Chapter 26
“Ye realize that if ye scowl much harder at that paper, it’s going to burst into flames, don’t you?” Ramsay drawled from where he leaned against the doorjamb of the study.
Hector jerked his head up to scowl at his friend instead. Ramsay, who didn’t care to use the good sense the Lord gave him, just laughed and held up his hands in a gesture of supplication.
“I bear you no ill will, your most high duke sir,” he said, which was such an idiotic mishmash of titles and formal addresses that Hector had to roll his eyes. “I am just here, your humble servant, to point out that you seem to be in the devil’s own mood.”
“You’ve never been humble a day in your life, let alone anyone’s servant,” Hector grumbled—though he couldn’t quite refute Ramsay’s words.
It was all Matthew’s fault, this bad mood of his.
Or, rather, Matthew’s and their fathers.
The two of them were cut from the same cloth, after all.
The pair of them had been absolute disasters at record-keeping, though Hector couldn’t be certain if this arose from laziness or a purposeful effort to outright kill Hector by burying him beneath paper.
That would be one way to get Matthew the title with little fuss.
The whole thing was ridiculous. He’d found a letter of complaint from a tenant, which his father had ignored, of course, and now Hector had to manage, because it wasn’t the crofter’s fault that the late duke was a tightfisted bastard—stuck atop yet another tailor’s bill for Matthew.
They could afford it—for all his father’s sins, which were manifold, at least he hadn’t emptied their coffers—but how many goddamned waistcoats did one man need?
Yes, that was the source of Hector’s ire. Matthew, their father, and London, with its self-important Society.
Not Clio. Certainly not that he’d disappointed Clio. Not because he knew that it was pride, rather than good sense, that made him hide his troubles from her. Not when he knew he’d hurt her by refusing to accompany her on her outing.
And definitely, definitely not because her disappointment had hung in the room like a miasma, making it impossible for him to think, let alone accomplish anything.
“Ach, well, you aren’t wrong there.” Ramsay, without invitation, tossed himself into an armchair. “Still. Lay your burdens upon me, oh mighty one. See if old Ramsay can’t help ye out a bit.”
Hector rolled his eyes again. “You are scarcely two years older than I am,” he pointed out.
Ramsay puffed out his chest. “Aye. Two years older, two years wiser. Plus, I’m descended from sensible folk. You’ll never catch my ancestors decorating a place like this.”
He waved around the room, and Hector felt a pang as he thought about Clio, draped over him, laughing as she mocked the decor.
He hadn’t done much to introduce Clio to Ramsay, which suddenly seemed absurd.
They were the two most important people in his life.
And they would like each other, he thought.
Except Hector knew he would get to keep Ramsay. They’d been through too much together—too many boyhood spats, that one time when Hector had kissed the vicar’s daughter even though he knew Ramsay fancied her, too many long winter nights—to think their friendship would ever fade.
Clio was only his temporarily. That was the difference.
Ramsay was watching Hector’s face carefully.
“Come on, man,” he said, the teasing vanished from his voice. “What’s amiss? What’s got you in such a foul temper?”
Hector sneered, but there wasn’t any real heat in it.
“I’m always in a poor temper,” he reminded his friend.
This effort at distraction didn’t work. Ramsay kept giving him that assessing look.
“No,” he said. “No, you aren’t in a bad mood at all when you are around your wife.”
Ramsay might as well have punched him. Hector let out a laugh that was little more than a puff of air.
“I think you must be thinking of someone else,” he said, not bothering to hide his bitterness. He didn’t think he could have managed it if he’d tried. “Clio and I are forever arguing about something or other. Usually that I’m a sorry excuse for a Society gentleman.”
This wasn’t fair, and he knew it wasn’t fair. But he felt rather like a cornered, injured animal who lashed out at a helping hand.
Ramsay gave him a flat look.
“That,” he said flatly, “is a great load of shite and you know it.”
Something inside Hector flared, taking him back to any of a hundred boyhood spats.
“Oh, go to hell,” he snapped. “You don’t even know Clio. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Aye, well, you might be a piss-poor excuse for a host,” Ramsay countered. “But your duchess is a right lady. She has been more than kind to me.”
This took Hector entirely aback. “She has?”
Ramsay looked positively disgusted with him.
