“You have your own stupidity to thank for that,” he observed. “Twice over.”
“Yes. And countless other non-blessings as well,” Montrose agreed.
One could only suppose.
Alessandro’s imagination was wicked, populated by the ghastliness he had seen and partaken in over the last few years of war. But somehow, the Duke of Montrose’s foibles seemed equally dangerous.
“You do not have to live as you do, Montrose,” he pointed out. “If you stopped drowning yourself in spirits—”
“Then I could not live with myself.” Montrose passed a hand over his face, looking ashen and weary. “Believe me, Rayne, I am far better gin-soaked.”
“I doubt that.” He sniffed, for he was not going to argue the duke’s future with him. If Montrose wished to poison himself and continue living a reckless life of debauchery, that was his choice. “If your maids do not soon attempt to clean the carpet, you will have to replace it.”
“What are you, my bloody housekeeper?” Montrose growled, unappreciative of his advice.
“Thankfully not,” he clipped, “else I should be concerning myself with such affairs as how to most readily remove the scent of a drunken fool’s piss from the Aubusson.”
Montrose’s eyes were closed, but he scowled. “Go to hell, Rayne. You may be marrying m’sister, but that does not give you the right to pontificate.”
“I am not pontificating,” he denied. “I am merely tired of holding you down for your bone to be set. After today, all such duties will be someone else’s problem. Not, I suspect, Torrington’s, however.”
“Satan’s breeches, do not remind me,” the duke said. “How is Torrie?”
“He will live, though apparently, he has no recollection of anything.” Not even his own name. Alessandro had seen such a case once before, on the battlefield. A man had fallen from his mount and could not remember anything for days. “It is a case of amnesia, I believe.”
“Oh, Christ. Are you certain, Rayne?”
Dr. Croydon had gone to Lord Torrington after resetting Montrose’s broken leg. His face had been grim upon his exit of the chamber. But Alessandro had been relieved the viscount had awoken at last. The final impediment to his nuptials with Lady Catriona had been removed.
He sighed, irritated with Montrose anew for the mayhem he had inflicted upon his plans. “As certain as I am tired of playing your nursemaid, let me be clear on the reason I am here, Montrose. You are a ne’er-do-well scapegrace, and you have been worrying your sister for far too long.”
Montrose’s eyes opened, the pupils dilated and large. “I know. Ought to have sent m’self to Scotland instead of her. My fault she was ruined. I should have challenged Shrewsbury to a duel and gutted him like a fish, too.”
Alessandro had not ruled out such a possibility himself.
The mere reminder of the foppish lord who had dared to ruin Lady Catriona was enough to make a sinister bolt of murderous rage slice straight through him. But today was not a day for violence. Today was a day of new beginnings.
His. With Lady Catriona.
Today, she would be his, in spite of all the obstacles blocking their path. In spite of the duke lying so pathetically before him.
“Forget about that spineless maggot,” he directed Montrose with a bite he could not temper. “I am looking for a promise from you.”
“A promise from me?” Montrose raised a brow. “Look here, Rayne. You are wedding my sister today, not me.”
When he was not being a drunken fool, Montrose was almost a likeable fellow.
Almost.
“I am aware of who I am about to marry, thank you.” He fixed the duke with a determined glare, the likes of which had made many a man crumble before him. “The promise I would ask of you is that you attempt, for Lady Catriona’s sake, to tame your ways. If I am to be leaving her behind to raise my heir, nothing would aggrieve me more than to learn she was forced to chase after you, fretting over you, playing your nursemaid, and keeping you from kicking your butler down the stairs.”
“Cat does not need to worry over me.” Montrose frowned. “I am perfectly fine without her interference. I already have one mother, and I do not really care for her interference either, if you must know.”
“Montrose,” he pressed. “Your promise. Lady Catriona loves your sorry hide. You owe it to her and your mother both—Dios, to yourself, too—to pull yourself together. You cannot spend the rest of your life drinking and fucking and crashing.”
“Any more than you can spend the rest of your life running?” Montrose returned.
Alessandro stilled, shocked by the duke’s rare moment of insight. Perhaps he had been running. Running from the past, from England, from the memories of Maria and Francisco and everything he had lost.
“What I do is none of your concern,” he bit out. “I will see your sister is well-cared for, as is my duty. She will want for nothing. All you have to do is promise not to mire her down with your foolishness. Try to be better. For her. For your mother. For yourself. Starting today, Montrose.”
Montrose’s eyes closed. “For Cat’s sake, I will try.”
“Good.” He would believe Montrose’s promise like he believed pigs would stop living in their own shit. But it was neither here nor there. The duke’s future was in his own, incapable hands. All Alessandro cared about was securing his wife at long last so he could begin his quest for an heir.
But there was one more thing that would have to happen first. He had promised his betrothed an audience with her brother, and an audience she would have.
Montrose had begun to snore.
Alessandro flicked his nose.
The duke snorted, his eyes flying open, a scowl on his face. “I say, Rayne. That was uncalled for. I am an invalid.”
Alessandro sighed. “Your sister wants to speak with you. No pissing on the rug.”
