Page 39 of Georgiana
“Who do you think you are?” Nathan punctuated each word with a step forward into the room until he stood directly in front of Max, his hands clenching and unclenching. “You dare to chastise me or George for our previous behavior when you are the worst of us all.”
“I have no idea what you are going on about.”
Max took a careful step back and moved toward the fireplace. Nathan had a quick temper and an equally quick fist and he had no desire to experience either of them.
“Georgiana.”
Max shoulders straightened and all his muscles tightened in response to her name.
“What about… her?” He couldn’t bring himself to say her name or call her his wife.
“Her? You refer to your bride as ‘her’?”
“Very well, what about my wife?” Bile rose in his throat at that word which by all accounts should signify a loving partner in a loving marriage. Neither of which he enjoyed.
“Are you sure she’s your wife? You’ve treated her worse than a harlot. You abandoned her at Adborough Hall, creating a scurrilous rumor that she may be pregnant by another man and ordered your staff to keep a watchful eye on her belly to see if it grows with child. You have subjected her to an embarrassing scrutiny for reasons she has no knowledge of.”
Nathan’s words brought on a swell of resentment in his chest.
“Be careful what you say, brother. You have no right to barge in here—”
“No right? I have no right to tell you that a loving Christian husband honors his wife? That he lays down his life for her as Christ laid down His for us? As your brother and a former vicar of the Church of England, I have no right to tell you to remove the beam from your eye before you attempt to remove logs from another’s?”
“No, you do not.” Max clasped his hands behind his back and held his gaze steady. Nathan had no idea what he’d gone through after his marriage to Georgiana. How his heart had been ripped apart at the thought of her being intimate with not one man, but two.
“Your wife sits alone in a large, unfamiliar house with no one to take care of her. She wouldn’t tell me how her face became bruised−”
“Her face? What happened?” Max’s heart lurched at the thought of Georgiana being injured.
“Now you show concern! If you were by your wife’s side, you’d know one of the tenants shoved her during one of her visits.”
“My staff said nothing of this.”
“Maybe they are taking their lead from you and think your wife is not worthy of any show of warmth, or compassion.” Nathan jeered. “At my insistence, Chapman divulged what had occurred. Thankfully, she required no stitches.” Nathan paced to the window and back. “What is going on in your mind? I cannot, for the life of me, fathom a reason for you to behave in this manner?”
“You have no idea what I’ve endured in all of this, of what I know.”
“Whatyou’veendured?” Nathan scoffed; his voice filled with contempt.
“I’m not her first lover.”
There he’d said it. Voiced the very words that twisted his gut night after night.
“Do you know this for an absolute fact?”
“Yes. Slade was not her first compromise, there was another.”
“Did you think to speak to your wife about this information, seeing as it concerns her?”
“I could not. It was like Constance Templeton all over again seeking an idiot to believe another man’s bastard was his own child.”
“My god! This is what you think of Georgiana. A girl you’ve known from infancy?” Nathan stepped away from him and moved to the front of the desk. “For your information, your wife in not enceinte.”
The tight band around his chest lessened at the news. Upon seeing the relief etched across his face, Nathan spat out. “May God have mercy on you, Maxwell, because at this very moment I have none. My heart is filled with sorrow. Caroline and I will pray for you. It’s all that we can do, but until you reconcile with your wife and beg her forgiveness, you are not welcome at Moreland Park.”
With those words, Nathan left the room, closing the door behind him with a quiet click. Max almost wished he’d slammed the door because then he could justify to himself that his brother had acted irrationally.
~~~~~
