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.He entered the office.Guilford stood over by the sideboard, pouring a glass of brandy.He glanced up, with a half-smile for Jasper.“So good to see you, Bainbridge,” he said over the rim of his glass.“I hope you don’t mind, I availed myself to your spirits.” Pause.“You look like hell.”Jasper grinned, and Guilford choked on his brandy.“By God, did you just smile?”Jasper’s smile widened, and he crossed over to his desk.He sat, hip propped on the edge, arms folded over his chest.“I did.”Guilford shook his head and took another sip.He gestured to Jasper’s decanters.“A drink, friend?”Jasper chuckled at his friend’s comfortable show as host in Jasper’s own home.He waved off the offer.My father was a wastrel.He spent his days and nights at the gaming tables, and indulging in spirits, and he squandered everything not entailed.Even in the darkest days since Katherine had left when he’d craved the mindlessness of drink, he’d not indulged in spirits—not when he’d be forever tormented with thoughts of all she’d suffered because of her father’s drinking and gambling.Jasper motioned for Guilford to sit.“What takes you away from London?” Do you have word of my wife?Something in the hesitant way Guilford’s gaze slid from his made Jasper wish he’d not sworn off drink.Jasper straightened and claimed the seat behind his massive desk.“I’ve seen your wife,” Guilford said after he’d taken his seat, volunteering information that saved Jasper from asking the question that would expose the depth of his feelings for Katherine.Jasper steepled his hands in front of him, atop his chest to still their tremble.“Oh?” His heart raced with a desperate urgency to demand his friend spill every last word he had of Katherine.Guilford lifted one shoulder in a far too-nonchalant shrug.“She’s become the toast of the ton.”Jasper’s gut clenched.She’d always possessed a beauty that defied the mere physical type, the kind worn deep on the inside, and that emanated out like an ethereal glow that belonged to angels and the like.Guilford fished into the front of his jacket and withdrew a neatly folded newspaper.He set it down on the mahogany desktop and took a seat.Jasper’s eyes fell to the copy of The Times.“They say she’s taken a lover.”Jasper’s body jerked at the unexpectedness of Guilford’s statement.The air left him on a swift, noisy exhale.Oh, God, Guilford may as well have taken the medieval broadsword from the wall and hacked at Jasper’s heart.Jasper shook his head.Lies.All lies.It couldn’t be true.Katherine was not the kind of creature capable of deceit and treachery.She’d not betray him.She loved him.But then, you never reciprocated those feelings of love.She humbled herself before you, and you scoffed and jeered at every turn, until you drove her away.Why should she have remained faithful?“And what do you say?” His question emerged angry with all the same harsh bitterness he’d harbored deep inside since Lydia’s death.His breath froze as he waited with a kind of dreaded anticipation of Guilford’s response.Guilford frowned.“I say if you truly care, you’d get yourself to London.”Jasper growled.“Who is he?” He punished himself with the abhorrent images of Katherine’s splendidly naked body stretched out for some nameless, faceless bastard’s worship.His gut roiled, until he thought he might cast up the contents of his stomach.Guilford shifted in his seat.“The Earl of Stanhope.” He took a sip of his brandy.“You’ve been away from Society for some time.” He waved his hand.“There’s a scandal in the man’s past.He’s something of a rogue.Frowned on by Society’s most polite hostesses, sought after by Society’s most notorious widows.”And Stanhope had set his lascivious sights upon Katherine.Jasper picked up the pen on his desk and to give his fingers something to do he passed it back and forth between hands.That, or mount his horse, ride to London and use these same hands to bloody the faceless bastard senseless.No, you gave her up.You let her go, a jeering voice taunted from deep within.She’d given him her love, trusted him with her heart, and he couldn’t have been brave enough to give her the words she deserved, the words that lived inside him.“Do you believe she’s taken him as a lover?” He grimaced.Even as he said the words, he dismissed them.Katherine possessed an honor and integrity not found in most gentlemen.She would not be capable of the deceit demonstrated by his parents.Guilford lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug.“I believe Stanhope’s determined.And she’s lonely.”How could his friend be so nonchalant when Jasper hung on the edge of true madness?That response did little to ease the tumultuous storm raging through Jasper.He wanted to flip his desk, storm from the room, and hunt down the Earl of Stanhope for daring to encroach on that which was Jasper’s.“Have you,” he paused.“seen them together?”Guilford looked away a moment.“I have,” he said at last.The pen in Jasper’s hand snapped in two.“I came upon them at Hyde Park,” Guilford went on.Hyde Park belonged to Jasper and Katherine.It had been the place they’d gone in the quiet of the snow to share the Wordsworth volume.It had been the place Katherine had asked him to marry her and spoke of them having babes together with a shocking candidness.And now, it was the place she visited with the Earl of Stanhope.Guilford leaned back in his chair and hooked one ankle over the other.“What do you intend to do?”Jasper’s jaw hardened.“I’m going to London.”Stanhope and Katherine should be prepared…The Mad Duke intended to fight for his wife.~31~LondonKatherine stood with a glass of champagne between her fingers, enjoying one of the very small luxuries of being a married woman [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]