Page 57 of My Hellion, My Heart
“I know what you said at the waterfall, about what it is you want.” Her blush intensified as she drew a ragged breath, her free hand fluttering to grasp her middle. “But you’ve also made it clear that there can be no future between us, and I don’t want to lose you. As a friend.” Irina stalled, going quiet for a long moment as if pondering her thoughts. “You asked me what I want. Well, I want something more for you, Henry. I want you to find love.” Her throat bobbed. “And you have a chance at that with Lady Carmichael. She loves you very much, you must know that.”
The statement left him slightly stunned. “Love?”
“Yes, love. She could make you happy.”
Henry understood her words but still somehowdidn’t. She wanted him to be happy?
“I am happy,” he said, frowning.
“You’re confusing pleasure with happiness,” she said, setting down her playing stick on the felt and moving toward the large windows lining the opposite wall.
Pleasureishappiness, he wanted to tell her, but the air had cooled between them, and Henry knew the moment was gone.As it should be.
He watched her at the windows, her face in thoughtful profile. She did not turn back toward him.
“I will leave you be,” he said after a while, repeating the same words she had said to him when he’d first refused to play billiards and she had turned to go. He’d jumped at the chance to keep her in the room. With him. He paused a moment, waiting for her to do the same now. When she remained at the windows, looking into the darkness, Henry nodded to himself in understanding. She wanted him to go.
He left the room, closing the door behind him. The footman who had been standing just outside the door, he noticed, had gone. Henry turned right and started down the long corridor in the direction of Worthington Abbey’s grand foyer. The walls were a rich and glossy mahogany with carved stone pillars arching overhead. It reminded Henry of a church, and as he passed underneath each one, he felt the increasing urge to apologize.
Irina wanted him to love and to be happy, and she’d turned away from him as if weighted down with sadness. As if she knew he would not be able to find those two things with her.You are marrying Rose and should find them with her,he told himself as he turned a corner and saw the foyer ahead. Strangely enough, it was Irina’s voice he heard in his head saying this. And it was his own voice that responded with:no, I won’t.
He did love Rose. He adored her, but it was as a brother. He would enjoy her companionship. They would be friends as they had always been. They shared a love for John and memories of him, but they would not share romantic love themselves.
Rose knew it, too. And like Irina, she’d urged Henry to search out happiness.
He stopped walking and stood still within the quiet corridor. The manor was so big and vast, he could not hear anything through the walls or ceilings surrounding him. Somewhere in the upper floors, Hawk and Lady Bradburne were tending to their children. Perhaps getting ready for bed themselves. Hawk adored his wife. Henry saw it in every gesture the man made when she was present. He’d change from surly and serious to teasing and relaxed. He’d becomehappy.
And that was what Irina wanted for him. More than pleasure, more than self-serving lust, she wanted him to be able to sit back and simply becontent.
Henry turned around, and without thinking of doing anything more than thanking Irina and telling her he understood what she’d meant to say, started back for the billiards room. He’d been inside Worthington Abbey in the past, but the foyer was so grand, it was often the focal point of every ball. He’d never been in the deeper reaches of the castle before this evening. The mahogany corridor with its stone arches stretched onward and onward, until far, far down there was what appeared to be an arched window of stained glass. There were doors on both sides of the corridor, all matching flat panels of heavy wood. The billiards room was to the left, Henry knew that, at least. However, as he continued down the corridor, he wasn’t certain which door it was exactly.
He stopped at one closed door, believing it was most likely the one, and grasped the knob. The moment he opened the door and stepped inside, he realized he’d been wrong. There was a little bit of light in the room, from a fire in a hearth, but there was no billiards table. And while there were large windows like the one Irina had been standing at, they were draped.
Henry was about to duck back out when a loud rustling sound stopped him. The room wasn’t empty. Two figures were standing up from one enormous chair that had been pulled in front of the flames of the fireplace. That they were both men was the first shot of information through Henry’s mind. That they were both hastily readjusting their clothing was the second.
And though the lighting was low, the shadows of the room heavy, Henry quickly discerned their identities.
“Lord Remi,” he said, his eyes then cutting to the footman who had disappeared from the corridor outside the billiards room.
Irina’s friend took a handful of steps away from the footman, who was fumbling with the front of his trousers.
“Langlevit,” Remi said as he smoothed his cravat and then ran a palm through his hair. “Still skulking about, I see. I must say your timing is impeccable.” His sarcasm was not lost on Henry.
The footman finished with his trousers and grabbed his livery jacket before rushing from the room, though not by Henry, still within the doorway. He took a back door, no doubt to a servant hallway.
“Henry?”
Irina’s voice behind him startled him, and he turned quickly, knocking his elbow upon the doorjamb.
“What are you doing?” she asked, attempting to peer inside the room. He didn’t know why he did it, but Henry quickly closed the door, shepherding Irina back into the corridor.
“Wrong room,” he said, grasping for an excuse. His urge to apologize and thank her for her honesty had become tangled with preventing her from discovering Lord Remi, half undressed and caught in an obvious tryst, in the private home of her sister’s in-laws, no less.
“I should not have left you alone in the billiards room,” he said. “I came back to see you to the foyer and to your carriage.”
Irina blinked a few times and frowned, as if she didn’t believe him. Or perhaps she did and was disappointed.
As they walked to the front of the abbey in silence and then summoned their individual carriages, Henry wondered at Lord Remi’s unabashed reaction to being discovered. He’s a smug bastard, he thought. And good at covering the truth. The spy Henry had contacted in Paris to dig up information on Remi had written nothing about his preferences. Was it just men, then? Or women and men both?
