Alex managed to get the duchess’s gig home before the downpour. He could only imagine what Ian would have to say if he had to replace the leather interior of a ducal carriage with the proceeds of the family’s next shipment of furs from Nova Scotia. Best not to find out.
He was out of sorts, fuming at himself for being a cad, and then for handling his caddishness with such a lack of finesse. The girl had kissed him, he had kissed her back, and that should have been the end of it. He should not have drawn her against him. He should have stopped her at the first touch of her lips. She was not that drunk, and he should not have been that foolish.
Or that cruel.
After seeing to the duchess’s horses, he let himself in the kitchen entrance of the house. The cook turned from her stove brandishing a large carving knife, but when she saw it was him, she simply smiled and went back to her cooking. The young kitchen maid smiled at him too, but her smile had a bit of a different light in it. His body responded with a jolt, and he realized how aroused he still was from a simple kiss from his angel’s lips. He was not one to dally with servant girls though, that day or ever. He nodded at her for politeness’s sake and took himself upstairs to find his brother.
Mary Elizabeth found him first as he entered the first floor hallway outside the music room. He heard the lovely sound of Robert playing the fife, and knew that his brother had been at the whisky already—and it wasn’t even dinnertime yet. No doubt his brother had fallen into one of his funks from being too long in the south.
“Did you do something to annoy Catherine?” Mary Elizabeth asked, barring his passage into the room where Robert was playing and no doubt drinking.
“No doubt I did,” Alex answered. “Why is that any business of yours?”
Mary Elizabeth glared at him. “Alex, she’s my only friend in this benighted city, and I won’t have you deviling her. You’ll go and apologize first thing in the morning, or I’ll write to Mama.”
“And tell her what? That I’m deviling English girls?”
“That you’re annoying my only friend.” He saw tears in his sister’s eyes then, and he stopped being cruel. It was not her fault he was ill behaved and a rascal and a varlet. Those faults lay square at his own door. She was right. He would have to apologize again, when he and his angel were both less…overwhelmed. And after that, he would have to leave Miss Catherine Middlebrook well alone.
He took his sister’s hand gently in his. He watched as she blinked her tears away with difficulty. She hated to cry, but she was a girl after all. Alone in the south, save for him and Robbie, and lost without her fishing, her hunting, and her sword. He leaned down and kissed her forehead, and this time, she blinked in surprise, her tears all but gone.
“I am sorry, Mary Elizabeth. You have my sincere apology. And Miss Middlebrook will have it as well on the morrow.”
Mary Elizabeth swallowed hard before she answered. She was not one to hold a grudge. “All right then, Alex. But don’t forget. Catherine is important to me.”
“I promise you. I won’t forget.”
As if he could forget her. If Catherine Middlebrook slipped from his mind like an outgoing fog, his life would be the simple, straightforward place it had been less than a week ago—when right was right, left was left, women were for fun alone, and whisky was for drinking. Now, very little made sense. But he did not have to take his own angst out on his little sister.
He kissed her forehead again, as he had when she was small, and sent her upstairs to change for dinner.
“I don’t need to change, Alex. This gown is perfectly clean.”
“It’s not about clean down here among the English, Mary. It’s about what’s fashionable. It was fashionable to go to Gunter’s, and it is fashionable to change for dinner. So that’s what we’ll do.”
She turned to go, but before she headed to her second floor bedroom, she said, “Alex, I am sorry I gave Catherine a tot. Was she ill when you took her home?”
“No, don’t trouble yourself over it.” Before she left, he raised a finger at her in warning. “But don’t ever do such a thing again. English girls can’t handle Scotch whisky.”
“Not even the smooth stuff from Islay?”
“Not even that.”
Mary Elizabeth sighed and nodded and went on upstairs. Alex did not realize until she was gone that she had not promised anything.
He had more to worry about than his sister. He opened the music room door and found Robbie with his fife in his hand.
The music had stopped and his brother sat brooding, a glass of whisky at his elbow.
“What’s her name?” Alex asked, a half smile on his face.
