She had not given him the whisky, and neither had Mama, who had also rushed from her chamber in the darkness, fluttering about aimlessly as a moth. In her dudgeon, Mama had almost fallen down the steps herself.
Catriona had caught her by the elbow in time.
And had also subsequently sought their butler, who had rounded up three of the sturdiest footmen to aid in returning Monty to his bed.
But the trouble with Monty was that he was, well, Monty.
And he had been out of his mind with laudanum and pain and desperate for what Monty loved second best—liquor. First was women, of course, and in massive quantity but questionable quality.
But Monty had not been appreciative of the efforts being undertaken to restore him to his bed. He had punched one of the footmen in the eye. He had also nearly succeeded in kicking the unsuspecting butler down the stairs. When the phalanx of servants required to restore him to his bed had finally managed to wrangle him to his chamber, he had relieved himself on the carpet.
In front of Catriona and their horrified mother.
She did not think she would ever be able to forget the sound of Monty’s stream hitting the carpet. Or the gasp of horror in Mama’s throat.
And Monty?
He had merely laughed. Laughed uproariously, as if he had heard the funniest sally in all Christendom. And then he had belched and begun to cry. And then he had fallen over, and all the servants had wrestled him back into bed as he uttered a series of nonsensical curses. Satan’s earbobs. God’s fichu. The devil’s banyan.
His splint had been quite ruined by that point.
Poor Dr. Croydon had once more been sent for this morning, and the household was awaiting his arrival whilst attempting to ignore the ghastly hollering emerging from Monty’s bedchamber, where he had been tied to the bed posts by their enterprising domestics. The extra laudanum spooned down his throat had worn off about an hour ago, by her estimation. Thankfully, Mama was suffering his tantrum at the moment.
Catriona was tempted to cry about it all now as she tried to consume her breakfast. Torrington was still insensate, and Hattie would probably never speak to her again on account of Monty’s reckless ways. She had been forced to write a note to Rayne, informing him she could not marry him. And she had also had to pen a note to Hattie, explaining her brother was…
“My lord, you cannot simply…my lord, this is highly irregular! My lord, I insist you stop!”
The frustrated objections of the butler echoed just beyond the breakfast room. The door opened, flinging against the damask wallcoverings with a thump. And there he stood, the man she had been meant to marry today. The man she had promised, just the night before, she would marry in the morning, regardless of her brother’s mayhem.
But that had been before the staircase incident.
And the peeing on the rug incident.
And the earl looked furious.
Beautiful, but furious.
She stood. “My lord. You did not need to come.”
“Of course I did,” he bit out, striding toward her. “You are to be my wife, and matters concerning you also concern me.”
To the butler, who lingered with a look of barely suppressed outrage—perhaps understandable after the evening they had just had—she nodded. “It is well. You may go. I sent a note to Lord Rayne this morning requiring his presence.”
The domestic bowed and took his leave.
In truth, she had done nothing of the kind. Rather, she had sent Rayne a note explaining—loosely, of course—the events of the prior evening and begging a delay of their nuptials. Although she had not requested his presence, it stood to reason he would appear, given they had been promised to marry this morning and that he seemed quite intent upon achieving their union.
Clearly, he was here on account of his sense of duty. The same sense of duty which made him promise himself to a woman he then intended to abandon. The same sense of duty which enabled him to believe having an heir would absolve him of all his obligations.
The same sense of duty which told him he could marry her, get her with child, and then leave.
The more thought she devoted to it, the more Rayne’s indefatigable sense of duty enraged her.
“You did not have to come here this morning on account of our impending nuptials,” she told him. “Waiting one more day ought not to be a problem. Should it?”
His lips tightened into a grim line. “One day does not seem sufficient to tend to the needs of your wastrel brother, my lady. If we are to delay our nuptials based upon Montrose’s whims, we shall remain forever unwed.”
Rayne was not wrong. Monty was a goodhearted man, and she loved her brother, but even she had grown weary of his antics.
The earl’s thinly veiled hostility gave her pause. “Are you not willing to wait one day?”
“After one day, shall it be another, and then another?” he asked. “Lady Catriona, perhaps I have not made it clear before, but allow me to do so now. I need a wife. I need an heir. And then I need to return to my country. All of these tasks must be accomplished as quickly as possible.”
He had prowled toward her in the course of their conversation, and he now stood devastatingly near. His scent hit her, along with a wave of yearning she could not shake regardless of how foolish she knew it to be.
The lingering prick of jealousy at his love for Spain and his first wife made her bold. “Is this not your country as well, Lord Rayne?”
His nostrils flared in irritation. “No. It is not. My home is where I make it, and that has never been here. Nor will it ever be.”
Of course. It was what she had expected him to say.
“I am sorry, my lord, for requesting a postponement of our nuptials,” she forced herself to say rather than pursuing the troubling matter. “You must know, I would not have done so were it not a necessity.”
“Montrose,” he growled, his loathing of her brother almost palpable.
Ah, Monty. Some days, she despaired of him. Any hopes she had entertained that this incident would curtail his wild ways had been summarily dashed last night.
