Chapter Eighteen
Wilfred inhaled deeply, then put the book down. “I said, I am not at home.”
His stiff-backed butler coughed politely—at least, Wilfred presumed it was a polite cough. “I know, Your Grace, but—”
“And when I said I am not at home, I am not at home,” Wilfred continued doggedly.
He hated doing it; he had never been one of those men who could shout at their servants. They had been his family, far more than his parents ever had. To shout at the man would be like shouting at his father. Except worse.
“I am aware, Your Grace.” His butler cleared his throat again. “But in this circumstance, I thought—”
“Well, it is what I think that matters in this house. Thank you. That will be all.”
Wilfred cringed as he looked away from the man and resolutely opened his book, a book whose words were stubbornly refusing to stick in his mind, but he couldn’t bear to see a single person. Not after what had happened. Not after losing everything he loved.
The sound of the door closing echoed through the library, and Wilfred put the book aside.
How could he read? How could he lose himself in the joy and excitement of an adventure story when the adventure he himself was on had already turned out to be such a disaster?
“I cannot be yours, not now.”
It was his own fault. Oh, Wilfred knew that; he had been the one to contract Miss Fletcher to this silly ruse.
He still did not know if she was responsible for the piece in the paper—and if not, who else would have gone so far as to name her supposed father—but he could not bear to even confront the woman.
It was possible it had not been she behind the accursed bit of gossip, but rather someone who had observed them together and somehow knew her name.
Blast. If he had only continued to pursue Irene as he had…
Well. Not that his approach there had been working in any capacity.
But still, it had been his actions and his actions alone that had precipitated this—and there was nothing to be done. Irene would not see him. He had tried returning to the Chance house twice today already and the servants had been most cold toward him. Distant.
It had been most alarming. The Chance servants had been… Well, Wilfred did not like to think of it like this, but like his servants.
His, in that they had played a part in raising him. It had been their hands that had bandaged scrapes, and their kindness that had led them to feed him treats from the kitchen, and now—now they looked at him as though…
Wilfred swallowed. As though I have done them a great harm.
Perhaps he had.
“Now, then, Master Wilfred,” came the storm that was Mrs. Ansley, “what’s all this about refusing to see your nice guest?”
Something deep within Wilfred cringed. “Mrs. Ansley, really—”
“I have never known you to turn away a friend at your door,” his housekeeper said brusquely, brandishing a finger at him like a professor with a pointer rod. “A friend who has come special to comfort you.”
“Mrs. Ansley,” said Wilfred weakly. What was he supposed to do against such an onslaught?
“And you’ve always liked those Chances so well,” she continued, unabated. “I don’t see why you wouldn’t see—”
“‘Chances’?” repeated Wilfred, treacherous hope rising like hot honey.
Chances—special friend?
It has to be Irene. It just has to be. Joy fluttered through him, a pulse irregular yet welcome, and he rose so swiftly to his feet that this book, whatever it was, fell to the floor.
“Yes, yes, show her in!”
For a moment, just a moment, Mrs. Ansley’s brows furrowed and there was a flicker of confusion in the woman’s face. “But—”
“Come now, Mrs. Ansley, half a breath ago, you were chastising me for not welcoming my guest!” Wilfred said jovially, trying to tighten his cravat and straighten his waistcoat at the same time. “Show her in!”
How was his hair? He hadn’t even looked at his hair in the looking glass that morning—there had been no point—and now Irene was here, and he hadn’t matched his buttonhole flower to his cravat, but that did not matter. She had come. Everything was going to be—
Michael Chance walked into the library.
Wilfred deflated; first his torso, then his head drooped, and finally his voice said dully, “Oh. It’s you.”
His housekeeper cleared her throat. “I did try to say—”
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Ansley,” Wilfred interrupted curtly.
Well, it was his own fault. He had presumed. How many times was he going to presume with this family and turn out to be completely wrong?
“No tea, thank you, Mrs. Ansley,” Michael was saying cheerfully to his host’s housekeeper. “I know where the master keeps the whiskey, and we’ll need it. Both of us.”
“Right you are, Mr. Chance,” bustled the housekeeper, gently brushing off their guest’s shoulders with her palms like a valet smoothing out his master’s wrinkles before seeming to come to herself and striding out of the room.
“And play nicely, the pair of you!” she admonished them both over her shoulder as though they were still eleven years old.
