Chapter 35
“Lysander!” Wolfgang bellowed, pounding on his brother’s door. “Lysander, we’re going shooting. Now!”
The door cracked open and a bleary eye stared out. “Now? What time is it?”
“It’s just before breakfast. Let’s go.”
“What are we shooting?” Lysander squinted at him. “Is it a new suitor? I suppose I could shoot the Marquess of Vyse, but I draw the line at anybody else.”
But Wolfgang had no time for his brother’s foolishness.
“Meet me at the range,” he called, already marching down the hall. He strode out of the house and up the crest of the hill behind it, and continued marching grimly until he reached the field with the lone dead oak that a footman had told him Julian used for target practice.
It wasn’t long before Lysander slouched up behind him. “Where are the loaders?”
“We load for ourselves.”
Wolfgang steadied his rifle between his knees and charged it from his powder flask, wrapping a ball with patch and pounding it hard into the barrel before ramming the whole mess down with the rod.
It was some six hundred yards from the oak to the fence line. He closed the hammer and raised the stock, holding it firm to his shoulder and letting his mind go blessedly blank and his breath even out as he took aim at a twig on the highest branch that reached up into the sky like a spindly finger.
Bam!
The twig blasted into the air and Lysander whistled. “You were wasted in the Hussars, Wolfie. You should have gone for the Rifle Brigade.”
Wolfgang ignored him, readying his weapon for the next shot. The smell of powder, the crack of the shot, the hard kick of the rifle against his shoulder—it helped, but it wasn’t enough to blank him out.
Not with last night’s thunderclap still ringing in his ears.
Strangely enough, Charlotte’s refusal haunted him less than the scratchiness in her voice, as if he were torturing her, when all he wanted—
Bam!
Wolfgang let loose a bullet and another bit of twig went flying.
Lysander cocked his head. “Bet you five quid I can take it off at the branch?”
Wolfgang’s jaw tightened. “Shoot or don’t shoot, but don’t make a bloody game of it.”
He fired again. Bam!
A miss, which made him swear low and viciously.
The worst of it was…
Wolfgang lowered his gun, only to have Lysander hand over the second rifle, already loaded.
“Shoot until you’re done,” he said quietly.
The worst of it was that for a moment last night in the corridor, he’d been back in Lord Marlowe’s ballroom, sure that something wonderful was about to begin.
Bam!
Wolfgang lowered the rifle. “I’m done. You fire.”
Lysander raised the second gun to his shoulder, took careful aim and pulled the trigger. He squinted at the tree. “Where’d I hit it?”
“You missed by a mile.”
Lysander shrugged and leaned his gun against the fence. “All right, Wolfie, why’d you drag me up here?”
But Wolfgang’s mouth was a thin, flat line and nothing could punch its way out.
“Shall I guess?” Lysander cocked his head. “You stepped on Rupert’s tail and Georgiana’s demanding satisfaction.”
“It’s Lady Charlotte. She…” Wolfgang could only shake his head.
“Did you offer for her?”
Wolfgang loaded the nearest rifle, raised it, and fired. Wood shards exploded into the sky.
“Blast it!” Lysander shouted. “Put the gun down!”
“I made such a hash of things, Lysander.” Wolfgang’s voice broke and he had to pause. “I…”
Lysander let the silence stretch, but he could only hold it for so long before he gave up and hopped onto the fence, his shoulders hunched up like a crow’s. “Wolfie, I’m the wrong man for this. We need John.”
It was true, but John wasn’t coming.
At the funeral, several people had come up to Wolfgang and told him how helpful they found it to talk to ones they’d lost. His own aunt Imogene was known for her long and raucous conversations with her dead sister, and often about people within hearing distance.
But when Wolfgang trudged along to John’s grave and plunked himself down to talk, he could never quite manage it.
The silence of the marble slab was so profound it smothered everything.
It was often said that one needed to sink to the bottom in order to rise, but Wolfgang had thought the bottom was the day John died.
Then he’d thought it was the funeral, or the first time he’d gone down to London and people he barely knew had bustled up to congratulate him.
