Page 58 of Vanquished By A Viscount
“She is surprisingly well,” Robert answered, his expression brightening. “She was terrified in the moment, of course, but once we were safely tucked away in our bed, she confessed that her faith in me, and in Charlie, to rescue her had never wavered.”
“Barbara is an extraordinary woman,” Gray said with a lopsided smile.
Robert hummed in agreement, then turned serious again. “She is an extraordinary woman that I nearly lost through misunderstanding and stubbornness.”
The sharpness in Robert’s eyes was as much censure as anything else.
Gray let out a heavy breath and brushed his fingers through his hair. “I’ve no idea what to do about Charlie,” he admitted quietly, knowing full well Charlie was as much the center of their discussion as Barbara. “We have made great strides in reconciling during this party.”
“Barbara will be pleased,” Robert said with a sudden smile, “considering that was her chief aim in hosting this party.”
Gray stared at his brother for a moment before shaking his head. “I should not be surprised.”
“None of us should be,” Robert chuckled. “Though I sense there is a ‘but’ in your statement.”
Gray sighed again. “I love Charlie,” he proceeded, keeping his voice down, lest anyone who did not need to hear the contents of his soul happen past. “I believe he loves me as well. But he does not trust me. The past has too tight a grip on him. We had finally reconciled, then Howard Bradford arrived. We came to an understanding again, then Charlie learned of Australia and balked once more. I cannot have him flinching every timethe waters of our attachment are stirred, or forever believing that I will be false with him or abandon him at the slightest provocation.”
Robert hummed and nodded. “Barbara tells me the man is far more sensitive than he would like others or himself to believe.”
“Yes!” Grayson shouted, then lowered his voice again. “Yes. But what can I do to assuage his fears? He will always be wary of my intentions.”
Robert frowned slightly. “And that is a reason to give up on the man and run away to Australia?”
“You know I purchased that passage long before reconciling with Charlie, at great expense, I might add,” Gray said. Guilt rose up in him all the same. Backing away now would be the coward’s way out, no matter whether he fled to Australia or the next room, but he did not have as much money as many thought, as the second son. He had already wasted a great deal of what he had on the Continent.
“Is the price of passage to Australia worth losing the man you love?” Robert asked.
Gray huffed and crossed his arms. “We are discussing an exploratory journey, not me taking orders and leaving for a missionary post in South America. Ships to Australia travel both ways.”
“All I am suggesting,” Robert said in a kinder voice, “is that you reexamine what is important to you at present.”
“Believe me, I am,” Gray said gravely, arms crossed even tighter.
“Barbara believes Charlie’s deepest pain is his lack of family,” Robert went on.
“Yes, I believe that to be true as well,” Gray agreed, glancing back at the house as if he might see Charlie’s lonely figurestanding wistfully in one of the windows, wrapped in a white shroud or some other maudlin nonsense.
Robert drew his attention back by resting a hand on his arm. “We are their family now, you realize,” he said. “Barbara is a Hawthorne now, but Charlie is, too, in a great many ways. It is our responsibility to make him feel that.”
Gray’s initial reaction to his brother’s words was prickly indignation, as though he was being told what to do. But that emotion quickly faded into something warmer and more sentimental. Charlie truly did need him, and not just as a bedmate.
The conversation was unable to continue as one of the footmen arrived, escorting a man from the nearby village who Gray recognized as a carpenter. He left Robert with the man and headed back to the house to search for Charlie.
Charlie was not the one he found, however.
“Grayson. There you are,” Howard greeted him with a wide smile as their paths crossed in the large front hall. “I was wondering where you’d gone off to. Australia, perhaps?” He chuckled as if Gray would share the joke.
“I went to look at the cottage’s remains with my brother,” Gray answered without any trace of humor. Odd though it felt, he was not in the mood for Howard’s teasing sort of humor.
Howard sensed Gray’s mood right away and switched to a more sympathetic sort of smile. “It is a fortunate thing that the lovely Lady Felcourt was not injured in the blaze. She was not injured, was she?”
“No, as I understand it, she is well enough this morning,” Gray answered.
“Good, good. I am glad to hear it.”
It felt even more awkward conversing with Howard as if the two of them were complete strangers than it did interactingwith the man with too much familiarity. The approach left Gray feeling as though his emotions were too close to the edge.
“Do you think that I am a false and fickle lover?” he burst out before he could stop himself.
