by Julia Quinn
It was an appalling prospect.
David set his mug down on a nearby table, ignoring the startled stares of his compatriots as it landed with a loud thunk, sloshing chocolate over the rim.
“Your glove, my lord,” someone pointed out.
David looked down rather dispassionately at his leather glove, which was now turning dark brown where the chocolate was soaking in. It was almost certainly ruined, but David couldn’t bring himself to care.
“My lord?” the nameless person queried again.
David must have turned to him with an expression approaching a snarl, because the young gentleman scurried away.
And anyone moving away from the fire on such a frigid day had to want to be somewhere else very badly indeed.
A few moments later, Clive and Susannah reappeared, still skating in perfectly matched steps. Clive was staring at her with that amazingly warm expression he had perfected at the age of four (Clive had never been punished for anything; one repentant look from those huge blue eyes tended to get him out of any scrape), and Susannah was staring back at him with an expression of…
Well, if truth be told, David wasn’t exactly sure what sort of expression was on her face, but it wasn’t what he’d wanted to see, which was full-fledged hatred.
Or fury would have been acceptable. Or maybe complete lack of interest. Yes, complete lack of interest would have been best.
But instead she was looking at him with something almost approaching weary affection, and David didn’t know what to make of that one way or another.
“Here she is,” Clive said, once they’d skated close. “Returned to your side. Safe and sound as promised.”
David thought Clive was laying it on a bit too thick, but he had no wish to prolong the encounter, so instead all he said was, “Thank you.”
“We had a lovely time, didn’t we, Susannah?” Clive said.
“What? Oh yes, of course we did,” she replied. “It was good to catch up.”
“Don’t you need to get back to Harriet?” David asked pointedly.
Clive just grinned back at him, his smile almost a dare. “Harriet is fine by herself for a few minutes. Besides, I told you she was with her mother.”
“Nonetheless,” David said, getting downright irritated now, “Susannah came with me.”
“What has that to do with Harriet?” Clive challenged.
David’s chin jutted out. “Nothing, except that you’re married to her.”
Clive planted his hands on his hips. “Unlike you, who is married to no one.”
Susannah’s eyes bobbed back and forth from brother to brother.
“What the devil is that supposed to mean?” David demanded.
“Nothing, except that you should get your own affairs in order before messing with mine.”
“Yours!” David nearly exploded. “Since when has Susannah become your affair?”
Susannah’s mouth dropped open.
“When has she been yours?” Clive volleyed back.
“I fail to see how that is any of your business.”
“Well, it’s more my business than—”
“Gentlemen!” Susannah finally interceded, quite unable to believe the scene unfolding in front of her. David and Clive were squabbling like a pair of six-year-olds unable to share a favorite toy.
And she appeared to be the toy in question, a metaphor she found she didn’t much like.
But they didn’t hear her, or if they did, they didn’t care, because they continued to bicker until she physically placed herself between them and said, “David! Clive! That is enough.”
“Step aside, Susannah,” David said, nearly growling. “This isn’t about you.”
“It isn’t?” she asked.
“No,” David said, his voice hard, “it’s not. It’s about Clive. It’s always about Clive.”
“Now see here,” Clive said angrily, poking David in the chest.
Susannah gasped. They were going to come to blows! She looked around, but thankfully, no one seemed to have noticed the impending violence, not even Harriet, who was sitting some distance away, chatting with her mother.
“You married someone else,” David practically hissed. “You forfeited any rights to Susannah when—”
“I’m leaving,” she announced.
“—you married Harriet. And you should have considered—”
“I said I’m leaving!” she repeated, wondering why she even cared whether they heard her. David had said quite plainly that this wasn’t about her.
And it wasn’t. That was becoming abundantly clear. She was simply some silly prize to be won. Clive wanted her because he thought David had her. David wanted her for much the same reason. Neither actually cared about her; all they cared about was beating each other in some silly lifelong competition.
Who was better? Who was stronger? Who had the most toys?
It was stupid, and Susannah was sick of it.
And it hurt. It hurt deep down in her heart. For one magical moment, she and David had laughed and joked, and she’d allowed herself to dream that something special was growing between them. He certainly didn’t act like any of the men of her acquaintance. He actually listened to her, which was a novel experience. And when he laughed, the sound had been warm and rich and true. Susannah had always thought that you could tell a lot about a person from his laugh, but maybe that was just another lost dream.
“I’m leaving,” she said for the third time, not even certain why she’d bothered. Maybe it was some kind of sick fascination with the situation at hand, a morbid curiosity to see what they would do when she actually started to walk away.
“No, you’re not,” David said, grabbing her wrist the moment she moved.
Susannah blinked in surprise. He had been listening.
“I will escort you,” he said stiffly.
“You are obviously quite occupied here,” she said, with a sarcastic glance toward Clive. “I’m sure I can find a friend to take me home.”
