Imogen sought support from the column and detested herself for caring for Alexander as she did, that she would shamefully search for him, even still. She’d imagined there could be no greater pain than William’s betrayal. In this moment, she appreciated how naively wrong she’d been.
This was worse. She hated that, even in his pretense as a rogue, Alex should so devastate her with that empty display with the tempting Lady Kendricks. Dratted tears blurred her vision and before she made a cake of herself before all of Society, she hurried along the perimeter of the ballroom. She slipped from the room and all but sprinted down the long, darkened corridor, racing anywhere—as long as it was away. With a ragged gasp, she shoved open the nearest door and stumbled into the library. She quietly closed the door behind her. A sob tore from her throat.
“Imogen?”
Her eyes flew open. “Alex?” she croaked and then with a dawning horror, the implications of his presence registered. Oh, God. She cast a frantic glance about the room and a giddiness filled her at the confirmation of her earlier supposition. He’d not come to meet the Viscountess Kendricks.
He strode over. “Are you searching for someone?”
“Yes. No. Yes.” A useless tear slid down her cheek.
“Montrose?” That one word utterance, a name came out on a lethal whisper.
Imogen whipped around, and then it occurred to her… “You think I’m here to meet the duke?” His silence stood as confirmation. Did he continue to believe so little of her that he consigned her to the ranks of the Viscountess Kendricks’ of the world? Another tear streaked down her cheek. “I am most certainly not here to meet the duke. And not merely because he is my sister’s husband but because I have more honor than that.” She swiped at the bothersome tear. Her sister had stolen her betrothed, but Imogen was incapable of treachery where Rosalind, or anyone, was concerned.
Alex wiped a teardrop with his thumb, the concern in his warm gaze nearly unbearable. She could not properly hate him when he was this gentle, tender stranger. He made a tsking sound. “The woman I’ve come to know who boldly faces down the gossips with her head held high would not be hiding.”
At his opinion of her, warmth unfurled in her heart and she, for the span of a moment, forgot he now sought out another because he was here. “At one time I would have been hiding.” She laid a hand upon his and locked their fingers together, studying them entwined. “I marvel at the scared, cowering, young girl I once was.” Imogen stole a glance upwards. “I’m no longer that girl, Alex. I’m a woman who’s known betrayal and heartbreak.”
“And life changes us, doesn’t it?” His expression grew dark. “The people we once were change into figures we no longer recognize.”
Those words admitted her deeper into his past. “Oh, Alex. What did he do to you?” She ached to know everything there was to know of the man he’d been and what had happened to turn him into the man he’d become.
A vein pulsed at the edge of his temple. Of course, the notoriously hardened rogue would not welcome such an intimate probe from a young lady. “My father was a monster.” For a long moment, she believed she’d merely imagined that quiet utterance. His face set in an unreadable mask, Alexander retreated a step. She longed to call him back, but instead of leaving, he strode to the window in the corner of Lord Ferguson’s office.
Imogen took a step toward him, then another, her feet carrying her to his side. She stopped just beyond his shoulder and hovered hesitantly. His silence should serve as all the evidence needed that he had little desire to partake in this particular discussion.
“I’ve no place telling you what a vile, abusive bastard he was.”
His words shot through her, jerking her erect. Except, since his brief admission in the Marquess of Waverly’s library, she’d needed to hear the rest from him and she suspected he needed to tell it just as much. Imogen closed the few steps distance between them, and stood at his side, so close their arms brushed, knowing her silence was somehow needed more than anything else in this moment, knowing intuitively that Alex had never before shared the agony of his past and did so now of a necessity—to finally be free of his own demons.
He peeled the curtain back and stared out into the darkened street. “A proper marquess that did something as plebeian as beat his children.” Alex shot a half-grin down at her. That chillingly empty smile wrenched her heart. “One would hardly ever expect it of the distinguished lord.” Those words were steeped in bitterness. “He delighted in reminding me what a failure I was early on.” A chuckle rumbled from his chest. “The birch rod was his favorite mode of punishment.” Nausea churned in her belly at what he’d endured. “The marks intended to serve as a reminder of those failings. To make me stronger,” he spat.
