as though they cut his throat like shards of glass. “As the head of the family, he would no doubt like to take care of this matter personally.”
He hated invoking his brother’s name like that—it made him feel like he was the helpless younger brother who always needed the elder to come along and clean up his messes—but he could think of no other reason to delay the marriage. And he was not quite ready to run out to a blacksmith’s and get married over the anvil.
He still hoped…
He didn’t know what he hoped for. Whenever Robert shut his eyes, he saw Ian, standing there, looking down at him with such an implacable expression that Robert couldn’t believe the other man had ever writhed against him, vulnerable and boneless with desire.
And those words—it wouldn’t be a lie.
Robert liked Miss Worthington. Maybe he would grow to love her, eventually, with time and with distance.
But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be a lie.
All of his thoughts, his feelings, his lust, his heart were consumed by Ian, and he thought Robert could just move on, as easily as that? How could that not be a lie?
But if Ian didn’t already know that, Robert didn’t know how to convince him.
“And when will that be?” Worthington asked, cutting into his thoughts.
“By the end of the month, unless there is some unforeseen delay.”
“Like adverse weather.” Worthington’s voice dripped with sarcasm. It didn’t slip anyone’s mind that the unpredictable Scottish weather was what had driven the family here in the first place.
“Like adverse weather,” he replied calmly.
Robert studied Alice, whose face was pale, her eyes bruised. She didn’t look like she’d gotten much sleep, either, these past few nights.
But she sat with her spine straight, her hands folded calmly. There was a strength to her, a sort of quiet practicality that he admired. Ian had a similar practicality—a refusal to bow under the weight of outside circumstances—a core of steel. Maybe that was part of the reason Robert liked her.
Except, for Ian, this trait wasn’t only a strength, it was also a weapon. When he felt too vulnerable, that unyielding nature turned to ice and stone. Robert couldn’t forget how inflexible Ian had been the last time they’d spoken.
A hot anger rose in Robert’s chest every time he thought about it. And anger was good. Anger was fine. Anger didn’t hurt, or if it did, it hurt in a more superficial way. But it never lasted.
When it inevitably died away, the empty space it left behind was filled with guilt and something too deep and dark and sorrowful to name. He was reaching for something that was already slipping away. But still, he couldn’t keep himself from grasping for it, all the same.
“But you’ll marry her?” Worthington’s next words echoed Ian’s so closely that Robert flinched. “You’ve never said it, and I want your word as a gentleman.”
Underneath the table, Robert’s hand clenched.
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Townsend alone,” Alice said suddenly, voice never wavering.
Mr. Worthington opened his mouth, to protest, no doubt, when his wife cut him off. “Very well, dear.”
She put her hand on her husband’s elbow and stood, and he had no choice but to follow. Robert could hear them arguing as they walked down the hall, but eventually their voices faded, and Robert and Alice simply looked at each other.
“Why were you in my room?” she asked, startling him.
Robert hesitated, but in the end, he didn’t feel like he could do anything other than tell her the truth. When he was finished, she looked drily amused.
“My mother mentioned that she’d stumbled across the stockings and assumed they must have been misplaced. When she heard everything else had been uncovered, too, she told Father he should apologize. But he refused, in light of recent events.” She shook her head. “All of this because of a cat?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“But you were right about one thing. I don’t think my father would have believed you if you’d simply told him. Pride and sheer stubbornness have always been his downfall.”
Robert didn’t feel much better, even knowing she didn’t blame him. They sat, for a little while, in silence.
“I always hoped I would have a love match,” she said, slightly wistful.
“You still could.”
She tilted her head, not unkindly, but as though she found the statement naive. And Robert suddenly felt naive. He felt like he was stupid and young and drowning in his own na?veté. And this was all his fault. He’d caused this. He’d ruined the first real peace he’d ever found, and he didn’t know if Ian would ever forgive him.
“It’s unlikely,” Alice said. “You know how it is once these rumors spread.”
Robert did know. He would gain a reputation as a rake, perhaps, but he wouldn’t suffer any lasting repercussions. Society’s memory tended to be short when it came to men’s transgressions with the fairer sex. Alice, however, would be ruined, through no fault of her own.
“But you don’t wish to marry me.”
“I like you. Though I admit…I wanted someone to choose me. Just me, for no other reason than they wanted me as I am.” She looked down at her hands. “It’s silly to think of now. We’ll get on well together. That is enough. That’s more than many people have.”
“That’s true.”