Montrose grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like bastard Spaniard beneath his breath. “Send her to me, then. I have grown weary of your presence.”
He sketched an ironic bow. “Likewise, Montrose.”
*
Catriona settled herself at her brother’s side, relieved he seemed much more lucid this afternoon. His jaw was clenched and his countenance set with the grim evidence of pain, but he had calmed considerably.
“How are you, Monty?” she asked softly.
“How do I look?” her brother countered, a trace of his ordinary good humor coming to life.
She tilted her head, considering him. “Truth?”
His eyes narrowed. “Truth.”
“Awful,” she admitted. “Though much improved over the last time I saw you.”
His eyes fluttered shut and remained thus. “Apologies, Cat, for what you witnessed.”
He sounded tired, and she knew a prick of guilt at having forced him into seeing her. “You were not yourself,” she told him quietly.
His eyes opened once more. “I was myself, and that is the trouble. I am a monster, and I know it.”
“You are a good man,” she defended, much as she had to Rayne earlier. “But I am worried for you, Monty. Your…incidents are growing more frequent and drastic in nature. This time, you have suffered a broken bone. What shall it be next time?”
“It depends on whether or not I drink blue ruin,” he joked.
“Monty.”
She was decidedly not in the mood for his banter. He had given her quite a fright, and she feared for him. Feared what the devils in him would lead him to do. Feared what would become of him.
He grimaced. “A broken head if I am fortunate enough. Or perhaps amnesia. It is not fair only Torrie is allowed to forget.”
The reminder of Lord Torrington’s injuries was sobering indeed. Hattie and her mother had rushed to Hamilton House and to his bedside. Seeing her dear friend awash in tears had hurt her heart.
“You must not make light of it, Monty,” she chided. “Torrington suffered a severe head injury. The doctor is not yet
certain if he will recover fully…if he will remember.”
Monty closed his eyes again. “I wish to God I did not remember.”
“Will you not confide in me, Monty?” How she wished he would unburden himself.
“There is nothing to confide,” he said grimly. “I am a scoundrel, Cat. But there may be hope for me yet. I have decided there is only one way in which I can rectify the wrongs I have done. I will marry Miss Lethbridge.”
Catriona could not have been more surprised had her brother started clucking like a chicken. She stared at him. “You? Marry Hattie?”
“Yes. Torrie is always moaning about her being a spinster, no proper lords wanting her and all that,” Monty said. “I will wed the chit. That ought to make amends for the damage I have done.”
She could not be certain if his horrible idea had been predicated by the laudanum, or if he was merely that oblivious. “There is one problem, I fear, and it is rather an insurmountable one.”
He raised an imperious brow. “Oh?”
“Hattie despised you before you decided to race Torrington whilst you were both heavily in your cups.” She paused, frowning. “Now that he has been so grievously injured on account of your foolishness—”
“On account of our foolishness,” Monty interrupted indignantly. “Torrie was a part of it, you will recall. Racing was his idea.”
She compressed her lips. “As you say.”
“Because it is true, by Satan’s chemise,” Monty insisted.
“Lord Torrington cannot recall,” she pointed out. “He did not even recall his own name when he awoke. Given the circumstances, I hardly think you are in a position to ask Hattie to wed you. Or to expect her to accept your proposal if you have the daring to make one.”
“Of course she will accept me.” He scowled at her. “I am a duke.”
Catriona sighed. “Dukes do not impress Hattie.”
“I am also the Marquess of Ashby,” he countered. “And the Viscount Lisle. She may take her pick of any of my other titles if a duke will not do.”
“Hattie is not impressed by titles,” Catriona elaborated, taking pity on her brother, who seemed genuinely perplexed by the notion Hattie would not leap into his arms immediately upon the delivery of his proposal. “She has had her choice of suitors, but none of them have suited her.”
“Fops, all of them,” Monty growled. “Lord Hayes has a beak of a nose, and the Earl of Rearden is a scoundrel.”
Monty knew the names of Hattie’s most recent suitors? Interesting. Very interesting indeed.
“You are a scoundrel,” she pointed out.
“One who owes her brother a debt of honor, having been the man who did not stop him from drinking the last of the blue ruin and who raced him instead,” Monty countered.
“You truly believe you can somehow rectify the events of yesterday by wedding Hattie?” Catriona knew without a shred of a doubt that her friend would never have him.
“I do not merely believe it,” her brother said with complete confidence. “I know it.”
“You were also once convinced you could make a flying machine,” she could not help reminding him. “I will never forget the sight of you on the turrets at Castle Clare, with those wings fastened to your back.”
“It was an excellent idea,” he argued. “I have simply never had the opportunity to test subsequent models. If the wind had not caught the wings prior to fastening them to me, they would not have flown down to the courtyard and become hopelessly mangled. Marrying Miss Lethbridge will be a far easier achievement to accomplish than flight.”
She well recalled the sight of the wings crashing to the ground. Their father had been furious when he had learned what Monty had been about.
“Hattie will not have you, Monty,” she felt compelled to tell her brother. She knew her friend. There was simply no means through which Hattie would ever agree to marry Monty, who she regularly dismissed as a scandalous jackanapes.