Imogen folded her arms about her waist and hugged tight. “Oh, Alexander,” she whispered. Agony lanced through her heart. “I am so—?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Sorry?”
Yes, she was. Sorry for the pain he’d suffered as a boy, pain that had shaped him into a cynical, detached lord who avoided emotional entanglements and took his pleasure where he would.
“I assure you, I do not want pity from you.”
Imogen tipped her chin up, unfazed by the patently false sneer on his lips. She too had once sought to protect herself at all costs. “I wouldn’t pity you, Alex. I marvel that you were strong enough to become the gentleman who—”
“Who what? Became a profligate gambler?” He spoke harshly, merciless in his demands. “A drinker? A whoremonger?”
Imogen recoiled, and then drew in a breath, knowing he merely intended to shock. “You’re not really that man,” she said, recognizing that with certainty. Mayhap, in some part deep inside, she always had. “You can present the image of indolent rogue to the ton but you’re not one of those men, Alex.” In truth, he had far more honor and courage than any of the peers she’d known in her twenty, almost twenty-one years. She thought of his devotion to Chloe, remembered her friend’s words. “You are a dedicated brother—”
“Who didn’t even want to be tasked with the responsibility of chaperoning my own sister?”
“And you are here,” she said softly. “You came here tonight so I wouldn’t face my sister and the duke alone.” By the slight pause, she knew her supposition had been correct. Imogen took a step away from him. “I’m sorry I interrupted your tryst.”
“Is that what you believe?” Alex jerked his angry gaze toward her. “That I’m here to meet—?”
“The Viscountess Kendricks?” She raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you?” She’d not doubted his interest in the woman was feigned. “What are you doing here, Alexander?” she asked quietly.
“I already told you, I—”
“Not here, but at Lady Ferguson’s.” Imogen waved her hand about. “You claim you’re not here for an assignation. So then why—?”
“You’d have faced your sister and Montrose on your own.” The words burst from him. He blanched as her suspicions exploded into truth.
Warmth suffused her heart and nearly set the organ ablaze. He cared. “And that is why your father was wrong and why you aren’t like the Duke of Montrose and why you aren’t the heartless rogue you’ve presented to Society.” She braced for his protest.
Instead, his shoulders sagged slightly. The muscles of his throat moved up and down. “You’d make me something I’m not,” he said in wooden tones.
Imogen returned to his side. “No, Alexander.” She cupped his face in her palms, running the pads of her thumbs over his hard, chiseled cheeks. “I’d have you be the man you truly are. Oh, Alex, you still don’t realize, do you?” Her heart ached. “Just because one is born a nobleman doesn’t mean they possess more honor and integrity than…” A second son. “Anyone else, does it?”
His jaw worked. “No, that is true.”
Polite Society revered lords and ladies for their rank above all else, often turning a cheek to the dark truths and sins carried by those illustrious peers. She tou
ched his forearm. “You agree with me, but why do I suspect you don’t truly believe those words?”
At her murmured response, his body went taut, the muscles straining the confines of his black coat. His eyes darkened. “What if I said I came tonight because I want you,” he said on a husky whisper that ran through her. Did he intend to shock her? From the moment she’d picked her gaze up and found him grinning down at her in the Marquess of Waverly’s library, he’d robbed her of the ability to be scandalized by his actions or words. He roped his arm about her waist and drew her close.
Her belly fluttered, but she tamped down her body’s natural yearning for him. “Do you know what I believe?” She didn’t wait for him to reply. “I believe your life is no different than one of those Drury Lane productions we took in two evenings ago.” He blanched. “You are not a rogue.” She’d come to that realization in the theatre and now his presence at her side this evening proved him to be more than that feckless fellow. “In thy face I see the map of honor, truth and loyalty.”
