Page 44 of As the Devil Dares

“I don’t,” he interrupted, the force of his reply silencing her.

A tense stillness settled over the library, broken only by the muted ticking of the mantel clock that pulsed on like a relentless heartbeat. She wordlessly held his gaze, clearly not believing him.

But instead of challenging him, she whispered gently, “All right.” She let her hand fall slowly away from his arm and retreated toward the door. “Then I’ll go and leave you men to your kittens.”

He rolled his eyes and drawled with a grimace, “Thank you.”

She paused in the doorway to look back at him. “Chesney isn’t completely right, you know,” she said, almost as an afterthought, “about leaving a cat to climb down on its own. Oh, usually they get down just fine.” A knowing but melancholy smile pulled faintly at the corners of her mouth. They both knew she wasn’t speaking of cats. “But sometimes they need help.”

With a lingering glance at him, as if she still hoped he would stop her from leaving and share everything about that night, she disappeared into the hallway. Moments later, he heard her voice rising sweetly as she joined Clara in song.

With a fierce curse, he tossed back the glass of whiskey in a harsh, gasping swallow.

Damn that woman, with her prodding and pressing! She didn’t understand the first thing about what he’d gone through, how it ate at him even now. How he’d never be able to purge from his mind the sight of his father falling from his horse, striking his head, then lying so still as a puddle of blood seeped onto the cobblestones beneath him. How every time one of his family mentioned Richard Carlisle it felt as if that night had happened all over again.

He didn’t need her platitudes and that nonsense about unburdening himself by sharing his grief—for Christ’s sake! She didn’t kill her mother, and he wasn’t some helpless cat stuck up a tree.

Robert had killed him as surely as if he’d pulled the trigger himself. And he was in hell.

CHAPTER EIGHT

One Very Long Week Later

Robert sank heavily into the leather chair in front of the fire at White’s. He heaved out a sigh as he let his head fall back, but the knotted frustration inside him didn’t ease away.

The past three days spent escorting the ladies across London had been excruciating. He’d managed to sneak away this afternoon only by claiming that he had an important appointment at the club, then sending a message to his cousin Ross to meet him here so that he wouldn’t technically be lying to his mother.

As if having to escort Mariah to his sister’s tea hadn’t been bad enough, the week had only grown worse from there. Daily afternoon drives with her through the park in the barouche. Breakfast with Lady Sydney Reed. Dinner with the Duke and Duchess of Chatham and thirty of their closest acquaintances. A morning call on Lady Elizabeth Mullins and her aunt, Lady Agnes Sinclair, where Robert learned firsthand that the stories about her whiskey-drenched tea were indeed true. Lunch with Mrs. Peterson and her niece Iphigenia Dunwoody, a very near-sighted, very nice—and oddly colorless—girl, for whom Mrs. Peterson clearly had designs on him, much to his terror and to Mariah’s delight.

Today, though, had been the last straw.

An entire morning spent shopping on Bond Street. Good Lord. If he had to see one more display of shoes and parasols, he would go mad. He couldn’t even sneak away for ten minutes’ peace into the bookseller’s to study Peveril of the Peak, the new novel by Walter Scott, without his mother sending the footman to fetch him back to the milliner’s so he could give his opinion on several bonnets the two women couldn’t decide between on their own, only for them to reject outright every choice he made.

That was when he sent the message to Ross and dared to make his escape. And he hadn’t looked back.

“Cognac,” he called out to the attendant.

“Good God, you look awful.” Ross Carlisle, Earl of Spalding, sank into the chair opposite him. “Bring the whole bottle,” he ordered the attendant, with an amused gleam in his eyes at his cousin’s expense. “This could turn into a wake.”

“Very funny,” Robert muttered.

Kicking his long legs out in front of him, Ross sent him a slow grin.

“Mock me all you want, but I needed you to save my life.” He shot Ross a pointed look. “And you still owed me for saving yours that day in York.”

“You mean from the Scot?” His sandy-colored brow jutted into the air, his blue eyes sparkling. Although the Spalding side of the family had darker features than the Trent side, they all possessed the same blue eyes. And the same penchant for stirring up trouble. “I would have been just fine on my own.”

“He was coming after you with a claymore—”

“That had last been used at Culloden,” Ross interjected.

“That was still sharp enough to chop through your door—”

“That he could barely lift to swing—”

“Enough to have you backed against the wall and sending up a prayer.”

Ross grinned. That same charming smile that had broken a string of hearts across the continent, including those of two princesses, if rumors could be believed. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have made that comment about kilts and sheep.”