Page 8 of The Insufferable Duke
“Enough, Percy!” Christopher barked and reached for his brother, clasping him so firmly on the shoulder that Robert nearly fell off the wall.
“Good Lord, are you trying to make my heart stop beating?” Robert scrambled to keep himself on the wall.
“Tell me it’s not true?” Christopher pleaded. Robert climbed down from the wall and walked away across the garden. Christopher followed, his pace never breaking. “Tell me everything I just heard in there was a lie. You were not caught in the garden with a Carter. Tell me it is not true.”
“She has a Christian name, you know?” Robert said, offhandedly. “Her name is Julia.”
“Julia?Julia!?Not evenLadyJulia anymore?”Christopher raged, following his brother with such haste that Robert actually began to run down one of the pine tree avenues. “You come back here!”
“You keep acting like this, and you’ll be the one with heart problems.” Percival pulled on his arm.
“Enough.” Christopher tore his arm out of his cousin’s grasp. “Percy, if you wish to be of use, then please, go back to the ballroom. Do what damage control you can and say the ladies were mistaken in what they saw outside.”
“As you wish. What are you going to do?” Percy asked, calling after Christopher as he ran after his brother. “Don’t kill him, for God’s sake!” he jested.
“Well, I don’t want witnesses, so go!” His wryness didn’t even bring a laugh from his cousin this time.
Christopher caught up with his brother in a clearing with a marble bench. Robert was repeatedly circling the bench, pulling at his cravat until it hung loose at his throat, completely undone.
“You can’t tell me it’s untrue then?” Christopher asked, panting as he came to a stop in the clearing. Robert looked at him, his dark eyes appearing black in the night, then he turned away again. “God’s blood, it’s true.”
“It’s true,” Robert said eventually, turning his back completely on Christopher.
“God, I wish I’d wake from this nightmare. Percival is right in one regard — you can recover from the scandal. We’ll just have to give it time.” Christopher tried to calm himself and stepped toward his brother. “Thetonalready talks about our family, so it may take a while for them to stop talking of you, but you can survive this. Lady Julia cannot, but you can.”
“Brother, you don’t understand.” Robert turned toward him, and those dark eyes flashed with as much anger as Christopher felt. “I can’t let Julia fall. I will not let it happen.”
What does he mean by that?
* * *
Helena closed the garden room door sharply, trying to shut out the angry words from the adjoining room. The muffled noises continued, and she turned to face her sister with a heavy sigh.
“They hate me, don’t they?” Julia said tearfully, raising her hands and wiping her tears with the backs of her wrists.
“Of course, they do not.” Yet Helena stopped speaking abruptly as the shouts grew worse. If there was a second door to close, she would have shut it, desperate to keep her sister safe from those angry shouts.
In the next room, her mother and father, Anna and Benjamin, were discussing the incident with her aunt and uncle, Kitty and Gibbs. Since the sun had risen, there had been no other topic of conversation.
“Oh, Julia.” Helena leaned back, tapping her head on the closed door behind her. “I wish I knew why this had happened.”
“Do you need to ask?” Julia’s breath hitched. She met Helena’s gaze, those large blue eyes watery.
“You were charmed by a Moore.” Helena hastened across the room, her feet moving so quickly beneath her that she was in danger of falling over. Julia shifted her weight in the wicker chair, fidgeting restlessly, but she said nothing for a minute. “You know they are not trustworthy. How many times have we heard it? He lured you into a trap. A trap!”
“That is not Robert.” Her sudden words took the wind out of Helena. She tipped back into a chair some distance from her sister.
“Robert…”Helena repeated the word, noticing that Julia did not use his title. When Julia blushed the color of claret, Helena raised her hands, covering her face in realization. “God’s wounds, Julia, for how long have you and Lord Robert been sneaking off into gardens.”
“It is not like that, but if you wish to know how long he and I have been close, then I will tell you it is for some time. Since my debut.”
“Oh!” Helena stood to her feet and marched around the room with her hands on her hips, hoping somehow the pacing would calm her blood though it did little. “Your debut was a year ago.”
“And we have grown closer ever since. He is a good man,” Julia spoke with passion. “At my debut, he saved me from the unwanted attention of another suitor. I saw at once he was kind.”
“Kind!?”
“Yes, kind,” Julia matched her sister’s loud tone though her voice trembled. “You may hate the Moores if you wish to, for an injury that was caused almost a century ago, but I could not hate Robert for what his great-grandfather did. That has nothing to do with him.” She shrugged, helplessly. “You know that to be true as well as I do.”