“Of course she will,” he argued with complete confidence. “She harbors a secret tendre for me. Has for some time, I daresay.”
Surely it was the laudanum and not Monty speaking now?
She studied him. “Has someone given you whisky?”
“No.”
“Gin?”
“No.”
She thought for a moment. “Brandy?”
“Damnation, Cat,” he roared. “It is just the bloody laudanum. And it is time for me to have more, I am certain of it. My pain grows worse by the second.”
“You may have more after the wedding,” she said, quite certain Monty had received his dosage already and that he was not due another for several hours.
“Would you have me in severe pain when I give my only sister to the black-hearted, half-Spaniard who shot me?” Monty demanded.
“How is your wound?” she asked.
Though a few weeks had passed since the ill-fated duel which had set in motion the events of today, the accident may well have caused him to reinjure himself.
“Painful. I require more laudanum.”
She sighed. “Monty, I want you to promise me something.”
“First Rayne, now you,” he grumbled. “Cannot a man swill laudanum and lie about in his sickbed like a proper invalid?”
“Monty.”
“Cat.”
Her brother was the only person who called her Cat. The only person she would allow to call her by the diminutive. He had teased her with it in their youth, but as they had matured, the name had rather stuck. They stared at each other now. Suddenly, the enormity of what was about to happen—the tremendous change her life was going to undertake—hit her.
Tears pricked her eyes. Tears of worry, sentimental tears, tears for the Monty and Cat they had once been, for the people they had become, for the uncertain futures awaiting them both.
“I want you to be happy, Monty,” she said softly. “That is all.”
“I want the same for you.” His smile was slow and lopsided. “I am sorry I banished you to Scotland, sorry I did not do something more about that blighter Shrewsbury.”
She shook her head. “I did not want you to. The fault was mine for being so reckless.”
“I suppose recklessness is in our blood,” Monty said.
“Yes, I suppose it is.” She paused. “You will be comfortable, being moved to the drawing room for the ceremony? I do not want you to suffer on my account.”
“I will be fine, Cat.” His eyes closed for a beat, as if he found them too heavy to keep open. “As fine as I can be.”
It was her fervent wish that one day, her brother would not simply be fine.
That he would be well.
But for now, she would settle for him being present at her wedding. For the half-smile he flashed her as his eyes opened once more. For the color that had come to life in his previously pallid complexion.
“You need not worry on my account,” he said then. “I promise I will not take a piss on the drawing room carpet.”
She sighed. “Oh, Monty. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Cat.”
Chapter Ten
For the second time in his five-and-thirty years, Alessandro had a wife.
She was seated across from him in his carriage, en route to Riverford House, looking as if she were about to be shepherded to the gallows before a jeering throng. Or perhaps led to the guillotine. Her gloved hands bit into her pelisse, her fists clenched. Her neat, even teeth had caught the fullness of her lower lip, and though her face was averted to the window, her countenance was undeniably grim.
Quite a drastic contrast to his first marriage. He and Maria had been drunk, in love, and smiling foolishly at each other. And then they had been drunk, in love, and in each other’s arms soon thereafter.
But Catriona and Maria were two different people. The past could not be resurrected. Nor could the joy he had lost. The present was…London, a city he abhorred. A cold rain had begun to fall as they exited Montrose’s townhome, the weather a
s forbidding as the mood.
The ceremony had not taken long. The duke had been aided to the drawing room by a team of footmen. To his credit, he had neither fallen asleep and begun to snore nor committed some other sin of similar proportion to the violation of his bedchamber carpet. Catriona’s friend, Miss Lethbridge, sister to the unfortunate Lord Torrington, had been present as well, her expression stricken. Lady Catriona’s mother had not seemed any more hopeful.
Suddenly, the quiet of the carriage ride, interrupted only by the normal street sounds of fellow carriages plodding by and the rustling of tack, seemed untenable.
“You are fretting, querida,” he said simply, breaking the silence. “What is the reason for your unhappiness?”
Her attention jerked toward him, her gaze clinging to his. “I am not fretting, my lord.”
She could not fool him. “Honesty, if you please.”
Catriona sighed. “Do not all new brides experience some trepidation on the day they wed?”
He supposed they may, but he had only one comparison. He said nothing, struggling to find the right words to say, now that he had initiated a conversation.
But she was perceptive. “Ah, I see. Your last bride did not.”
His last bride.
How haunting it sounded. How final. For it was. Death was life’s end, and no one understood that fact better than a man who had wept into the freshly turned earth over the graves of his wife and son.
The abrupt pain slicing through him was almost palpable. As always, he forced it down through sheer will.
“No,” he was able to answer simply. “She did not.”
“Yours was a love match from the beginning?” his new wife ventured to ask.
He swallowed against a rising tide of grief. “It was.”
“I am sorry.” Her countenance was open. Kind.
Too kind.
Alessandro flinched. “I do not want your sympathy or your pity. Both are meaningless to me.”
She paled. “Of course, my lord.”
Cristo, what a bastard he was. He had not meant to lash out at her. She was not at fault for the pain he had been dealt in his life. His aim was to put her at ease. Tonight, he would come to her bed. Their marriage would begin in truth.
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