“You came with me. You will leave with me.”
“It’s not—”
“It’s necessary,” he said, and Susannah suddenly understood why he was so feared among the ton. His tone could have frozen the Thames.
She glanced over at the iced-over river and almost laughed.
“You, I’ll speak to later,” David snapped at Clive.
“Pffft.” Susannah clapped a hand over her mouth.
David and Clive both turned to stare at her with irritated expressions. Susannah fought another extremely ill-timed giggle. She’d never thought they resembled each other until now. They looked exactly the same when they were annoyed.
“What are you laughing at?” Clive demanded.
She gritted her teeth together to keep from smiling. “Nothing.”
“It’s obviously not nothing,” David said.
“It’s not about you,” she replied, shaking with barely contained laughter. What fun it was to throw his words right back at him.
“You’re laughing,” he accused.
“I’m not laughing.”
“She is,” Clive said to David, and in that moment they ceased to be arguing with each other.
Of course they weren’t arguing anymore; they were united against her.
Susannah looked at David, then she looked at Clive. Then she looked back at David, who was glowering so fiercely that she ought to have been frightened right out of her specially made ice skates, but instead she just burst out laughing.
“What?” David and Clive demanded in unison.
Susannah just shook her head, trying to say, “It’s nothing,” but not really succeeding in anything other than making herself look like a deranged lunatic.
“I’m taking her home,” David said to Clive.
“Be my guest,” Clive replied. “She clearly can’t remain here.” Among civilized society, was the implied end of his sentence.
David took her elbow. “Are you ready to leave?” he asked, even though
she’d announced that very intention no fewer than three times.
She nodded, then made her farewells to Clive before she allowed David to lead her away.
“What was that all about?” he asked her, once they were settled in his carriage.
She shook her head helplessly. “You looked so much like Clive.”
“Like Clive?” he echoed, his voice tinged with disbelief. “I don’t look a thing like Clive.”
“Well, maybe not in features,” she said, plucking aimlessly at the fibers of the blanket tucked over her lap. “But your expressions were identical, and you were certainly acting like him.”
David’s expression turned to stone. “I never act like Clive,” he bit off.
She shrugged in reply.
“Susannah!”
She looked at him with arched brows.
“I don’t act like Clive,” he repeated.
“Not normally, no.”
“Not today,” he ground out.
“Yes, today, I’m afraid. You did.”
“I—” But he didn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he clamped his mouth shut, opening it only to say, “You’ll be home soon.”
Which wasn’t even true. It was a good forty minutes’ ride back to Portman Square. Susannah felt every single one of those minutes in excruciating detail, as neither of them spoke again until they reached her home.
Silence, she realized, was quite deafening.
Chapter 6
Most amusing, Lady Eugenia Snowe was spied dragging her new son-in-law across the ice by his ear.
Perhaps she spied him taking a turn about the ice with the lovely Susannah Ballister?
And doesn’t the younger Mann-Formsby wish now that he’d worn a hat?
LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 4 FEBRUARY 1814
Just like Clive?!!!
David grabbed the newspaper he’d been attempting to peruse and viciously crumpled it between his hands. Then for good measure, he hurled it across the room. It was a wholly unsatisfactory display of petulance, however, since the newspaper was nearly weightless and ended up floating in a soft lob before settling gently on the carpet.
Hitting something would have been much more satisfying, especially if he’d managed to peen the family portrait that hung over the mantel, right in Clive’s perpetually smiling face.
Clive? How could she possibly think he was just like Clive?
He’d spent his entire life hauling his brother out of scrapes and accidents and potential disasters. The most important word there being “potential,” since David had always managed to intercede before Clive’s “situations” turned calamitous.
David growled as he scooped the crumpled newspaper off the floor and tossed it into the raging fire. Perhaps he’d been too protective of Clive over the years. With his older brother around to solve all of his problems, why should Clive have learned responsibility and rectitude? Maybe the next time Clive found himself in hot water, David ought to just let him boil for a little while. But all the same…
How could Susannah say the two of them were alike?
Groaning her name, David slumped into the chair nearest to the fire. When he saw her in his mind—and he’d done so approximately three times per minute since he’d left her at her home six hours earlier—it was always with cheeks flushed from cold, with snowflakes bobbing precariously from her eyelashes, mouth wide and laughing with delight.
He pictured her in the snowbank, at that moment when he’d come to the most amazing, breathtaking realization. He had decided to pursue her because she’d make an excellent countess, that was true. But in that moment, as he’d gazed at her lovely face and had to use every ounce of his restraint not to kiss her right there in front of the entire ton, he’d realized that she’d be more than an excellent countess.
She would be a wonderful wife.
His heart had leaped with delight. And dread.
He still wasn’t quite sure what he felt for her, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that those feelings resided rather stubbornly in and around his heart.
