Page 108 of To Pleasure a Prince
He kept reading, hoping for more mention of her, but instead…
Another lady’s absence was also markedly obvious. Miss North, sister-in-law to Lady Draker, and often seen in the company of that lady’s brother, the Duke of Foxmoor, was not in attendance. Neither was the duke, despite his friendship with the Merringtons. According to the viscountess, Miss North’s bad cold has kept her from attending parties of late. Lady Draker had no idea why the duke had not come, but we can only speculate from his previous marked attentions to Miss North that he did not want to attend any party where she was not. We will be watching this couple closely. Could a wedding be in the offing?
“Damn.” He threw the clipping aside. If he’d done as Regina asked and let Louisa stay in London, nobody would be speculating on anything. It might have been possible to separate the couple gracefully with little comment, but now—
“What did you do to Simon?” Louisa shook the clipping in his face. It was clear what part of the columnshedeemed important. “If you’ve hurt him in any way, I swear I will never forgive you!”
“How am I supposed to have hurt him when I haven’t left Castlemaine in three days?” Not that he hadn’t wanted to trot off to London to strangle his brother-in-law. But he hadn’t dared leave Louisa alone while he did it.
Besides, he’d promised Regina not to kill the man. And although he’d broken at least one promise to her, he sensed that she would never forgive his breaking that one. Murdering her brother was the quickest way to make his wife hate him. It suddenly seemed very important to have his wife not hate him.
“So whatareyou going to do to Simon?” Louisa asked plaintively.
“I haven’t decided.” But he didn’t intend to let the man escape unscathed. The first chance Marcus got, he intended to speak to Byrne about a suitable revenge. His diabolical half brother would know exactly how to hit Foxmoor where it would hurt the scoundrel most.
Louisa sat down at the table. “And me? What do you plan to do to me?”
“You’re just now asking that?” he said, raising one eyebrow.
“I expected you to say something that night in the carriage, but you didn’t. Since then, you’ve been so grumpy, I didn’t want to broach the subject.”
“You thought you’d give my anger plenty of time to cool, did you?”
She thrust out her chin exactly as his wife might have. “Perhaps.”
He shook his head. “That was pointless. It’s not a matter of anger anymore—I still hold to what I said in London. You’ll stay here for now. And sometime in the fall, we will consider whether to let you have another season.”
“Who’swe—you and Regina? You drove your wife away, remember? She doesn’t even feel free to live in the town house you supposedly leased for her.”
The words were like a slap in the face.He’d driven his wife away.She was in London, apparently convinced that she must rely on Iversley’s charity, and probably growing to hate her husband more with every day.
Oh, God, what if she never came back?
“What happened between me and Regina is not your concern,” he said tightly.
She leaped to her feet. “Isn’t it? You got angry at her because she was standing up for me. She still is.” Her lower lip trembled. “But it’s not going to do her much good, is it? How long do you think she can keep telling people in society that I have a cold? And if…if no one hears that Simon has offered for me and he stays absent from society…how long do you think it will be before they’re spreading nasty rumors aboutme?”
“They won’t,” he choked out. “I won’t let them.”
“And how will you stop them? By shouting down all the rumormongers? Going to Almack’s and threatening to cut out their tongues, like you did to Lord Whitmore at the opera?”
He gaped at her. “How did you know about that?”
She paled. “Oh, dear. I wasn’t supposed to say. She said you might be annoyed.”
“She who?” he bit out.
“Regina. She told me and some other ladies at the wedding breakfast what happened at the opera. I think she was afraid Lord Whitmore might resent you enough to reveal it himself, so she told her side to stave off the gossip. She said she didn’t want anyone to think badly of you. Not that anyone would. It was very romantic, the way you leaped to defend her honor when Lord Whitmore caught the two of you holding hands.” Louisa swallowed. “But I suppose I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“I’m glad you did.” Even if every word pounded his conscience. Regina, his clever wife, had known that her sanctified version would instantly be believed over the tale of a spurned suitor…as long as she told hers first.
He tried to imagine his own mother drumming up some tale to protect Father’s reputation, but he couldn’t conceive of it. And she certainly had made no attempt to preserve her son’s. Yet Regina, the wife he’d barred from their home, had risked her own reputation to save his pathetic one.
“Marcus?”
“Hmm?” Great God, where had he gone so wrong?
“Why do you hate Simon?”