He started and then adopted that false, rogue’s grin—a practiced, deliberate smile. A show. “I most certainly am, my lady.” Alex closed the steps between them and cupped the back of her neck angling her face up to his. “In fact, I can show you just how much of a—”
Imogen ducked out from under his arms. At any other moment, her heart would be racing and she’d be breathless from his deliberate charm. Not now. Not in light of all he’d shared.
Alex released her so suddenly that she careened sideways then quickly righted herself. “You’ll quote Shakespeare and dream the words of romantic poets.” His gaze took her in from the top of her shamefully crimson head to the tips of her slippers, and then back up once more. “Yet you’d be better served if you stayed the hell away from me, Imogen. Have Primly for your husband.”
Pain knifed through her. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do,” he said, the merciless edge to his words sharper than any blade. “You’ve had your heart broken by Montrose. Any of this hero worship you’d heap upon me is not deserved. The only reason I came tonight was at the bequest of my sister.”
Oh, God. She shook her head, incapable of getting words out past the emotion clogging her throat.
“Yes,” he said with a bluntness that made her flinch. “The only reason I shared my… past…” he faltered over those words “…with you was so you might realize why I’ve become the man I am.” Alex stalked over. “Do you know why I’ve been such a, how did you refer to it, doting brother?” He planted his hands on her shoulders, forcing her gaze up to his. “Because my brother, the revered marquess has tired of my gaming, whoring, and drinking.” She flinched. “He threatened to cut me off if I did not do my brotherly duty. I’ve only ever cared about myself.” He released her so suddenly, she staggered back a step.
“I don’t believe that,” she said softly. Did she try to convince herself or him?
“Then you’re a fool and it is no wonder you were too naïve to see Montrose’s true character.”
Imogen jerked back, his words more painful than had he struck her. She’d come to know him too much in this time to recognize this display was nothing more than a mechanism to push her away, a desperate bid to protect himself from further hurts. “Don’t do this,” she pleaded.
“I’m not doing anything but providing the truth.” With a sharp, perfunctory bow, he spun on his heel and left.
A tear slid down her cheek, the silence of the room her only company. God help her. She’d gone and fallen in love with Lord Alex Edgerton, a man so determined to keep the walls up about his heart, he could never, would never, love her in return.
Chapter 13
Alex sat on the sofa in the library of his brother’s townhouse, cloaked in the thick, dark silence of the early morning hours, head buried in his hands. Even with his abrupt departure from Imogen at Lady Ferguson’s ball five hours past, a riot of emotions still churned through him.
He loved her. A hiss escaped his lungs, the slight exhalation of it as it burst from his lips the only sound in the dead of night.
Why are you doing this…?
A lady once betrothed to a duke, now courted by an honorable earl, deserved far more than Lord Alex Edgerton, the broken and battered second son who’d been told with an enduring frequency of his unworthiness. First from the sire who’d given him life and then in all those countless women who took him to bed, wanting nothing more than the pleasure of his body. And those meaningless entanglements had been enough.
Until Imogen.
“May I come in?”
He snapped his head up. “I didn’t hear you enter,” he said, his voice gruff from the tumult of his emotions and the embarrassment of being caught unawares by his ever-perfect, older brother.
Gabriel shoved the door closed behind him then strode over. Then in a manner eerily reminiscent to an exchange that had taken place in this very room just recently, Gabriel paused at the foot of his seat. Alex reached for the full bottle of brandy and the empty glass alongside it. His brother covered his hand with his own, staying the movement. “You don’t want that.”
He did. Desperately. So he might find a liquid resolve. “What the hell do you know of it?” A wealth of questions buried within the one. At one time Gabriel had known. With the passage of time, he’d forgotten what they’d shared.
“If you truly wanted it, you’d have consumed nearly half the bottle. As it is, it’s been untouched.”
Alex tightened his fingers about the rim of his glass, hard enough to shatter the tumbler. He lightened his grip, damning him for being astute, seeing everything, and yet at the same time, seeing nothing. “What the hell do you want?”
