Page 23 of The Moonstone Marquess
“Send my regards to Lady Seline when you next see her. The respect, or should I say the lack of respect, is mutual.”
He walked out of the room, hoping they would not now destroy his parlor in their fit of pique.
“James, James,” he muttered. “We’ve gone about healing your brother entirely wrong.”
Part of the deathbed promise made to his friend was to help his brother lose his innocence. Richard, despite being of a manly age, did not have any experience with women and had come to Westgate Hall innocent as a lamb.
This week’s house party was to serve a dual purpose. First, it was to make a man of Richard in the carnal sense, because that was the most easily accomplished. The second task was to turn Richard into a worthy earl and leader of men.
But Cormac had botched this deathbed promise from the start by giving Richard the choice of friends to bring with him to Westgate Hall.
Obviously, the man had chosen badly. How would he ever heal while in the company of friends like these? They were all users who held no particular fondness or loyalty toward him or each other.
Richard, now the new Earl of Crawford, was a sensitive man and thought these people actually cared for him when they were no more than bloodsucking leeches.
Cormac went upstairs to talk to him. Richard was in his early twenties. Cormac himself was only a few years older, not yet near thirty. But his years of battle and life experiences put them decades apart.
The drapes were drawn, leaving the room pitched in darkness as he entered. “Cormac, is that you?”
“Yes, I came to look in on you.” It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the somber lack of light.
“Well, I managed to dress. But that’s about all I have accomplished today.”
Cormac tried not to lose his patience.
His valet must have dressed Richard, who’d immediately afterward fallen atop his bed and remained stretched atop the counterpane, bemoaning his fate.
Cormac dismissed the footman attending him. “Come back in fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
Now left alone with the fellow, Cormac crossed to the window and drew the drapes aside to allow afternoon sunlight to filter into the room. “Richard, have you noticed the view from your bedchamber. It is spectacular, is it not?”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Richard replied with a shrug. “Who cares about the view? My brother is dead, and I am to blame.”
“Stop thinking like that. You did not force him to do anything he did not wish to do. The war is to blame, not you. If anyone is to be held responsible, it is Napoleon. He is the villain, not you.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“You can and must. I know you are grieving, and I understand it is important for you to do so. James was a dear friend of mine. I miss him too. But I also know he had free will and made his own choices. He would be terribly overset to know you blamed yourself for something that was entirely his choice.”
“He only chose to become a soldier because he knew I did not have it in me.”
“He could have bought you out of your commission and paid someone else to take your place. But he did not do this because he wanted to join the battle.” Cormac glanced at his arm. “Look at me, Richard. I made the same choice as your brother and lost an arm for it.”
“But you survived.”
“Hardly,” he muttered, for Cormac would not call what he had been through over the last three years much of a survival. “You did your best to nurse him back to health, just as my brother did for me. His body simply was not strong enough to recover from his war wounds.”
“Why are you absolving me of the responsibility? He was the heir. I was the one who should have gone to fight, not him.”
He was tired of talking in circles with this pampered lord.
In truth, he wanted to haul him out of bed and beat sense into him.
Grow up.
Punch.
