Chapter Eighteen #2
It was hardly a logical argument, but Wilfred was not in a position to argue. He drank the whiskey. In one.
“Steady on, man. I need you conscious to hear my apology.”
“Your ap-apolgy?” spluttered Wilfred, blinking through the fiery burn of the liquor.
Michael’s smile was fleeting. “You sound like my Aunt Florence. Yes, my apology. It’s my fault you’re in this mess, you know.”
“I do know!” Wilfred said hotly, temper flaring. “And—”
“And yours, of course,” interrupted his guest, his voice level. “But I thought it was only fair that you shared the blame.”
Wilfred gaped at the impertinence of the man. He dared to blame him, Wilfred, for hurting Irene—when all he wanted to do in the world was give her pleasure?
Probably not the best thing to say to the woman’s brother, now that he came to think about it…
“Look,” Michael said darkly, “you and my sister—you were made for each other.”
It was difficult not to snort derisively at that. “‘Were.’ Past tense.”
“You are made for each other, then—damn it, man, are you going to be this difficult about everything?”
Wilfred glared at his friend. “Yes.”
For a moment, Michael just stared. Then he laughed. “Good. You know, I always worried that Irene would walk all over you. That you would simply acquiesce to every demand she ever made, and you’d end up kissing the ground she walked on.”
It was a fair comment, and Wilfred was loath to admit that it was still completely true. Probably best not to demean himself too much.
“And then I thought…good,” said Michael softly.
Wilfred was starting to get dizzy from all the different twists and turns this conversation was taking. Pushing the book off his seat and taking another sip of his whiskey—a smaller one, this time—he tried to respond in a way that was charming, and refined, and befitting of a gentleman.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he said wearily.
Well. He had made an attempt.
“I thought, good,” repeated Michael, his smile faint.
“My sister, all my sisters, deserve to be loved by men who are going to adore them. Who will do anything, everything for them. Who will believe them and fight for them and love them no matter what occurs. And I thought that was the sort of man you were.”
Wilfred did not know whether to be aggrieved or pleased. “I am that man.”
“But you’re here, stewing,” pointed out his friend.
“I am here, drinking whiskey with you,” countered Wilfred sharply. “And I came by your house—your parents’ house—twice today, and each time—”
“Yes, I am afraid you are being treated with the cut direct at la Casa de Pernrith,” said Michael with a twisted smile. “And that was even after I went to my mother and confessed everything.”
‘Confessed’… ‘Confessed everything’?
Not for the first time, Wilfred wondered why it had not been himself and Michael who had become close friends all those years ago.
The boy had always been on the periphery, to be sure, but it had been Irene who had caught his attention.
Oh, they had gone up to university together, as two young men only a year apart, and a gaggle of them had done the Grand Tour… but it had always been Irene.
Perhaps he had missed out on having two close friends, rather than one.
“Look, I am sorry,” Michael said suddenly, his expression one of contrition as he downed the last of his whiskey. “I feel responsible.”
“Good,” muttered Wilfred.
“It was my fault for pushing you toward Miss Fletcher in the first place,” continued Michael, whose voice was filled with regret. “And… Well… I paid the paper to print that gossip.”
Wilfred swallowed. “You… You what?”
He’d suspected Michael, briefly—it would have made his outrage at Christmas, his inability to step forward and help Wilfred, make sense, considering he must have been hiding his involvement—but he hadn’t suspected the man to come out and admit it.
“Made up the name of her dad and everything—found a man of business with the name Fletcher in Yorkshire who might suit, to make it seem as if she were from a family better fit for a duke. Albeit still a merchant’s family, but that had to be better than a harlot’s, you know?”
No, Wilfred did not know.
“I was an idiot, I know. Miss Fletcher said she hadn’t seen you in weeks, that you’d sent a letter that you were done with her services. But it had only been that one time, which clearly hadn’t been enough. You spent so much time with Irene, but the two of you never seemed to make any progress—”
“We’d made progress Christmas Eve!”
Michael gaped.
“Never-Never mind that,” he said. “The point is, Irene confessed her feelings to me, and we understood each other. At last. Until I came downstairs and found a wall of infuriated Chances formed against me. Yourself included, I might add!”
The solitary Chance in the room swallowed, then winced. “I feel… Well, as though I have destroyed things for you.”
It was on the tip of Wilfred’s tongue to say that he had; that it had been Michael who had ruined everything, that it had been Michael who had ended his opportunity to not only marry Irene, but to become a Chance, to join the family he so admired and revered.
But even as the words formed themselves in his mouth, Wilfred found—to his great annoyance—that he couldn’t say them.
“You were part of the tale,” he said quietly. “A large part, it seems. But you cannot take all responsibility.”
“My mother wishes me to,” Michael said darkly. “She said a great many things, some of which were far sharper than I could have believed of her. And she was right. Mostly.”
He did look mostly penitent, Wilfred had to admit. The picture would have looked complete if the man hadn’t been downing a glass of his own whiskey at the time, but Michael did in fact look a tad morose.
As though he…regretted what he had done. A new experience for Michael Chance.
“If I had never suggested Miss Fletcher or gone to the papers with that tale of lies,” Michael said dully, “this whole thing wouldn’t have happened, and you and I would be supping champagne in my father’s house about now.”
Wilfred’s stomach tightened. I can hardly deny it. “And yet you did, and I did—there, we are both to blame.”
“No, no, it is time I started taking responsibility for my actions. Or at least”—his guest grinned—“that is what my mother said, and I was not in the mood to disagree with her. She was wielding a knife at the time.”
