Chapter Eighteen #2
When he looked up, a little surprised that there was no response to his despair, it was to see the two of them grinning. “What the devil are you smiling at?”
“She is completely in love with you, you fool,” Miss Chance said quietly. “Did you think she could forget you so easily?”
For a moment, the room spun. It was impossible to accept, impossible to believe.
Jessica, still love him? After what he had done?
“She definitely loves you,” Aynor said quietly. “I have never seen a woman so in love. Save for the viscount and viscountess, of course.”
“And that’s just sickening,” Miss Chance said matter-of-factly. “Seeing Jessica moping after you all the time, it’s just sad. You need to do something about it.”
Reginald blinked, not accustomed to such blunt conversation. “‘Do something’?”
Miss Chance rolled her eyes. “Honestly! Men! It’s a wonder anything gets done in this world! Wilfred, more brandy!”
“What my best friend is attempting to say,” said Aynor quietly, removing the brandy glass from the young woman’s fingers and putting it beside his own on the desk, “is that Miss Jessica Chance loves you, and you run the very real risk of losing her if you do not hurry up and do something about it.”
“‘Do something about it’?” Reginald echoed blankly.
He probably deserved that eye roll.
“Yes, do something about it!” said Miss Chance, rising to her feet and brushing down her skirts. “I would like to think you are worthy of her, and you can do me a favor and prove that you are by going over to our house, declaring your undying love, apologizing profusely—”
“I’ve done that!”
His protestation was ignored. “Do it again,” said Miss Chance darkly, “or accept that you were not worthy of her in the first place.”
“You don’t understand,” said Reginald lamely, staring down at his brandy and watching the liquid slosh in the glass as he stirred it.
“There’s something she learned that will soon affect my family terribly.
It’s a miracle it hasn’t gotten out yet…
but it will. If I married her, it would affect her, too—affect you. All the Chances.”
“Oh, that. Yes, well, we’ve talked about it, and we don’t care.”
Reginald’s head whipped up. “You’ve talked about it?” He supposed it only right that Jessica had explained to her family what had led her to end the engagement. Though perhaps he’d hoped she’d stuck to his petty list and kept his brother’s secret for now. Still, he could not blame her.
“I think you were right the first time, chap,” said Aynor amicably. Reginald wondered if that meant this man, too, this stranger, knew what his brother had done. “Marrying into the Chances will save you. Nothing can ruin their reputations.”
Miss Chance backhanded him across the chest. “Excuse you! I won’t accept that as a reason to marry my sister.”
Aynor rubbed his chest, as if the flick of her hand had indeed hurt him. “I wasn’t saying that. I was saying it’ll solve his problem, just like he apparently thought it would.”
The sigh Irene let out could have moved a mountain. “Come on, Wilfred. I would imagine Don Saltero’s Chelsea Coffee House is still open, and I’m gasping for a hot chocolate. Maybe we’ll run into Wharton on the way and I’ll get less of an earful from Mama this evening. Shall we?”
Aynor leaned toward Reginald and whispered, though rather loudly still, “We ditched her chaperone to come here.”
“Shall we?” Irene repeated, louder this time.
The study door shut behind the pair of them, and all Reginald could do was blink into the silence.
Dear God. That was certainly a lot to think about it. If the evidence of the two now-empty glasses on his desk was not most definitely real, he would have been tempted to think that he had dreamed the whole thing.
But he had not. Miss Chance and her friend, Aynor, whoever he was—they had been here.
They had told him that that her family did not care about his brother’s past, that Jessica still loved him, that there was almost nothing he could do to stop her loving him—and the glare in Miss Chance’s eye had dared him to find something.
And that meant that there was still, perhaps, a wedding to plan. Still happiness that could be reached. Still joy to be found.
Well, now all he had to do was—
“I can explain everything later, man, but at this very moment I need to speak to my brother!”
Reginald stiffened. That isn’t… It couldn’t be—
For the second time that day, the door to his study burst open, and the person standing in the doorway was just as unexpected as its previous occupants.
This time, however, Reginald rose to his feet, swore loudly, marched over to the individual, punched him hard in the nose, and then, as the man staggered back and gripped his face, blood dripping on his white glove, hugged him.
“Peter, you idiot,” came his muffled words into his brother’s shoulder. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing here?”
“Being punched by you, apparently,” said Peter, their mother’s blue eyes watering over the carefully dabbing nose. “Goodness, you have a mean right hook.”
“And you have taken an awful risk coming here, you dolt,” Reginald said, pulling away from his brother as the panic started to rise. “Who else saw you?”
“That butler of ours.”
Well, that was no worry, the loyalty of their servants was beyond reproach. The fact that rumors about his brother had not leaked into Society gossip long before now was proof of that.
“And I saw Lady Romeril on the street and she asked—”
Reginald swore loudly.
“Look, you don’t have to like her, but she is one of the doyennes of Society,” protested his brother, dabbing at the small trickle of blood descending from one nostril. “You could hardly expect me to give her the cut direct.”