The door closed and Wilfred dropped onto his chair.
He should have expected it. Michael clearly had forgotten his own role in how this whole mess had started, or he somehow seemed to believe that Wilfred had, at some point, not been pretending at all.
Irene’s father perhaps was too important, too angry even to come here himself, but it made sense that Irene’s only brother would come here and—
Not challenge him to a duel. There hadn’t been a duel fought over a lady in… Well, not officially. Not for ages.
What was it to be, then—a demand of money? A stricture never to darken their doorway again?
Wilfred glanced up at his childhood friend’s brother and saw him swallowing, a strange war of emotions in the man’s face. Was that…regret? Surely not.
“I had planned to come here,” Michael said slowly, walking over to the secret compartment in the second-left bookcase and pressing down on the Bible, “to congratulate you.”
The hidden spring pushed open what had appeared to be five books on agriculture. A bottle of whiskey became visible.
“I knew you had found out about that,” Wilfred said dully. “Since we were eighteen.”
“Well, it didn’t seem fair that only you and Reeny got to have the whiskey,” Michael said cheerfully.
Wilfred snorted. “I thought it was disappearing rather quickly.”
And yet what did it matter? It was only whiskey. Whiskey could be replaced.
Irene could not.
“Yet here we are, commiserating over your expulsion from my parents’ home,” Michael said in that same cheerful voice, now reaching behind the whiskey for two glasses. “The newspaper announcement was a damned unfortunate thing to happen, you know.”
“‘Unfortunate’? You were the one who suggested the whole damned ruse in the first place!” Wilfred exploded.
It were as though a dam had finally burst, as though he was finally being given permission to be angry—and by God, he was angry.
Mostly at himself, true. But also at this man: this man who had attempted to help him and then had had the gall not to stand up for him when he’d discovered how far the ruse he had suggested Wilfred undertake had gone.
“It’s all your fault!” he shouted at the man who was helping himself to Wilfred’s own whiskey.
And anger, pure anger the like he had never known before, roared through him.
Yes, this was it, this was something he could blame—it wasn’t his own fault, it was Michael’s!
Michael, who had wheedled out of him that he was in love with Irene; Michael, who had suggested making his sister jealous; Michael, who had suggested Miss Fletcher herself; Michael, who had stood there, indignant alongside the rest of the family, not saying a word about his role in the whole affair!
Perhaps—and at this point, Wilfred was hardly sure whether he was in control of his thoughts, or his thoughts were in control of him—perhaps Michael had sabotaged the whole thing!
Had he perhaps gone to Miss Fletcher, asked her to put the gossip in the newspaper?
Had he placed the piece himself? That would make sense.
Who else would even have known the name of the lady, and her supposed father as well?
“Are you quite finished?” asked Michael calmly, sipping from one of the whiskey glasses and wrinkling his nose. “Goodness, this is fine stuff. From the Highlands, I take it?”
“Michael!” exploded Wilfred.
His guest winced. “You know, if you really want to berate me, you could not have picked a better way. That is precisely the way my mother shouts at me when she is disappointed with me. Well done.”
Wilfred stood there, lungs tight, anger still nice and hot in his veins…but the utter lack of reaction from his friend was startling. “Why… Why aren’t you fighting back?”
Michael slowly swilled the whiskey glass, staring at the amber liquid. The silence between them stretched out in a most alarming way, until finally, the gentleman looked up and met Wilfred’s gaze with a steady one of his own.
“Because,” Michael said quietly, “you are absolutely right. This is my fault.”
Opening his mouth to retort against the absolute slander that the blaggard had surely said, it took a moment for Wilfred’s mind to catch up with him. He hesitated, mouth agape, then he slowly closed it.
“Your fault,” he repeated, all the wind taken from his sails.
“Yes, my fault,” said Michael simply, stepping forward. He gestured to a chair. “May I?”
Wilfred hardly knew what to do with himself. Irene had loved him, and now she hated him. The Chances, the only family he had ever truly known, had thrown him out. Michael was drinking his whiskey and saying the whole damned situation was his own fault.
He wanted to sit down.
Grasping with relief to the final thought, Wilfred nodded brusquely and sat down himself. Before his guest took his seat, he poured a healthy dollop of Wilfred’s own whiskey into a fresh glass and handed it to his host.
“Drink up,” Michael said quietly. “You’re going to need it.”