Page 35 of Vanquished By A Viscount
“And that news will not come about if they are sleeping in separate beds,” Charlie agreed.
Gray had no idea how wise or right the idea that popped into his head was, but he said, “We must do whatever we can to bring the two of them together in the coming days so that they might resolve their differences and get on with things.”
Charlie stood stock still, then blinked, then laughed.
“What?” Gray demanded with a frown. “Why laugh at that?”
Charlie continued laughing for a moment before saying, “Do you suppose Barbara and Robert said the same thing about us?”
Gray felt something tug at his gut. Part of him wanted to laugh along with Charlie, but the rest of him was indignant and bothered…and hopeful at the thought.
“Never mind the two of us,” he said, shaking his head and gesturing as if to sweep the idea away. “It is Robert and Barbara we must think of now.”
“Of course it is,” Charlie said, eyes still flashing with mirth. “And yes, we must do what we can to help them.”
“Good,” Gray said, hesitated, then finished with, “I am glad we are in agreement.”
“We are,” Charlie said, still amused about something. He stepped the rest of the way into his room and began shutting the door. “Good night, Grayson,” he said.
“Good night, Charlie,” Gray said in return before retreating into his own room.
Once he had the door shut, he sagged and blew out a breath as he walked back to his bed. How cold and arrogant did a man have to be to make him feel…to make him feel as though he were a young man of twenty, reveling in his first taste of love again.
He never should have agreed to attend the house party. It was going to change everything.
Eleven
Charlie lay awake half the night contemplating the problem before him.
The problem of his awakened feelings for Grayson, that is.
He should have been racking his brain for ways to calm Barbara’s fraught nerves. He should have been plotting ways to bring his sister and her husband back together so that the two of them could resume what Charlie was certain was a perfect love match of a marriage. Barbara had talked a great deal the night before when he’d accompanied her to the gamekeeper’s cottage, but she had said very little. She had frustrated every attempt of his to delve into the heart of the matter.
Charlie sighed with impatience and rolled over in bed, pulling the covers up around his chin as he remembered the futility of asking his sister to explain why she was so miserable. She gave the excuse of the house party and the rain, but Charlie knew Barbara as well as he knew himself, perhaps better, because at the moment, he did not understand most of his own actions or feelings, and he knew she was holding something back.
He intended to continue to contemplate the puzzle of Barbara and Robert, but tugging at his bedcovers had renewed the scent of Gray all around him. That familiar musk had his blood racing and his cock twitching and begging him to seek out his lover again.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scolded himself sleepily, burrowing deeper under his covers.
Itwasridiculous. The entire bloody thing was ridiculous. He’d put Grayson aside all those years ago because he did not want to ruin his reputation, and through that, destroy Barbara’s hopes of a good marriage and a place in society. Barbara had her excellent marriage now, though, and her place in society would likely sort itself out because of her title as countess.
Why should he not renew his affair with Gray?
Because Gray hated him, he answered himself just as sleep took him. And why should he not? Charlie was well aware he had been in the wrong when their attachment ended.
The morning brought thick clouds and a pervasive sense of dampness, though the rain seemed to have exhausted itself. Charlie woke, washed, and dressed early, hoping to visit Barbara and reason with her before most of her guests awoke. He wandered downstairs, and almost immediately realized something was amiss within him.
As he left his bedchamber, he paused and stared at the door across from his. Was Gray awake yet? Had he spent a restless night thinking about the two of them and ways they might repair the damage that had been done between them? Had one spectacular tupping been enough to change Gray’s thoughts about him to something more forgiving of the past?
Charlie shook his head and forced himself to continue down the hall rather than knocking on Gray’s door, and perhaps sliding into the man’s bed to help him greet the day.
The grass and garden path on the way to the gamekeeper’s cottage was wet and heavy as Charlie trudged across in the early-morning light. The grounds of Hawthorne House seemed as out of sorts as most of its inhabitants, which did not bode well for the day. Charlie knocked on the cottage door, half expecting Barbara to either answer it with a wan face and red eyes from weeping all night or to shout at him to go away and never darken her doorstep again.
He was shocked when Barbara threw open the door and greeted him with a cheery smile and a vivacious embrace.
“Brother, I am so delighted to see you this fine morning,” she said, letting go of Charlie and pulling him into the house. “You are looking quite well.”
It was a bald-faced lie, but Charlie was too stunned by Barbara’s apparent joy to contradict her. “Did you sleep well?” he asked.
