When a Rogue Meets His Match - Elizabeth Hoyt Page 0,94
second Julian caught a glimpse of the laughing, quick-witted boy his brother had once been.
Then Quinn tipped the wine down his throat, emptying the glass. “What’s the other concern?”
Julian pressed his lips together. He hated to speak of it. That he, the scion of generations of aristocrats, should have this…humiliating weakness.
Quinn must’ve been in better control of his senses than Julian thought, for he said softly, “Blackmail.”
Julian nodded. He was a Greycourt. He had to face this. “If Hawthorne finds out…”
“Augustus will destroy you,” Quinn finished. He poured more wine into Julian’s glass and his own. “So the most pleasant reason for Hawthorne to follow you is our financial ruin.”
“Yes.” Julian clenched his stomach and swallowed some of the blasted wine. “The other options are worse: social annihilation or my own assassination.”
“Well, then,” Quintus said, his words hardly slurring. “It seems to me that we have no choice.”
Julian met his brother’s eyes and saw his determination mirrored there.
Quinn nodded. “We kill Hawthorne.”
* * *
It seemed like hours later that Messalina found herself in the sitting room again, with Lucretia pressing a hot dish of tea on her.
Messalina glanced up to find her sister gazing at her anxiously.
“He’ll be all right,” Lucretia was saying. “Quite all right, I’m sure. Anybody shouting like that can’t be too badly injured. And you know how men get when they’re hurt. Remember when Quintus fell from his horse when he was seventeen because he was in his cups and he made such a fuss but then wouldn’t let anyone near to help him and locked himself in his bedroom? And then it turned out he only had a twisted ankle, but he insisted on resting it on a pillow in the most annoying fashion for weeks and weeks?”
Lucretia stopped, possibly to draw breath.
Messalina looked down at her tea. It was growing cold, but she was afraid that she might very well cast up her accounts should she drink it.
There had been so much blood on Gideon’s face, and she thought the hair on the side of his head had gleamed with more blood. What if he lost consciousness? What if he was dying at this very moment from the loss of blood?
Why hadn’t he wanted her in his room? Had he come to loathe her so much because of their discord?
She must’ve made a noise—maybe a sob—for Lucretia suddenly took the dish of tea from her hands and pulled her into a tight hug.
“It’s all right,” Lucretia whispered. “He’ll be all right, I promise, Messalina. I promise.”
“I thought you didn’t like him,” Messalina gasped.
“I don’t,” Lucretia murmured. “But you do.”
It was usually Messalina, as the older sister, who gave comfort. Messalina buried her face in her sister’s shoulder and inhaled the scent of violets—wild and free, a perfume that perfectly matched Lucretia’s spirit and exuberantly loving nature.
The door to the sitting room opened, and Mr. Blackwell came in quietly.
Messalina hastily sat up, blotting her face with a handkerchief. “How is he?”
“Better.” He gestured to a chair by them. “With your permission?”
Messalina nodded. “Please.”
He sat, his face grave. “The shoulder was dislocated, but the doctor has been able to set it again.” He winced. “A rather painful process, I’m afraid.”
Messalina gulped. She’d once seen a groom’s arm dislocated. They’d been with a picnic party, several miles from home, and the decision had been made to set the arm there and then.
The groom had screamed as if he were being tortured. She grew faint thinking of the shouts they’d heard earlier from above.
“Is he awake?” She felt helpless, having to beg the information from another when it was her own husband hurt.
Were they really husband and wife in anything but name anymore?
“When I left him, he was,” Mr. Blackwell replied. “But I believe the doctor wanted to dose him with something to make him sleep. Gideon didn’t like the idea.”
Lucretia muttered something about males, sickrooms, and bad patients.
Messalina ignored her. “Did…did he ask about me?”
The pitying expression on Mr. Blackwell’s face made her immediately regret the question. “No. I’m sorry, Mrs. Hawthorne. He was in a great deal of pain, you understand. The doctor thought he might have broken ribs, and there was a cut upon his head that needed to be sewn shut.”
“I see.” Messalina looked down at her clasped hands.
The gilded clock on the mantel chimed the hour, and Messalina was surprised to find it wasn’t yet dinnertime.
Only an hour had elapsed since Gideon had been brought home.