“May I?” he motioned to the seat beside Alex.
“Surely the powerful marquess needn’t ask permission to be seated in his own library.” Did he imagine the spasm of pain to contort Gabriel’s face? He scoffed. In spite of his protestations in their earlier conversation, Gabriel had ceased being human the moment the devil had taken him under his wing and provided tutelage to the revered heir.
Wordlessly, his elder brother flicked the tails of his jacket and claimed a seat. Then, in the first shocking act he remembered of the always proper, unyielding marquess, Gabriel swiped the bottle of brandy. He made use of Alex’s untouched glass, pouring himself a drink. “You certainly left Society talking last evening with your showing at Forbidden Pleasures,” he said without preamble.
Alex’s public defense of Imogen would, of course, have been remarked upon and fast become fodder for the gossips. However, he’d not believed his exchange with Rutland would have circulated with such rapidity. Rather, he’d hoped it wouldn’t. “The lady is a friend of our sister’s,” he said, in a bid to protect the truth of Imogen’s hold upon him. “Then, I’d not expect you to understand matters of loyalty.”
Gabriel winced and yet had proved far more resilient through the years. “I hardly expect it should matter to you what one such as Rutland says of the lady.”
“It doesn’t.” The lie was automatic. He rolled his shoulders.
“Yet you defended her.” His brother took a slow, deliberate sip. “Out of the lady’s connection to Chloe?” Skepticism underscored those questions.
A volatile force of emotion brought Alex to his feet. “Is there a question there?” His brother arched an eyebrow. “Rutland is a master manipulator,” he said defensively. “He’d have the ton believe there is more there than actually is.” Liar.
Ever imperial and unaffected, Gabriel leaned back in his seat. “Perhaps.” He draped an arm along the back of the leather sofa. Of course, he’d not let the matter be. “I’m sure it was merely gossip and lies that claimed you’d defended the lady’s beauty.” A wry smile pulled at the other man’s lips. “Though, the gentleman, doth protest too much, methinks.”
He’d grown accustomed to a world in which Gabriel didn’t know his interests or hopes or fears. Yet, for everything that had come to pass, he still re
membered Alex’s love of Shakespeare. A flush burned his neck. “You take the same twisted glee as our great sire in ferreting out one’s weakness, but you’re wrong on this score. I do not care for Imogen Moore.” I love her. Two very, very different sentiments.
Gabriel went still, a flash of pain sparked in his eyes. “Is that truly how you see me? As an extension of our father?”
Bloody hell, he did not wish to have this discussion again with his brother. Dredging up their dark past was futile. No words could put to rights the rift between them. “We’ve already said everything there is to say about our…” His lip peeled back in a sneer. “Father.”
Gabriel surged to his feet. With a furious step, he stalked over and planted himself before Alex. Of like height, he stuck his face close. “Do you think you’re the only one who suffered? Do you believe that when he took me under his tutelage I was somehow spared from his viciousness?” For the first time since he’d been a young, angry boy forgotten by his elder brother, hero, and protector, a niggling of doubt twisted about his brain. “I wasn’t,” he said with an almost gleeful delight in correcting Alex’s erroneous supposition. “I was still a victim of his abuse. I still bore the blunt of his fist, his hand, or that damned birch rod whenever I faltered in the lessons he imparted.”
If those words were truth, then it would mean everything he’d believed these nearly two decades had been wrong. He shook his head dumbly. No. The world would cease to make sense if his brother spoke the truth.
“Yes,” Gabriel spoke in a deadened tone that could only come from another who’d shared in the hell of Alex’s youth. He scoffed. “Come, you are smart, surely you noted the attention Father showed you after he’d separated us and began grooming me for the role of marquess?”
With a confounding sluggishness, he ran through the childhood years, rolled past the bitterness, resentment, and pain he carried at his brother’s defection. As a small child, the beatings handed out had occurred with a shocking frequency. They’d never stopped.
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