A Portrait of Love (The Academy of Love #3) - Minerva Spencer Page 0,91
a woman he already cared a great deal for. Who knew, maybe love would come someday, or at least happiness and contentment, since he no longer believed in the calf love that had once sustained him.
Fortified by that thought, Simon set down his glass, took a step toward his only brother, and smiled, “Look here, Wyndham, I don’t want to keep—”
“Arabella MacLeish has returned to live at her father’s house.”
Nobody had said her name for so long that it took Simon a moment to absorb his brother’s words. And then there was the issue of the name—MacLeish. He had continued to think of her—on those occasions she stole into his well-guarded mind—as Bella Frampton.
Simon took his glass back to the console and sloshed more alcohol into it, so distracted was he that it almost overflowed. When he tried to pick it up, amber liquid sloshed over the rim onto his hand.
He put the glass down but did not turn. “She has come for a visit with her family?”
“She has come back here to live; she is a widow, Simon.”
Simon laughed—a frightening sound that should not have originated in his body. He was still laughing when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“How long?” Simon asked, not needing to explain what he meant.
“You are married now, Simon,” his brother said in an uncharacteristically gentle voice. “Happily married and—”
Simon violently shrugged away the duke’s hand and spun. “How. Long.”
Wyndham’s jaw worked, but he didn’t speak.
Simon could only gape in horrified wonder. “You knew she was widowed and kept it from me.” He grabbed his brother’s coat lapels and rammed him back into the wall, knocking against the console and sending glasses and decanters crashing to the floor.
“Goddammit, Wyndham! How bloody long have you known?”
“Six months.”
Another bark of half-mad laughter broke from him before he could catch it. “You could have told me this months ago?”
“You might have learned of it yourself if you’d actually behaved like a man instead of an angry child. You’ve been back almost two years and have refused to socialize with our neighbors and friends. And for twelve years before that you never paid us one visit.” Wyndham shoved his face close to Simon’s. “All those years you stayed away. You didn’t just punish me—you punished our mother. And then, after you finally do return, you go straight from the sickbed to The George and proceeded to drink yourself blind.”
“You could have told me this six months ago.”
“Good God! She is no good, Simon.” It was the closest the Duke of Plimpton had ever come to yelling.
Simon watched in morbid fascination as the muscles of his brother’s face rippled with the force of his emotions.
He stared at Simon with an openly beseeching look. “You need to believe that much: Arabella bloody Frampton was never any good.”
This time, when Simon swung his fist, the duke caught his wrist, holding Simon’s arm in a granite-hard grasp. “No. I will not take any more abuse from you.” Wyndham’s hair was mussed, but his voice and face were utterly bland, as if the emotional episode of a few seconds earlier had never happened.
Simon wrenched his arm from his grasp. “Get the hell out of my house.” He stalked to the door and flung it open. “Get out and never, ever come here again. Do you hear me? I’ve tolerated you as long as I had to, and now I don’t ever want to see you again.”
The duke did not move.
“Fine,” Simon shouted, “I’ll leave. But you’d better be bloody gone when I come down for dinner or I’ll kick you down the goddamned steps, myself.”
Chapter Thirty
Honey ate her first dinner at Everley in the big dining room, alone.
She’d taken her time bathing and dressing and had waited for Simon. And then waited. And waited.
It had been full dark when she’d finally given up and come downstairs. Only to learn that her husband had sent word he was indisposed and not to be disturbed, and that Honey should dine alone.
She’d wanted nothing more than to go to his chamber and demand an explanation, but the silent, judging eyes of a half-dozen servants had forced her to take her seat and behave as if she’d already known of his indisposition.
She made her way through three courses with a dozen dishes each, every mouthful tasting like sawdust.
Finally, when the dessert tray came in, she waved it aside. “Please give my compliments to the cook, but I have had a long day and wish to retire.”