Chapter 16 #2
He was being crude and he knew it, but he was in a vile mood. He hadn’t sought his sister’s companionship. But he damn well did need to know what she was about where his old friend was concerned. Kingham was a dedicated sybarite. His reputation was quite possibly the worst of anyone in their set.
It stood to reason that Verity wouldn’t be devoted to her first love for the remainder of her life, that she would want to find a husband and have children one day soon. And Everett’s duty was to protect her.
“You are being perfectly dreadful,” Verity pronounced. “And you haven’t even poured me a whisky.”
He sighed and splashed some amber liquid into a tumbler. Perhaps it wasn’t done to share whisky and confidences with one’s unwed sister after midnight, but he didn’t give a damn.
“Here you are. Bribery becomes you, sister.”
Verity accepted his peace offering. “If I have to listen to you grumbling for half the night, then it’s only reasonable to expect recompense.”
“Ever the soul of reason. Sit with me?”
He gestured to the pair of chairs flanking the hearth and waited for Verity to precede him. They sat, the fire crackling the only sound between them as they sipped at their whisky.
“You needn’t worry where Kingham and I are concerned, brother,” Verity said at last. “I know he’s a wicked rake, but I have a mind and heart of my own, and they both belong to Leo just as they always have.”
“That doesn’t explain why he has paid so many calls of late,” he pointed out solemnly.
King had been pleasant and charming at dinner, making all the ladies laugh with his dry wit and flair for the dramatic.
Everett hadn’t spied any longing glances exchanged between the two of them, and he had made certain there was no opportunity for them to be alone.
But still, Sybil’s query troubled him. Perhaps she had seen something he had not.
“I suspect His Grace is lonely,” Verity said. “He has no one after all.”
“He has a dog,” Everett pointed out.
King had been something of a lone wolf for as long as they had been chums. His mother had died when he’d been a lad, and his father had gone to his reward when they’d been at Eton.
“Spy died a fortnight ago,” Verity said.
“Bloody hell. He didn’t say a word.”
King had been in love with his old hound, who had been nearly blind and largely deaf in his later years. He’d had the dog since he was a young man. Pity lanced Everett. His friend would not have taken the loss well, he was sure.
“I don’t suppose he likes to speak of it,” Verity told him. “The poor old fellow was a dear heart.”
“He was a pleasant hound,” Everett agreed before his sister’s words settled in. “How would you know?”
“Kingham and I went on a drive. He brought Spy along so that he could take the air. He couldn’t see or hear much, but his little nose was twitching. I do think he enjoyed that ride.”
Everett didn’t like the notion that Verity had spent enough time in King’s company to have met his beloved hound and to know more about his friend than he did. It was all too cozy. But he felt like a bear for arguing about it now that his sister had just announced Spy had died.
“I don’t know what to make of this,” he confessed instead. “None of it sits well with me.”
“You needn’t make anything of it. King and I are friends, and that is all.”
“Such a relationship between you both is the height of impropriety. You are an unmarried female, and he is a rakehell of the worst order.”
“He wept when he told me about Spy,” Verity said. “I can assure you that he wasn’t wooing me. He simply sought solace from someone who has experienced a great deal of loss herself.”
“You told him about Lord Leopold?” he asked, surprised.
“Of course I did. He wondered why I was weeping at Sybil’s ball, if you will recall.”
“He ought not to have concerned himself with you.”
“Cease your bluster, brother, and tell me what is weighing upon you this evening.” She gave him an arch look. “Because we both know that it has nothing to do with the Duke of Kingham and his dog and me.”
She was right, curse her.
Partially right.
The idea of his sister being friends with Kingham was sitting as well as a turned fish course in his stomach. But the real source of his frustrated ire was the woman he had married.
The woman he loved.
The woman who stubbornly continued to love someone else.
So much so that she still fretted over that man’s welfare and begged him to offer the bastard a better situation than the one he currently had at Eastlake Hall.
“Well?” Verity prodded. “Have you nothing to say?”
Where to begin?
He finished his whisky and contemplated pouring another. “She’s still in love with him,” he bit out at last.
“Sybil?”
“Yes.” Everett exhaled a heavy sigh and rose, returning to the bottle to refill his tumbler. “Who else?”
“Have you asked her, then?”
He heard the pity in Verity’s voice, and it made him want to throw his glass against the wall just to watch it shatter. In the end, he settled for stalking about to his chair, glass in hand, to drown himself in his sorrows.
“Of course I haven’t asked her,” he admitted. “I needn’t. Her feelings are more than apparent. This evening, she asked me to take him on as one of the domestics either here in London or at Riverdale Abbey.”
“She did?”
His sister’s obvious shock gratified him, but he was still damned furious about Sybil begging for a situation for her lover from him, as if her request were hardly of note.
“Yes, she did,” he bit out.
“And what did you tell her?”
He raked his free hand through his hair. “I told her no, naturally. I told her that she possessed an astonishing amount of cheek to make such a request of me, and that harboring such a person in our household would be an affront to our mothers and you.”
“You were correct in that, brother. I don’t know what Sybil could have been thinking, other than that perhaps her concern for the gentleman triumphed over her ordinary good sense.”
It was a very politic explanation. One he might have agreed with, had he not been utterly devastated at the realization that Sybil’s feelings hadn’t altered.
“I don’t know how I can forgive her for this,” he rasped, voice hoarse and raw. “The poets always write about unrequited love. Now I know why. It’s a bloody misery, Verity. One unlike anything I’ve ever known.”
“Oh, Everett,” she murmured, and that was all.
There was naught more to say, truly. They sat together in silence, drinking their whisky and trying their utmost to forget.