It was a disaster.
Reginald had known it would be the moment his traitorous brother had walked into the room. The instant his brother returned, there would be disaster for the whole family, and he found he was still not prepared for it.
Lady Romeril, of all people…
“—mentioned something about a wedding of yours,” his brother said lazily, walking around Reginald seemingly without a care in the world and picking up the bottle of brandy. “Oh, good, an excellent year. You don’t mind, do you?”
Reginald blinked. This was all too much: the revelation that Jessica still cared for him, still loved him, and now this?
“‘Mind’?” he echoed weakly.
“Excellent,” his brother said happily.
It was only when Peter poured himself a large measure and gulped it down in one go with the phrase, “Far better than anything that you can actually find in France, would you believe it,” that Reginald regained his focus.
“In France.”
“You absolute fool,” he said heavily. “What on earth are you doing here? You do know you’ll be caught?”
Peter grinned as he threw himself down into Reginald’s armchair. “Going to give me in?”
“You know full well that I have no choice in the matter. You’re a traitor to the Crown, for God’s sake!” Reginald could hardly understand why his brother was so calm.
There he sat, brandy in hand and boots—boots on his desk?
Peter saw the direction his brother was looking and slowly removed his boots from Reginald’s desk. “Look—”
“And to think, I had almost had it all sorted,” Reginald muttered, pulling his hand through his hair and dropping into the second chair in the study—a far less comfortable chair. “And here you swan about, without a care in the world—”
“Well, actually,” began Peter.
“—as if it hasn’t been a strain on all of us—”
“I have some news in that quarter,” said his brother quietly.
Reginald was not listening. “Thankfully, our sister has no comprehension of what is going on, but I have had to make some hard decisions. It is no joke having a traitor for a brother, and—”
“Reg,” said Peter firmly, “I am not a traitor.”
Reginald snorted, pulled the bottle of brandy out of his brother’s hands, and dispensed entirely without the thought of a glass, drinking it directly from the neck of the bottle.
“Reginald!”
“You don’t know what I have been through,” he said ominously, glaring at his younger brother through a heady haze of brandy. “You don’t know what I have done, what I have tried to do to keep this family respectable.”
For some reason, all the color drained from Peter’s face. “What—What have you done?”
“Well… Well, it didn’t work, if it comes to that,” Reginald had to admit gruffly. “But—”
“If you would but listen to me for five minutes, you would know that you don’t have to do anything,” Peter said, far more patiently than Reginald could ever remember his sibling being. “I am not a traitor.”
The scoff was loud, but Reginald made no apologies for it. “Oh, of course not!”
“No, really, I’m not.” His brother shook his head, holding back a smirk all the while. “I am glad the subterfuge fooled even you, though I admit myself to being a tad offended. You would believe me capable of treachery that easily?”
Reginald opened his mouth, hesitated, tried to replay the words he had just heard, then closed them again.
It wasn’t possible, was it? After all these weeks of trying to figure out the best way to keep the family safe, to maintain their reputation…surely, it wasn’t possible that he had gotten the wrong end of the stick?
His brother grinned. “Voila!”
“Explain.” Reginald took another swig of the brandy, swallowed a large gulp, and grimaced. “Now.”
“It’s all very simple, really,” said his brother airily. “The government needed to discover an actual spy, and so they put about the word that I was the traitor. I holed up in France for a few weeks, spent my time eating a vast amount of cheese and getting to know one of the local ladies very—”
“Peter!”
“I’m just saying, it was not much of a hardship.
” Peter chuckled, crossing his legs and winking for good measure.
“The real culprit was apprehended, having gotten too lazy, thinking that the heat was off him, and so here I am. Exoneration to be published the day after tomorrow, once the details are ironed out. Great service to Queen and Country, great thanks from government, small pension, etcetera, etcetera. You look surprised.”
He felt perplexed.
Reginald could hardly understand what he was hearing. His… His brother was not a traitor. It had all a lie. A trick. A ruse.
“A ruse,” he said weakly.
Peter nodded. “It was only going to last a few weeks, a few months at the most, and it was crucial that no one knew, so I’m afraid I wasn’t permitted to tell you, old chap. But now I am back.” He shrugged, as if it were all no great concern to him.
“You… You have no idea,” said Reginald weakly, “the stress I have been under.”
His brother cleared his throat. “I am sure it was a rum situation, but it’s over now, and no harm done.”
“No harm done.”
Reginald tried to smile, but he couldn’t. His brother was not a traitor. He did not need to save the family name. He had no need to marry anyone, let alone convince Miss Jessica Chance that he was worthy of her.
So why was he filled with such…such disappointment?
In the silence, his brother’s jovial expression was starting to fade, and as he spoke, it was with a concern that grew with every syllable.
“Oh… Oh, dear Lord. You did not do anything rash, did you? While I was away, I mean, thinking that I was indeed a traitor to the Crown, you… You didn’t do anything impulsive, did you? ”
Without letting go of the brandy bottle, Reginald slowly lowered his head into his hands, and started to laugh.