If she still loved Clive, if she still pined for his brother, then she was lost to him. It didn’t matter if she said yes to his proposal of marriage. If she still wanted Clive, then he, David, would never truly have her.
Which meant the big question was—could he bear it? Which would be worse—to be her husband, knowing she loved someone else, or not to have her in his life at all?
He didn’t know.
For the first time in his life, David Mann-Formsby, Earl of Renminster, didn’t know his own mind. He simply didn’t know what to do.
It was an awful, aching, unsettling sensation.
He eyed his glass of whiskey, sitting just out of arm’s reach on the table by the fire. Damn, and he’d really wanted to get drunk. But now he was tired, and drained, and much as it disgusted him, he was feeling far too lazy even to get out of the chair.
Although the whiskey did look rather appealing.
He could almost smell it from there.
He wondered how much energy he’d have to expend to rise to his feet. How many steps to the whiskey? Two? Three? That wasn’t so very many. But it seemed really far, and—
“Graves told me I’d find you in here.”
David groaned without even looking to the door. Clive.
Not the person he wanted to see right now.
The last person, in fact.
He should have instructed his butler to tell his brother that he wasn’t in. Never mind that David had never in his entire life been “not at home” for his brother. Family had always been David’s first priority in life. Clive was his only sibling, but there were cousins and aunts and uncles, and David was responsible for the well-being of every last one of them.
Not that he’d had much choice in the matter. He had become the head of the Mann-Formsby family at the age of eighteen, and not a day had gone by since the moment of his father’s death that he had had the luxury of thinking only of himself.
Not until Susannah.
He wanted her. Her. Just because of who she was, not because she’d make an excellent addition to the family.
He wanted her for himself. Not for them.
“Have you been drinking?” Clive asked.
David stared longingly at his glass. “Sadly, no.”
Clive picked the glass off the table and handed it to him.
David thanked him with a nod and took a long sip. “Why are you here?” he asked, not caring if he sounded blunt and rude.
Clive didn’t answer for several moments. “I don’t know,” he finally said.
For some reason, this didn’t surprise David.
“I don’t like the way you’re treating Susannah,” Clive blurted out.
David stared at him in disbelief. Clive was standing in front of him, his posture stiff and angry, his hands fisted at his sides. “You don’t like the way I’m treating Susannah?” David asked. “You don’t like it? What right, may I ask, do you have to offer an opinion? And when, pray tell, did I decide that I should care?”
“You shouldn’t toy with her,” Clive ground out.
“What, so that you can?”
“I’m not toying with anyone.” Clive’s expression turned angry and petulant. “I’m married.”
David slammed his empty glass down on a table. “A fact you’d do well to remember.”
“I care about Susannah.”
“You should stop caring,” David bit out.
“You have no right—”
David shot to his feet. “What is this really about, Clive? Because you know it’s not about your looking out for Susannah’s welfare.”
Clive said nothing, just stood there glaring at his older brother as his skin grew mottled with fury.
“Oh dear God,” David said, his voice dripping with disdain. “Are you jealous? Are you? Because let me tell you, you lost any right to feel jealousy over Susannah when you publicly humiliated her last summer.”
Clive actually paled. “I never meant to embarrass her.”
“Of course you didn’t,” David snapped. “You never mean to do anything.”
Clive’s jaw was set in a very tight line, and David could see by his shaking fists that he very much wanted to hit him. “I don’t have to remain here and listen to this,” Clive said, his voice low and furious.
“Leave, then. Be my guest. You’re the one who came here unannounced and uninvited.”
But Clive didn’t move, just stood there shaking with anger.
And David had had enough. He didn’t feel like being charitable, and he didn’t feel like being the mature older brother. All he wanted was to be left alone. “Go!” he said harshly. “Didn’t you say you were leaving?” He waved his arm toward the door. “Go!”
Clive’s eyes narrowed with venom…and pain. “What kind of brother are you?” he whispered.
“What the—what do you mean?” David felt his lips part with shock. “How dare you question my devotion? I have spent my entire life cleaning up your messes, including, I might add, Susannah Ballister. You destroyed her reputation last summer—”
“I didn’t destroy it,” Clive quickly interjected.
“Very well, you didn’t render her unmarriageable, you just made her a laughingstock. How do you think that felt?”
“I didn’t—”
“No, you didn’t think,” David snapped. “You didn’t think for a moment about anyone other than yourself.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say!”
David turned away in disgust, walking over to the window and leaning heavily on the sill. “Why are you here, Clive?” he asked wearily. “I’m far too tired for a brotherly spat this evening.”
There was a long pause, and then Clive asked, “Is that how you view Susannah?”
David knew he ought to turn around, but he just didn’t feel like seeing his brother’s face. He waited for further explanation from Clive, but when none came, he asked, “Is what how I view her?”
“As a mess to be cleaned up.”
David didn’t speak for a long moment. “No,” he finally said, his voice low.
“Then how?” Clive persisted.