He’d never considered that the bottom might be three years later, looking into Lysander’s hollow eyes and realizing he’d let his only remaining brother do his suffering alone.
Wolfgang forced himself to open his mouth and it creaked like a rusty hinge. Why did words come so hard when he tried to talk about the most important things? “I offered to court her, she said no, and now we have to leave.”
“Leave?”
“You must stay if you want, of course, but—”
“Wolfgang, last night with Lady Charlotte was the first time in years that I saw you, instead of a starched-up idiot. You’re just becoming yourself again and you want to leave?”
Wolfgang gritted his teeth. “She told me—”
But something over Wolfgang’s shoulder caught Lysander’s attention. “Pull it together, Wolfie, the others are arriving. Although perhaps they’re exactly what we need?”
“What?” Wolfgang turned just as Miss Alexandra bounded up the hill, with Miss Marby following behind.
“Good morning, my lords!” called Miss Alexandra. “We heard the rifles. May we try a shot or two?”
“Yes, but there’s more interesting sport and we could use your help,” said Lysander. “My brother’s making an ass of himself, you see.”
“How diverting.” Miss Alexandra offered her hand to Lysander and he pulled her up to sit beside him on the rail. “What have you done, Your Grace?”
Wolfgang opened his mouth to say something withering, but the dowager crested the hill with Georgiana at her elbow. “What a bunch of madcaps you children are! Isn’t it early in the day for shooting?”
Wolfgang leveled a dark look at his brother. “Not when there are so many targets available.”
“Hmm.” The dowager eyed Wolfgang up and down. “I take it you botched it last night?”
Wolfgang’s instinct was to ignore Lady Alice, saddle up Imperium and leave them in a cloud of dust, but his instincts had served him badly. All these years, he’d let himself see Charlotte through the lens of one night, ignoring the evidence of his eyes and his own endless yearning.
God save him, he needed all the help he could get.
“If you must know,” he muttered, “I told Lady Charlotte how I felt and asked if I could court her.”
“Excellent, dear boy!”
Miss Marby’s pansy brown eyes went wide. “How did she take it?”
Wolfgang felt his cheeks go dark. “She said no, burst into tears, and ran into her bedchamber.”
The dowager leaned forward on her cane, looking most intrigued. “Did she? That seems promising.”
Wolfgang cast a stern eye at the lot of them. “Do all of you intend to poke your noses in my affairs?”
“Yes,” called Miss Helena from behind them. She was the last up the hill and rather out of breath. “We’re taking bets, you see. I put your chances with Charlotte rather low, even though we can all see how she moons for you.”
A groove carved itself across the bridge of Wolfgang’s nose as his pride went to war with the need to ask a deeply incriminating question. “You think…” Hell, why not? His pride was practically dead already. “You think she moons for me?”
It was never pleasant to get a pitying glance, and Wolfgang got several.
“How do you intend to win my granddaughter, Your Grace?”
Wolfgang had no answer. He didn’t want to win Charlotte, as if she were a prize. He wanted to make her mouth curve in helpless laughter and perhaps not at him, for once. He wanted to listen as she laid her many plans. He wanted her liquid underneath him, as sloppy in love with him as he—
Christ.
It was long past time to admit that his suffering, and strain, and piss-poor decision-making all came down to love.
It felt like a bad case of dysentery.
“Oh! Oh! I’ve an idea.” Georgiana bounced on her toes. “You could give her a puppy. Or a kitten, of course, but a good cuddly puppy would be best.”
Helena considered. “I’d marry any man who presented me with the complete works of the Comte de Buffon.”
Miss Marby smothered a sound that was somewhere between amusement and sympathy. “Lady Alice has been lecturing us all summer on the importance of jewelry. Might your vault have something to catch Charlotte’s eye?”
“No,” said the dowager. “This calls for something even more important than jewelry. Be her friend again, Your Grace. Charlotte’s quick to laugh, but she rarely shares her true feelings. Show her she can trust you.”
Lysander jumped down from the fence. “And start living again, Wolfie. No one wants a man who’s buried himself in his brother’s grave.” He picked up a rifle. “Now, can we get back to shooting?”