Page 25 of Unmasked by the Marquess
“I was conducting an experiment,” Alistair said, likely compounding the inanity of the scene, but he was speaking the truth and that had to count for something. “I wanted to see if swearing made me feel better.”
“Did it?” Gilbert looked genuinely curious.
Alistair tried to look like a detached, impartial man of science. “It did not.”
“Ah. Doesn’t work for me either. Worked a charm for Father, though.”
Alistair had forgotten that. It was a dark day indeed when Alistair found himself emulating his father.
He remembered what had transpired the last time he had seen his brother. “Did you consider my proposal?” It was high time Gilbert established himself at that rectory, settled down, and lived responsibly. Alistair needed to see Gilbert safe, provided for, with some direction to his life.
“That’s why I came. I’ll always be grateful that you offered it to me, but I have to decline. I’m sure there are many worthy fellows who’ll be happy to have such a good living. Give it to one of them. But not me.”
Idiot.Idiot.
Alistair sighed and sank into the chair by the fire. It was warm for April, but the fire was blazing. Likely the housemaids lacked the temerity to question his cranky lordship about whether he still required a fire. Gilbert poured them both glasses of brandy and pressed one into his hand, a kindness Alistair knew he did not deserve.
He tried to school his voice into some semblance of calm, as if it meant nothing to him to cast his brother adrift. “I don’t dare hope that you have some reasonable, alternative plan for your future,” he said after a sip of brandy. It was not a question, merely an observation. He had given up trying to figure out the man.
“Well, actually...” Gilbert began.
Alistair hastily drained his glass. Had any sensible observation commenced with “Well, actually”? If so, Alistair had never heard it.
“I was thinking of trying my hand at farming.”
“Oh my God,” Alistair said. This again. The younger son of a marquess becoming a farmer. The mind reeled. Of course there were some gentlemen who made a hobby of improving the farms connected with their estates, and were forever writing letters to publications that one could evidently subscribe to if one wished to pursue that particular mania. But these were great landholders, operating on a scale that Gilbert could not aspire to. Alistair feared Gilbert had in mind a mule and a plow, a straw hat and a watercolored rustic idyll.
“I shan’t ask you for anything,” Gilbert said, a mite too stiffly. “I’ll do this on my own.”
And when he inevitably failed, Alistair would bail him out. They both knew it, but it wouldn’t do to say it aloud. “I see.” Alistair tipped his head against the back of the chair and studied the motes of dust that were caught in the lamplight. “I wish you luck.”
“What happened between you and Selby?” Gilbert asked.
“Excuse me?” Alistair straightened so abruptly he nearly injured his neck. “I have no notion of what you mean. What have you heard?” Only after he saw the stunned expression on his brother’s face did he realize that those last words were only heard from the mouths of guilty men.
“It’s only that I noticed that he hasn’t been here or at the club, and when I called on him this afternoon—”
“You went there?” Alistair could feel his cheeks heat and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself.
“I often do,” Gilbert replied evenly. “Anyway, he hasn’t even been in his own drawing room these past few days, so I nosed around the house until that strange butler of theirs brought me to him. I asked him if the two of you had a falling-out—”
“Youwhat?” Alistair roared.
“I was concerned.” Gilbert seemed not to notice that his brother was practically foaming at the mouth. “I know how awful you are about admitting when you’re in the wrong, and thought to tell him so. That way he didn’t think it was personal. But he said that he was the one in the wrong, and—”
Alistair laughed, dry and joyless. “Oh he did, did he? How noble. How very generous-minded of him.”
Gilbert was now regarding him in plain astonishment. The fellow could never make his face do anything other than advertise his thoughts. “What on earth happened?”
“I’m not at liberty to—”
“Please don’t hide behind moral superiority.” This was the first hint of frustration with his older brother’s foul mood that Gilbert had betrayed today. “If you know anything about the Selbys—Miss Selby in particular—that you believe renders them unfit for our friendship, you’d do best to tell me.”
Alistair curled his lip. “Why, are you going to call me out?”
“Alistair, just listen to yourself! I’m asking because I intend to marry Louisa Selby and if there’s some reason I shouldn’t, you ought to tell me.”
“And you’d listen to me for once? I doubt it. But have it your way. I can think of nobody less suitable to be your wife than Miss Selby. Marry whom you please.” Hell, if he were to be a farmer he could sink as low as he liked. “But not Miss Selby. Anyone else. I couldn’t bear it.” Those last words he hadn’t meant to speak out loud. But they were the truth—he didn’t know how he could endure a constant reminder of The Impostor. Of his own loss.