“This is rather indelicate,” she began, not certain how much she ought to reveal to Rayne. What she truly meant was it was mortifying.
Her brother was a disaster, it was true.
Rayne snorted. “I am not a delicate man, querida. Tell me everything.”
She bit her lip, considering her options. She could either unburden herself entirely, at the risk of humiliating Monty, or she could offer an abridged version.
The earl did not like her hesitation. “Everything,” he pressed.
Catriona sighed. “Monty left his bed, strictly against the doctor’s orders. In the process, he ruined his splint and upset the bone.”
Her brother’s indecipherable hollering punctuated her truncated explanation.
“Cristo,” muttered Rayne. “Is that Montrose?”
“I am afraid so,” she admitted hesitantly.
“Is the sawbones already here doing his work?” the earl wanted to know. “Cannot the man do his duty and spoon some laudanum down Montrose’s throat?”
She frowned. “Dr. Croydon has yet to arrive, on account of being detained elsewhere. Monty is…distressed because he has been tied to his bed.”
“Tied to his…” Rayne’s brows furrowed. “An explanation, if you please, madam.”
Oh, dear. Where to begin? How much to reveal?
“In the midst of the night, Monty was seeking whisky.”
“I knew it,” Rayne bit out, the rage emanating from him at his initial entrance, returning.
“He was out of his head, perhaps from the pain, perhaps from the laudanum,” Catriona continued. “But whatever the reason, he upset his splint, and he was walking on the leg, which he is not meant to do without a crutch of some sort.”
“None of that explains why Montrose has been lashed to his bed like a Bedlamite,” the earl pointed out.
Correctly.
“We feared he ma
y make a second attempt,” she admitted. “He was not…particularly lucid at the time of the initial incident, and as some of the servants were injured in the effort to return him to his bed, we all deemed it best to remove the temptation. At least until Dr. Croydon arrives.”
“And what of Torrington?” Rayne demanded next.
“He has not yet woken,” she said sadly. “I have sent for his sister, Hattie, and his mother. I expect they will wish to move him home, whenever it is practicable.”
She could only pray the viscount would, indeed, wake. That the damage he had suffered when he had been thrown from his phaeton was not irreversible.
“What of you?” Rayne asked, disturbing her tumultuous musings as he closed the last of the distance between them, then caught her chin in his thumb and forefinger, tilting her face back so he could study her. “You are very pale this morning, my lady, and the darkness beneath your eyes suggests you did not have a proper sleep.”
She swallowed, trying not to lose herself in the warm depths of his gaze. Trying to ignore the length of his black lashes, too long for a man’s, the aristocratic sweep of his nose, the prominence of his cheekbones.
Trying to forget how handsome he was and how effectively he tied her wits and stomach in knots whenever their paths crossed.
“I am fine,” she managed to say, though the words, when they emerged at last, were undeniably breathless. “Thank you for your concern.”
“Someone ought to be concerned for your welfare,” he bit out. “Where in Hades is your mother?”
“Attending Monty,” she answered.
His thumb moved, running along her jaw in a tender caress. “Who is attending you, my lady? Making certain you are eating? Making sure you are well? Hmm?”
“No one,” she managed shakily. “I can see to myself.”
Surely Rayne was not concerned for her. Was he?
“Of course you can, querida.” His voice had thickened. The sweetness of his baritone licked through her, at once soothing and yet also inciting a flame. “You have had to do so, because everyone else is too busy chasing after Montrose. How many times has he done something as reckless as what he did last night?”
She tried to think, but the earl was caressing her throat, his large hand slipping around to cup her nape. He began massaging the muscles of her neck, easing tension she had not even realized she possessed.
“How many times, Lady Catriona?” he asked again, his voice deceptively soft.
“Not many,” she felt compelled to defend, for she was loyal to her brother. Monty was not a villain. He was simply…lost. That was the best way to put it.
“I think you are lying to defend him,” Rayne observed, his gaze scouring hers. “I cannot believe the duel and this foolhardy race are the extent of his indiscretions.”
She thought about it.
There was the time he had brought an actress to live at Hamilton House until Mama had nearly boxed his ears and chased Mrs. Wilton from the duchess’s apartments. There had also been the evening he had gotten so inebriated; he had been attempting to hold a conversation with a potted palm at Lord and Lady Oxley’s ball. Later, he claimed he had mistaken the palm for a spinster. He had fallen down the staircase once and tripped into the statuary in the entry hall, shattering a marble bust of the first Duke of Montrose.
She still recalled Monty kicking the poor duke’s nose across the polished floor and declaring the bust had been his least favorite anyhow.
Catriona frowned.
And then, there had been the time he had fallen into the lap of one of Mama’s friends at a dinner party. The time he had engaged in a heated shouting match with their father’s portrait. He had also once decided, in the midst of the night, to paint the second-floor hall. The time she had found him lying prone on the Aubusson in the library in a drying puddle of his own vomit…
“Your face is expressive, my lady,” Rayne said grimly. “You need not speak a word, for I already have my answer.”
She did not like the judgmental tone in the earl’s voice. “Monty is a good man.”
