Page 3 of Scoundrel for Sale
“I’ll be able to rest in peace if… if I know she’s married—”
“I’ll do it. I’ll do it gladly.”
“—to Dulson.”
Gabe’s body jerked, a reaction he regretted when Hart gasped in pain. “To… to Dulson?”
Hart nodded jerkily. “He’ll do it. Always fancied her, Dulson has.”
George Davies, Baron Dulson, had been at school with them. He hadn’t been in their closest circle of friends, even though his family seat was just a couple of miles from Hart’s, largely because he wasn’t game for the sorts of antics they liked to get up to.
There wasn’t anything wrong with Dulson. He was a respectable sort of chap—decent fortune, had inherited his father’s barony at the age of sixteen. And he was a nice enough fellow.
But Gabe couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea of someone as effervescent as Abbie marrying Dulson, who was, well…
Dull.
Below him, Hart gave a wheezing breath. “You’ll make sure of it?”
“I… Yes. Of course.” Gabe’s voice broke, because nobody had come with a goddamn tourniquet, Hart looked as gray as a gravestone, and Gabe could no longer tell himself the lie that his favorite person on the face of this earth was not dying. “Anything, Hart.”
“Then make sure she… marries Dulson.”
“All right.” Gabe realized that the moisture on his cheeks wasn’t sweat or blood, but tears.
“Promise me.”
Gabe swallowed. Nothing had changed. He’d never expected to marry a girl like Abbie. It was stupid of him to have thought of it, stupid to have imagined even for a second that Hart would want his sister to marry someone like him. He wasn’t good enough for Abbie.
His own family hadn’t wanted him, after all. Why should the Stapletons?
“I promise.”
“One… one more thing,” Hart gasped.
Gabe squeezed his best friend’s hand. “Name it.”
“Abbie will be… vulnerable. All alone. Looking for… comfort.” Hart’s eyes drifted closed, and for a horrible moment, Gabe wasn’t sure if he would open them again.
But open them he did, and he looked Gabe square in the eye as he said, “Swear to me you won’t touch her.”
“I won’t—what?” Gabe couldn’t keep the shock and pain out of his voice.
Was this what Hart truly thought of him? To be sure, he was a bit of a scoundrel. But so was Hart. Gabe was under the impression that they’d had around the same number of lovers.
Gabe had to own that his reputation was worse than his friend’s, but that was only because that widowed countess he’d had an affair with had been such a gossip. Lady Bollington had told half the ton that Gabe was surely the best lover in all of England. It had got so out of hand that the gossip rags had started reporting upon his exploits, both real and imagined.
But his reputation as some legendary rake wasn’t real. It was a bunch of nonsense made up by the papers. And he certainly wasn’t so low, so shameless, so depraved that he would take advantage of any grieving girl, much less Abbie.
Hart knew that.
Didn’t he?
“Say you’ll never… lay a hand on her.” Hart took a gasping breath. “Swear it!”
In any other circumstance, Gabe would have been furious.
He would’ve asked Hart what the hell he was suggesting.