Robbie laughed out loud at that, his usual good humor showing through his rare malaise. “God forbid! I’m not sick with love. I’m sick for home. When are we leaving again, Alex?”
“Tired of the ducal palace that surrounds you already?”
“I’m tired of London, and London dirt, and London coal smoke, and London people.”
Alex poured himself two fingers of Islay whisky, the only stuff they drank. “That’s quite a list. Anything else?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
Alexander raised one dark brow and Robert sighed. “The food’s not so good here.”
“Don’t let the cook hear you say that.”
“Oh, she’s a good sort, and at least what she makes tastes like something, but every time we eat outside this house, I find I want my mother’s bannock, and a slice of decent rye.”
“So it’s home-cooked bread you’re after.”
“Don’t joke, Alex, this is serious. When can we leave?”
“You know the answer as well as I, Robbie. The day our sister is wedded and bedded to a decent man.”
Robert’s mouth quirked in a grin. “Only decent? Can’t the poor lass hope for a good man?”
“We’re among the English, Robbie, don’t forget.”
His brother laughed out loud at that, as he meant him to. Alex did not join in. He downed his whisky in one gulp and went to pour himself another.
“And what ails you, Brother? Drinking before dinner, and not a head cold or a whore in sight.”
“I wanted to go to a whore yesterday,” Alex confessed. “I wanted to. I just couldn’t.”
“Oh, Holy Mary, full of Grace, as Mama would say. What’s this, then? Have you lost your keen edge?”
Alexander glowered as his brother laughed at him. When Robbie saw he meant business, he stopped laughing.
“It’s worse than that, is it? Though God alone knows what could be worse than that. What the hell’s the matter with you?”
His brother’s thickening brogue brought Alexander a little comfort. It reminded him of his brother Ian, of his father, of the smell of salt on the open sea, of the taste of clean burn water down from the mountains. It reminded him of home.
When Alex didn’t answer, his brother asked, “What’s her name?”
Alexander did not dissemble or try to hide his foolishness. He and Robbie were one year apart. They had lived together, fought together, chased women together all their lives. His brother knew him so well that he had only to read his face to know when something was wrong with him. And something was wrong with him now.
“Her name is Catherine Middlebrook.”
Robbie smiled. “That sweet-faced girl from Devon? Mary Elizabeth’s friend?”
“That’s the one.”
“Hmmm.” Robert contemplated the last of his whisky, then set it aside. “She’s a bit young for my taste, mind, a bit grassy green, you might say.”
Alexander felt his temper rising like a flash tide, and he caught it before it exploded, but barely. “She is a beautiful girl with everything to recommend her. A good girl, a sweet girl who deserves better than the likes of me, God help her.”
Robert examined his brother carefully, but he did not hesitate to say what he was thinking. “She’s as poor as a church mouse. I think her sister said she sews her own clothes.”
“And what of it? No girl can help what money her father left her, or the lack of it.”
Robert squinted at him, becoming even more cautious, watching him as he might watch a ravening beast on a rampage. “True enough, true enough. And you like her well enough to take her from her home, to bring her to the Highlands, to let Mother look after her for the rest of her life among the ice and the heather?”
Alexander knew that despite his brother’s glib tone, he was bringing forth real objections. Their mother was English, but she was not a fan of English girls for her sons. She had told them under the strictest terms that they were not to marry themselves off while down south, that she would beat them herself if they did so.
Not that Alexander waited on his mother’s opinion in the matter of the fairer sex. He never had and he never would. But he did listen to his brother.
He was listening to him now.
“I am a damned fool,” was all Alex said.
Robert grinned and Alexander felt his heart lighten a little. One reason he loved Robbie was that he kept him from being so serious about every single thing on God’s good, green earth.
“Well, if you’re thinking of marriage, and marriage to an English girl, you’ve gone a bit mad, that’s certain. But you look pretty calm for a madman. Perhaps you’re not in love with her after all.”
“I have no idea.”
It was Robert’s turn to raise a brow. “Really? Well, that’s the first order of business, isn’t it? Before you can do anything else, you’ll have to decide. Do you love her, or not?”