Wilfred blinked. The image of the Viscountess Pernrith threatening her only son with a knife was a most incongruent one. “I am sorry. ‘She was wielding—’”
“Well, a needle, same difference,” Michael said with a wave of his hand. “She was doing some embroidery at the time of my confession and you know, she looked most upset and I would not have put it past her to stab me in the eye with it, considering her fondness for—”
“Irene,” Wilfred breathed. It was almost a blessing, to be able to say the name aloud.
Michael frowned. “Well, yes, but I was going to say ‘you.’”
Me?
“My parents have a great deal of affection for you, you know,” his friend said quietly, as though he did not comprehend just what a gift he was giving his host. “I think that is why the whole debacle has rankled so much. It’s not just their daughter they are upset about. It’s their second son.”
Was it Wilfred’s imagination, or was there a hint of pain in his friend’s voice?
“And it is all my fault,” said Michael heavily.
Perhaps if he had opened with that, Wilfred would have agreed with him. It would have been pleasant, to blame someone else, to feel the relief of absolution across his shoulders.
But he was no cad, no matter what Irene had thrown at him.
“I accept your apology. But it doesn’t matter.”
Michael raised an unbelieving eyebrow as he settled back in his chair. “It doesn’t?”
Wilfred shook his head. “No. No, I am really the one to blame. I claim credit for pretending even just once to woo the woman. I have to accept the blame when it does not go to plan. When it goes completely disastrously, as it happens, but yes. This is on my shoulders, and now…now it is over.”
Over.
That was the first time, he realized, he had said that aloud—but it had been true for many hours now.
Over. Any chance of his happiness—for he would never love another, Wilfred was certain about that—had ended.
Perhaps the newspaper gossip would put an end to all chance of there ever being a piece about him and Irene, thereby protecting her reputation.
Perhaps that was for the best, as much as he hated to think it.
Irene would go off and marry someone else, someone better, someone more suave and charming, and he…
he would have to look into the family tree and find an heir somewhere.
There had to be a distant cousin, did there not?
Surely, he could not be the very last Aynor?
And if he was, indeed, the last, well… So he would be.
“Oh, well, that’s all right, then.”
Wilfred blinked. So lost had he become in his thoughts, he had almost forgotten that Michael was still there. “‘All right’? What the devil do you mean, ‘all right’?”
His companion shrugged. “Well, if you can say that it is over so easily and without any real fight, perhaps you did not love her at all.”
And Wilfred was on his feet again—how, he did not know, but he was and there was rage pouring through his heart and words he had not even known he’d possessed were spilling from his lips.
“‘Not love her’—not love Irene? Not love the only woman who makes me feel—who knows me and sees me and—and everything she does is sunlight!” Wilfred knew what he was saying simply did not make sense.
He did not care. He had to say it. “‘Not love her’? I have loved Irene for as long as I have breathed—there are no memories within me when I did not love her! Loving her has been the greatest privilege of my life and I will never love again like—Irene is… And if she asked me to cut my own heart out, then I would tear it out with my bare hands!” Wilfred was shouting, but the shouting could not stop until all the words were out.
“I love her, Michael, and I-I may not deserve her, but I do not deserve slander like that! It’s an outrage! ”
He was panting heavily, his hands clenched to fists at his sides, and there was boiling rage coating the insides of his lungs and Michael—
Michael just sat there…laughing.
Wilfred shifted his feet as though to check that the library floor was still level. Yes, it was—so why did it feel as though he had just been tipped sideways?
Michael was still laughing.
“Why—Why are you—” he began defensively.
“Oh, please, I mean no offense by it.” His guest grinned. “I just did not expect to get a rise out of you so easily.”
Wilfred groaned, dropping back onto his seat and putting his head into his hands. “You shouldn’t be allowed to do that.”
“It comes from growing up with four sisters.” Michael chuckled. “It becomes all too easy to see the ways one can prod at another. You really think I did not believe your affection for Irene was real?”
Embarrassment flooded through Wilfred as he groaned into his hands.
The voice of his guest came from before him. “Oh, come now, it’s not that bad. You hardly humiliated yourself, though I have to admit, I will remind you of that ‘ripping your heart out of your chest’ comment when Irene wants to paint your library a nice lilac and you disagree.”
The thought of Irene here, redecorating his home—making it their home—crackled in Wilfred’s mind.
He looked up. “You seriously think there is any future in which Irene and I are—”
“It’s the only future I can see,” Michael said lightly. “Here you are, miserable because you are not with her, and there she is, miserable because she is not with you. It’s all mightily obvious.”
Wilfred could not help but glare. “Fine, magical miracle worker. How would you fix this damned mess?”
His friend’s eyes twinkled. “Ah, far be it from me to take the pleasure of solving the whole thing away from you. Besides, would you trust me to be the one to fix it, when it looks as if I’ve made the whole thing worse?”
Wilfred glared at him before shaking his head.
“No, you will have to seek help from another Chance. I will stick to what brothers-in-law are really for: teasing the newcomer to the family.”
Wilfred snorted.
“Not that you are much of a newcomer,” continued Michael, his voice calmer now. “I mean, you’ve been part of the family for so long, it’d be odd if you didn’t marry one of my sisters.”
‘One’ of them? Oh, it had only ever been Irene. She had been like a sister to him, Wilfred knew, until…until she had not. Until the very last thing he’d wanted from her was sisterly affection.
Until he had realized his life would be utterly incomplete unless he had Irene by his side at all times.
“So,” Michael said lazily, reaching forward to pick up the whiskey bottle—Wilfred’s whiskey bottle—and pouring himself another large measure. “Tell me.”
Wilfred blinked. “Tell you…what?”
His friend lifted his now-full glass in a toast. “How are you going to win back my sister?”