“Yes, you bloody idiot, she has,” he said sharply. “A few days ago, now she sought me out and said that even if you weren’t going to show me proper hospitality, that she was. She invited me to breakfast. We’ve breakfasted together—” He quickly counted, “—three days in a row, now.”
Hector knew it was insane, but he felt jealous.
It wasn’t as though he couldn’t have been with him—actually, the precise problem was that he could have been with them.
Instead, he’d been all but hiding in his office, determined to deal with the problems his brother presented to him on his own.
Wasn’t that what a true gentleman would do?
He hated himself for wanting to be that, and hated that he knew he would fail. Because Clio deserved a gentleman. And she’d gotten him, instead.
And, apparently, Ramsay.
“Stay the hell away from my wife,” he growled, pointing at his friend.
Ramsay was unimpressed. “Oh, piss off,” he said dismissively.
“She’s nice. I don’t know why you are always moping about and whining that she’s too proper.
I told her the story about Fergus, Bessie the cow, and the village fete, and she laughed so hard that she almost choked on her toast. She’s not exactly some prim, dainty miss who will be scandalized by the mere sight of you. ”
“You told her what?” Hector didn’t know what he found more appalling—that Ramsay had told a story about a man getting kicked in the bollocks by a cow after one of the milkmaids, tired of his constant flirtations, tricked him into disrobing in the stable, or that Clio had almost choked, and he hadn’t been there. “Is she all right?”
Ramsay looked at the ceiling and crossed himself.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he prayed. “Save me from fools. I am surrounded by them. Mostly this one. May the saints guard him from himself.”
“You aren’t a Papist,” Hector reminded him. “Your ma will tan your hide if she sees you praying like one. And I’ll write to her myself if you do not tell me this instant if my wife is all right.”
“She is fine.” The you great bloody idiot went unsaid, but Hector heard it nonetheless. “But tell me you see my point.”
Hector narrowed his eyes. He didn’t see it, but he wasn’t going to admit that.
“Nobody would believe that you have a point,” he said sourly instead.
“My point,” Ramsay said emphatically, “is that you should spend time with her. She is your wife. Also, it makes you much less—” He waved a hand, encompassing Hector’s entire aspect. “—this when you do.”
Hector felt the fight go out of him. It all sounded so simple when Ramsay said it, but it wasn’t simple. It was a wretched snarl of twine from which he feared he would never extract himself.
“It’s … temporary,” he said with a sigh.
“It is by definition not temporary,” Ramsay retorted, sounding frustrated. “I’m not married myself, but I’ve been to enough weddings to know about the ‘til death do you part’ bit of it all.”
Hector shook his head sharply.
“No, we’ll still be married,” he said. “I just …” He gestured at the paperwork before him. “I just came here to handle this business with my brother, to get the legalities about my inheritance sorted out. And then I always planned to go back home.”
Home. The word tasted strange in his mouth.
And maybe Ramsay heard it, too, because he leaned forward, putting his elbows on the desk.
“Hector,” he said, his voice low and imbued with meaning. “This is your home.”
The idea tried to gain purchase, but Hector shook his head again before it could settle on him.
“No,” he said. “It’s not. I don’t belong here, don’t you see? That’s why I’m always in this devil of a mood. I can’t find peace in a place where I’ll never be enough. I just—I just have to sort out my brother. And then I’ll go.”
“And what about Clio?”
Hector likely should have objected to his friend using Clio’s given name, instead of her title, but he couldn’t summon the energy to do it.
Besides, he could all too easily picture her inviting Ramsay to call her by her Christian name.
Didn’t her whole family share that warm familiarity with one another, after all?
He felt an aching pang at the idea that he would never truly be enveloped in that warmth.
“Clio will stay here,” he said, closing his eyes. “Her family is here. The people she loves are here.”
When he opened his eyes again, Ramsay was glaring at him.
“You’re the worst kind of idiot,” he accused. “You have the love—" Hector outright flinched. “—of a wonderful woman and yet you are determined to squander it? And for what? For people who never saw you as more than a set of strong shoulders?”
“It’s my home,” Hector protested weakly, but Ramsay slashed a hand through the air, cutting off his objection.
“I am glad that ye ended up in the North, Hector, for without that, I never would have found my true brother,” Ramsay said, eyes blazing with earnestness.
“But the people who took you in? They weren’t your family.
The people who cast you aside? They certainly weren’t your family.
I was your family—and now you have a chance at more than that, and you plan to throw it away? ”
Ramsay sounded outright furious.