Page 10 of Vanquished By A Viscount
Frustratingly, Pettigrew answered Gray’s statement with a sympathetic look. “It was while you were at university together, was it not?” he asked.
“When I was green and ignorant,” Gray snapped. “I learned more than just the classics and the law back then. I learned that some people cannot be trusted and that only a fool gives his heart away to a villain.”
Pettigrew hummed as if he understood more than Gray wanted to let on. He glanced past Gray to the ladies, and because they were engaged, he said in a quiet voice, “First love can be the sweetest in the moment and the bitterest when it ends.”
Being met with kindness when Gray wanted nothing other than to be righteously angry hung like lead on Gray’s shoulders. It left him feeling as though he did not know what to do with himself or the emotions that swirled within him.
He was spared from having to justify himself as Lady Eudora broke away from her conversation with Barbara and the others and sped her way over to Pettigrew.
“And now, dear doctor,” she said, batting her eyelashes coquettishly at Pettigrew, “could you examine my ankle? I am in such desperate need of a doctor’s touch.”
The suddenness and clumsiness of the woman’s comment caused Gray to burst into a fit of coughing. He would have laughed outright if he hadn’t been so stuck in his anger toward Charlie.
“Er,” Pettigrew mumbled, eyes as wide as if he were faced with a rampant tiger. “If you will excuse me, Lady Eudora, I have promised to help Mr. Hawthorne here with his cough.”
Gray coughed a few more times for Pettigrew’s sake, though his sounds were more like laughter by the moment. He let Pettigrew lead him away, though, which was all the man needed.
“I have no idea what I’ll do if the entire party is to continue like this,” Pettigrew said with a wary expression as they disappeared from the ladies’ sight.
Gray lost his smile. He could say the same for himself where Charlie was concerned.
Three
There was only so much Charlie could do to assist Hawthorne House’s footmen in unpacking his clothing and belongings and storing them safely in the wardrobe and dressing room of the suite he’d been assigned to. Olivier would arrive in a few days, and his valet knew far more about the care and handling of clothing than Charlie did. The least Charlie could say was that he knew how to dress himself in a pinch.
He did exactly that once the footmen had gone, after availing himself of a thorough sponge bath and exchanging his travel-worn suit for something more suitable for company. Once he had the last button fastened and his neckcloth tied, however, he paused to look out the window with a heavy sigh.
Coming to Hawthorne House had been a terrible idea. He could feel that already. He knew his presence was required as Barbara’s only family, but in the space of the two hours since he’d stepped down from the carriage, he’d already had two unpleasant encounters with Gray. He could still feel the intensity of Gray’s fiery blue eyes boring into him with accusatory venom.
It had been the same at Christmas. Charlie sank into a chair that had been conveniently placed by one of the windows that afforded a magnificent view of the countryside to the east of thehouse. While he and Gray had managed mostly to avoid each other at Christmas, the few times when they’d been forced to be in each other’s company had been just as stilted and angry as the two passes they’d just taken at each other.
Charlie hated it. He resented Grayson’s extreme prejudice against him. But more than that, he despised the man, no, the boy he’d been seven years ago for taking what he’d thought would be the easy way out of the only romantic relationship in his life that had truly mattered. Just because he’d been a young fool at Cambridge did not give Gray the right to treat him as if he were a leprous dragon now, however.
After five more minutes of staring blankly out the window while rehashing the past in his mind, Charlie sighed aloud, “You cannot sit here all summer, wallowing in resentment.”
He pushed himself out of the chair and turned to start toward the bedchamber door, but halfway across the room, it was as if his feet were encased in stone. Every step was difficult and painful. He did not want to face Gray again. He wanted nothing at all to do with the maelstrom of feelings that yanked him this way and that, like a ship tossed in a storm. He did not even wish to hate Gray the way Gray clearly hated him. He wanted to feel nothing at all.
He made it to the door and grasped the handle, but paused, shoulders stooped. Nothing would go well if he left his room and went downstairs to join the others for luncheon. He was opening himself to misery and ridicule of every kind. But Barbara needed him, and Charlie would have paddled to South America on a rotted log if his sister asked him to.
He stood straighter, braced himself, then threw open the door and stepped into the hall.
It was a bit anticlimactic that the hallway was empty and the only sounds in that part of the house were the distant clattering of servants going about their business and the extremely faintsound of Barbara’s guests laughing that wafted in through a window someone must have had open somewhere. Charlie proceeded down the hall, bracing himself for what was to come.
He was fortunate enough to come across a maid who was able to direction along the easiest route to the garden, where luncheon was being served under a marquee. It was also fortunate that more than a dozen people were already congregated in the garden, enjoying a variety of small treats as they sat in several groups and bunches.
Gray was already there. Charlie could tell by the stiffness of his old lover’s back that he’d spotted his arrival before Charlie had noted him. Gray did not turn to him with so much as a sniff of greeting, so Charlie pretended as though the man was not there at all as he made his way to the long table dressed with plates, dishes, and a bowl of punch that was being served by the same footman who had helped him with his trunks earlier.
“Charlie, here you are at last,” Barbara said, leaping up from her conversation with a group of ladies that included Lady Suzanne and Lady Carolina to rush to his side. “I was afraid that you’d taken ill or decided to lurk in your room for the entire day,” she added quietly as she grasped and hugged his arm. “We cannot have that.”
“I would never behave badly in front of your guests, my dear,” Charlie said, leaning in to kiss her cheek.
Several feet away, Grayson made a sound that could very well have been scoffing. Of course, the resentful blackguard was also ostensibly in conversation with Robert, Pettigrew, and two other men, so he could just as easily have been reacting to something one of them said.
“You must try some of these savory tarts Cook prepared,” Barbara said, loading the small plate Charlie had just taken with a few delicious-looking morsels that he had no appetite for. “Greene has worked at Hawthorne House since she was akitchen maid. The late Lord Felcourt sent her to Paris to learn cookery especially, and I think that she is as talented as any master chef on the Continent.”
“I am certain she is,” Charlie said with a tight smile, allowing Barbara to mother him by loading his plate.
“I was just telling Lady Winifred about your railroad endeavors and she is most interested in hearing more,” Barbara went on, tugging Charlie toward one of the arrangements of chairs once his plate was filled. “There has been so much speculation about railroads of late, and I am certain you will have much to add to the conversation.”
