Chapter 6
Heathbrook struggled against pulling over into some dark corner of Hyde Park, asking his tiger to be a lookout, and then taking greater liberties with her.
But that hand of hers! God in heaven, she’d touched him as an innocent would, unsure of herself but curious, and he wished nothing more than to satisfy her curiosity. A pity that he couldn’t. Mustn’t, especially now.
The last thing he needed was to encounter his brothers and Yates with a cock-stand in his trousers. Holy hell, that would ruin everything.
To keep it at bay he thought over all she’d told him about her parents.
That had an instant dampening effect. He couldn’t imagine finding out at eighteen that his father wasn’t really his father, and his uncle meant to marry him off to someone he despised.
But that never happened to men, did it? They didn’t have the same things to worry about as women, and nobody knew that better than he did, given his past.
“I did not expect to find it so deserted on Rotten Row,” Giselle said. “I thought Society came here to see and be seen.”
“They do . . . during the Season. But we’re well out of the Season now, and everyone is in the country.
This time of year it gets too chilly for driving in the park anyway—the ladies have to swaddle themselves in blankets and the gentlemen need a nip or two of brandy just to stay warm. So, you don’t encounter many out here.”
“I see. I suppose it was still the Season when I last came here. The place was packed with carriages.”
“In autumn, you see more walkers than carriages, the local populace that doesn’t mind a brisk walk in the cold.
But from autumn until nearly Easter, most of the fashionable crowd are at their estates or their friends’ estates.
The ones in town will come out, but on horseback for a quick ride in the morning or late afternoon. ”
“Like that gentleman with his children just now coming around the turn?”
His gaze shot ahead to where four horses were approaching. His heart hammered in his chest. Finally.
It was Yates, looking as cold and unapproachable as usual, his unfashionably long gray hair sticking out from underneath his top hat. And riding on either side of him at a slow walk, obviously at the end of exercising their mounts, were Evan, Kit, and Zachary.
Heathbrook had to assume the smallest fellow, with the straight chestnut hair, was Zachary, since the boy had been born after Heathbrook and his father had left England.
Zachary was eleven or so. Evan was easy to pick out, too, since, at nearly nineteen years old, he was the tallest of the boys and had always shared Heathbrook’s dark hair, even as a lad of nearly seven.
Kit, now seventeen, was no longer a chubby child of five.
He’d thinned out and practically grown into a man, his once-golden curls more of a medium brown hue these days.
With his heart in his throat, Heathbrook halted his phaeton and waited for the others to draw near, drinking in the sight of them looking so hale and hearty.
Yates had not noticed him yet, busy explaining something to Evan who rode to the left of him while Zachary rode to the right, with Kit beside him.
“This is who you wanted me to meet?” Giselle whispered.
He could only nod, so enraptured at finally seeing them in the flesh that he couldn’t speak.
Kit was the first to spot Heathbrook. When the lad reined in and cried, “Ingram!!” and jumped down from his horse, Heathbrook practically leapt from the phaeton, leaving his tiger scurrying to secure the reins.
The boy was now running toward him and into his arms. “You came! I knew you’d come! I told Evan you’d come for us!”
Heathbrook squeezed his brother tightly, fighting tears, not wanting any of them to see him making a fool of himself. “Yes, lad, of course I came,” he whispered. “I would never abandon any of you by choice.”
“Christopher William!” Yates said sharply as he hurried his horse toward them. “Come back here at once!”
“No, I don’t want to!” Kit cried. Then he looked up at Heathbrook, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Why didn’t you come get us when you first got to England? We waited so long . . .”
When it dawned on him what the lad’s words meant, anger surged in Heathbrook so powerfully that he couldn’t contain it. “Damn you, Yates!” Heathbrook growled as the man rode up. “You didn’t tell them? You . . . you let them think I didn’t care?”
Evan was the one to answer. “But you didn’t care, did you? You were too busy with your friends and paramours and going about town to parties to even speak to us.”
“I was too busy trying to become the guardian of you three! The Court of Chancery wouldn’t even allow me to see you, much less be with you,” Heathbrook snapped, then glowered at Yates. “You didn’t say a word to them, you arse? How could you let them think I didn’t want them?”
“You’re violating the court’s instructions merely by being here,” Yates said in his even-tempered bloody monotone.
“It was a chance meeting, you scoundrel!”