“He is more child than man, if you ask me.” Though Rayne was curt and his expression rigid, he continued to knead the tightness in her neck. “I have a proposition for you, Lady Catriona. Montrose has done enough damage. We will wait until the doctor returns to set his bone. I will even aid him in his task. And then, this afternoon, we will wed. The special license enables us to marry whenever we wish, after all.”
Something inside her thrilled to the notion at the same time as something else within her balked. “But Dr. Croydon will likely need to give Monty more laudanum to set the bone, which will render him incoherent. I wished for Monty to be present at our nuptials.”
He was her beloved brother, after all.
Even if he was a scapegrace.
“We can speak our vows here rather than in the church,” Rayne suggested soothingly. “In the drawing room, the library, wherever you prefer. We will have Montrose brought down for the occasion. He will miss nothing.”
“But what of Torrington?” she asked next. “How can we carry on when he may be…”
Dying, was the word she had been about to say.
She would not speak it.
It was far too daunting, far too frightening.
“Torrington is not your brother,” the earl pointed out calmly as he continued his ministrations. “He is not even your family. We will pray for a complete recovery from him, but he, like Montrose, is a man grown. He, too, made the decision which led him to where he now lies.”
Once more, Rayne was not wrong. But her heart ached when she thought of Torrington’s injuries, his very life in question, and her dear friend.
“Hattie will be beside herself with upset,” she protested. “I only just sent her a missive this morning informing her of what has occurred.”
“Miss Lethbridge strikes me as a very strong sort, and I have no doubt she will carry on as she must. If she is your friend, she will not wish you to delay your future on account of the uncertainty of her brother’s fate.”
Was it Rayne’s nearness or the dexterity of his long fingers working every ache from her tensed muscles, or was it the decadent scent of him invading her senses? Whatever the cause, she was beginning to see the reason in his suggestions. They should not have to wait to marry because of Monty and Torrington.
She thought then of how many excuses she had made for her brother, how often she had raced to his defense, how many occasions upon which his lack of control had left her scrambling to cover up his foibles or somehow diminish or excuse them.
“It is time for you to live your own life, Lady Catriona,” Rayne urged. “We will see your brother’s bone set, and by that time, Lord Torrington will likely be awake. Our marriage will take place this afternoon, and by this evening, we will be on our way to Riverford House.”
Catriona bit her lip.
“Do not fret, querida.” The earl did the oddest thing then, the one gesture she could not resist.
He pressed his lips to her forehead in a chaste kiss. Like a benediction.
“All will be well,” he whispered against her skin. “You shall see.”
And she believed him.
She exhaled slowly. “Yes. You are right, Lord Rayne. We will marry this afternoon, here at Hamilton House. But first, I would like a chance to speak to my brother, if you please.”
“It will be done.” She felt him smile against her skin. “Thank you, Lady Catriona. You will not regret it, I promise.”
She closed her eyes and breathed him in, wondering how he had already become such a familiar, important part of her life.
Catriona hoped he was right.
Chapter Nine
Alessandro stared down at the Duke of Montrose, who was pale, sweating, and clearly uncomfortable. He was no longer tied to his bed, but he was in a great deal of pain. As he should be.
The foolish drunkard had managed to unleash all manner of havoc upon not only his own househol
d, but his friend’s and, most importantly, Alessandro’s. He was fortunate Alessandro had allowed him two hours of laudanum-induced sleep before seeking an audience.
“Why does it reek of piss in here, Montrose?” he asked the duke.
They were alone now, so he could speak plainly. The bone had been reset. The much-suffering doctor had left. Alessandro had decided a moment alone with his future brother-in-law was imperative. They needed to come to an understanding.
Today was the very last day the duke would cause him or his future countess any grief. He was determined.
Montrose looked shame-faced despite the laudanum he had been administered to aid the setting of the bone, which had rendered him droop-eyed. “I think I may have inadvertently used the carpet as a piss pot.”
Cristo. He had been hoping there was a poorly trained canine about, but it had seemed exceedingly unlikely since he had seen no hint of such a creature.
“Maldición, Montrose,” he bit out. “You are worse than a mongrel.”
“Yes,” the duke agreed. He closed his eyes. “I am a worthless bastard, and I know it.”
No point in arguing against such a statement. From where Alessandro sat, it certainly looked like truth.
“I am marrying your sister this afternoon,” he said.
“The wedding. Christ.” Montrose shifted as if he were about to rise from the bed, but then winced. “Beelzebub’s ballocks. I forgot about the ankle for a moment. And the wedding. And my ankle. Fucking laudanum.”
“Lady Catriona loves you,” he said, unmoved by the duke’s sickbed garble. “She wants you to be present for the nuptials. I want to be certain you are amenable.”
“Hell, yes. Marry her.” Montrose grimaced. “I am more than amenable. As you know.”
“Perhaps I should be more specific.” He paused. “I want to be certain you will not embarrass her.”
“Jesus! Do I look like I will embarrass her?” Montrose asked angrily, before closing his eyes. “Do not answer. Damn it to hell. The room is spinning.”
“Yes,” Alessandro answered, not bothering to heed the duke. “You do.”
“I will not,” Montrose said on a groan. “Christ, my leg hurts.”
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