Page 16 of With Love in Sight
Caleb shrugged. “It’s a fine day. Do I need another reason?”
Tristan shook his head and turned back to the road. “You’re unnatural, you are.”
Morley nudged his horse closer. “Tristan, you dunce, if you had not over-imbibed so dreadfully last night—and I daresay into the early morning as well—your head would be clear enough to know that his good mood has everything to do with a certain female’s presence awaiting him at Knowles’s home.”
A belated look of understanding lit Tristan’s face. “Ah, Miss Imogen Duncan will be there, will she?”
Caleb’s smile vanished with the swiftness of the sun on a cloudy day. “How many times do I have to explain to you? I have no designs on Miss Duncan. I simply enjoy her company. She’s refreshing.”
“Hogwash,” Morley scoffed.
“It’s the truth,” Caleb insisted through clenched teeth.
“You are deluded,” Morley countered. “A man like you does not change overnight to such a degree.”
“And how would you know, Morley?”
“Because I am a man like you, Willbridge,” his friend drawled. “I have known you since Eton. And not once since we were at University have you deviated.” He looked suddenly uncomfortable and exchanged a concerned look with Tristan before clearing his throat. “My apologies,” he mumbled.
Caleb’s jaw set. It took some effort to form words, for he knew just what was on their minds. They had been there the day Jonathan had died. They remembered the horror of it, and what it had cost him since.
“None needed,” he replied in a patently false voice.
But despite the momentary dredging up of memories they’d all best forget, Morley launched on: “Now you are eschewing your friends and typical pursuits. You ignored a blatant invitation from Violet at the Morledge ball and have not visited her since. As a matter of fact, you have not been to visit with any of your other inamoratas, either. The signs are all there, man.”
Caleb squirmed a bit in his saddle and tried for a tone of bored indifference when he said, “You are ridiculous. What signs?”
“Why, that you are more than halfway in love with Miss Duncan,” Tristan said. Morley nodded in agreement.
“I am not in love with Miss Duncan,” Caleb all but shouted. A bird launched itself from the bushes that lined the side of the road in a flutter of startled feathers.
“Methinks the man doth protest too much,” Morley murmured.
Caleb huffed in exasperation. “Can I not have a platonic female friend?”
“No,” both friends replied in unison.
Caleb shot them a glare.
Tristan held up one hand. “We just want you to exercise caution, is all.”
“Caution,” Caleb repeated dumbly.
“Yes,” Morley said, “caution. We don’t pretend to understand your interest in the girl. Perhaps she’s just a novelty, something new to relieve your boredom. Now, don’t go taking offense,” he said as Caleb let loose a low curse. “Even if you just feel friendship for the girl, you know as well as I that gentlemen cannot form close friendships with unmarried females. You will get people talking, and then will ruin her reputation when you don’t offer for her. At the very least she will be a laughingstock.”
For a long moment Caleb didn’t trust himself to speak. Finally, he said gruffly, “I will think on it, I promise you. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”
Before he could say something he knew he would regret, he nudged his horse on faster, leaving the two men behind. Damn and blast their eyes, why did they insist on putting a lecherous spin on the one thing in his life that was pure and sweet?
But perhaps he no longer had the right to touch anything pure and sweet. The old pain shot through him, and with it came the unbidden image of laughing eyes closed much too early, blood on his hands that no amount of scrubbing could erase, grief etched on the faces of those he loved.
If he had not been so cruel, his brother would be alive. But with the loss of Jonathan, everything in his life had changed. And Caleb had not been the only one affected. His father had done his best to deny it when he had been alive. His mother even now attempted to tell him he was not at fault. But Caleb knew better. In his heart he carried that guilt constantly. So he lived the life he did to hold the pain at bay as best he could.
Until he met Imogen.
She alone gave him a calm peace from the turmoil in his soul. But had his need for that peace blinded him to how he could harm her reputation irreparably?
Was Imogen to be relegated to the list of lives he had ruined through his self-serving actions?