Yates looked over at Giselle, who now sat pale-faced in the phaeton. “I hope so, for your sake. Because the very fact that you are here with a mistress proves—”
“How dare you, monsieur?” Giselle cried, her French accent thickening in her anger. She jumped up in the phaeton, nearly over-setting it. “I am not that sort!”
“And a French mistress at that,” Yates added coolly.
Releasing Kit, Heathbrook hurried to the phaeton. “Come, my dear,” he said as he helped her down, “let me introduce you to my cousin and my three brothers.”
“You will not do any such thing!” Yates retorted. “Have you no shame, man? No sense of decorum?”
Tucking Giselle’s hand in the crook of his elbow, Heathbrook said, in a voice that shook with rage, “Yates, allow me to introduce Miss Giselle Bernard, granddaughter of a French count and my fiancée. Giselle, this is Frederick Yates, my mother’s rude cousin.”
When the color drained from Yates’s face, Heathbrook nearly smiled.
“Fiancée?” Yates squeaked. Then he paused, and his gaze narrowed on her. “I’ve heard no mention of a fiancée of yours.”
“That’s because we only just became engaged,” Heathbrook said smoothly even as Giselle dug her fingers into his arm.
“But we’ve known each other for ten years, ever since we first met in Verdun.
I thought I’d lost her when I was sent to Bitche .
. . until I learned she had come to England with her mother.
That’s when I began courting her. Fortunately for me, she has finally agreed to marry me. ”
“I see,” Yates said sullenly before tipping his hat to Giselle. “Forgive me, mademoiselle. I was unaware that the earl had a fiancée. I shouldn’t have spoken so rashly.”
Giselle sniffed. “I suppose I will accept your apology, sir, since we are soon to be family. But I do hope to be treated better by you in the future.”
Heathbrook struggled not to laugh at Yates’s comical expression, which vacillated between outrage and chagrin. She had certainly played that well. She’d thrown Yates off his game spectacularly.
“Come, Kit,” Yates said, banishing all Heathbrook’s satisfaction. “We must go home before night falls.”
Kit looked at Heathbrook.
“I’m sorry,” Heathbrook murmured to his brother. “The court won’t allow me to take you yet. But I hope to bring you home soon. Very soon.”
With a trusting nod, Kit turned and went back to mount his horse. Heathbrook could hardly bear to watch as they rode past. Evan wouldn’t even look at him, but Zachary regarded him with frank curiosity, and Kit gave a small wave as they went by.
Heathbrook waved back, his heart breaking.
This was so unfair to them. What had possessed his father to do such a thing, not only to him but to his brothers?
Granted, Heathbrook had been reckless and foolish in his youth, but at twenty-six, he had become as responsible toward his father as it had been possible to be in an enemy camp.
Yet Father had let the lads go to Yates. Heathbrook would never forgive him for that.
“Those poor boys,” Giselle said, as if she’d read his mind. “I understand why you struggle so to get them back.”
“The worst part is I assumed they knew I was in London fighting for them,” he said in a hollow voice. “I sent them letters but never received replies, and all this time they were thinking I didn’t care.”
“You realize Mr. Yates might never have passed the letters on to them,” she pointed out. Releasing his arm, she started walking back to the phaeton. “Still, you might have warned me.”
He fell into step beside her. “About what?”
“About whom we were going to meet. And why.”
“What do you mean, why? I wanted to see them, that’s why.”
She halted to look at him, her eyes sad. “No, you wanted to flaunt your faux fiancée before your cousin, so he would know you were not backing down. It was a strategy meant to throw him off his guard.”
How clever of her to have figured that out. “And it worked! Now he knows—and they know—I am not the man he keeps painting me to be.”
“Congratulations.” She began walking away from him again. “And all you had to do was pretend to be courting me and carry me out here to Hyde Park without a word to me about your plans or what my part in them was.”
It began to dawn on him that she was angry. “I suppose I should have told you.”
“Yes. You should have. You had no reason not to. What difference would it have made if you told me your ‘strategy’?” Her voice turned sarcastic. “You’d already engaged my services as your fiancée for the next few weeks, after all.”
“It’s not like that, Giselle,” he said, although he knew perfectly well it was exactly like that. “Besides, you agreed to the scheme.”
“Because I thought you would be honest with me at least. Why could you not even prepare me for being called your mistress and being considered as an insult to your brothers?” She strode past the phaeton and continued down Rotten Row. “Your cousin thought I was your whore!”