The Rogue and I (16 page)

Sadness darkened Garret’s features. “What little pawns we were to him.”

“He told you,” Harried said, her voice breaking. “He told you I took the money and it was meant to make you think I’d left you for five hundred pounds.” She sucked in a breath. “That’s why you never came that night.”

Garret stood silently.

Harriet swallowed. “You must have thought very little of me to believe such a thing.”

“I saw a copy of the bank draft.”

“If you’d come that night, you would have found me waiting for you.”

“I did go.”

Those three words ripped out her heart anew. “What?”

Pain darkened his face. “I stood, hiding behind that copse of oaks. And all I could think was what a savvy woman you were to play both sides. It was the day I stopped being a boy.”

“All based on a lie,” she lamented.

“Yes, Harry. On a lie.”

“Then let’s not lie anymore,” she said suddenly. She couldn’t let his father win any more than fear. “I love you. I love you with all my heart. I always have. I always will.”

“I want to believe you,” he said but then he looked at Emmaline.

“Don’t,” Harriet bit out. “Don’t you dare think us a pack of liars. It is your family who has manipulated and caused pain.
Yours
. We are just poor mortals in your princely game.”

He winced. “I. . . I don’t know.”

Harriet felt her whole body collapsing as if he’d struck a deadly blow. Yet, she forced herself to stand, her shoulders back. “Then you should go.”

He didn’t.

Garret stood still. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve loved you since the day you fell out of that boat,” he said simply. “I’ve loved you every day you hurt me. I love you still.”

Tears stung Harriet’s eyes. Oh dear God. She’d longed for those words. For so, so long. But now, what a mess they were in! And there was one thing she couldn’t escape. They didn’t trust each other. They apparently never had.

Emmaline stepped forward and grabbed her arm. “Not him,” she said, her face hardening.

Harriet couldn’t bear the pain in Emmaline’s eyes. “But. . .”

“You can’t trust him,” Emmaline bit out. “He abandoned you. They’re all alike.”

The bitterness in Emmaline’s voice burned through the room.

Harriet could barely breath against her cousin’s hate. “I—“

“Ask me anything,” Garret said suddenly. “I’ll do anything to prove my love.”

“Anything?” Harriet asked. The feeling that raced through her wasn’t a pleasant one. This felt like a very dangerous game with torturous stakes. She racked her mind, trying to think of something meaningful.

“Call your brother out,” Uncle George said suddenly. “Call him out and prove to the world that my daughter is innocent.”

The silence that filled the room was heavy. So heavy it felt like stones were crushing them all down into the floor.

Garret drew in a slow breath. “You’ve made me a liar, sir. For that is the one thing I cannot do.”

Harriet choked back a sob. Why had her Uncle demanded something so outlandish? So positively ridiculous?

“Can you not censure him publicly? Call him out and then take it back?” she asked quickly.

Garret looked like he’d been sent to a deathbed. “No,” he said quietly. “I cannot call out my own brother. Duels are a serious business. Duels should never be undertaken unless one means to win.”

“I see,” she said, her throat tightening around her tears.

“Do you?” Garret asked.

The entire world stopped in that moment. Because she did see. Yes, the request had been outlandish. It had been horrible. But Garret Hart would always choose his family first. He’d eagerly believed the worst about her from his father. He’d not even asked her about it before casting her aside all those years ago. He’d simply abandoned her.

As Emmaline claimed.

She frowned. “You and Edward are alike,” she said.

Garret blinked. “Edward is a good man, so I must take that as a compliment.”

“No,” she replied. “Edward is a coward.”

Garret gave a simple nod. “I think, madam, all has been said that needs saying.”

“No, sir,” Harriet declared. “You have called yourself a liar. So, I can trust nothing you say. You don’t love me. Do you?”

Garret looked around the room then finally brought his hard gaze back to hers. “You and I are beyond convincing Harry. Nothing either of us says will win the day. We believe the worst about each other too easily. So. . . I bid you all adieu. I am sorry for it though.”

Sorry
, she wanted to scream as he turned and strode out the door.
Sorry?
She’d let him rip her heart out
again
and he was
sorry
?

“What a fool I am!” she shouted, loud enough she hoped he heard as he left their company for good.

Harry turned on her cousin and uncle, grabbed the brandy bottle then stormed from the room.

Happiness had always been natural to her. . . But at this particular moment, Harry felt certain that she would never know happiness again.

Chapter 17

“You’re well rid of her.”

Garret gripped the crystal snifter and suddenly wished that he had agreed to Harriet’s uncle’s mad request. At this particular moment, he longed to shoot his brother.

Edward was drunk. The boy was swilling brandy from the bottle and eying the gaming tables.

Apparently throwing his life into a bottle wasn’t enough. In the last five days, Edward had been relentlessly present at the gaming tables and had lost ten thousand pounds.

It had been interesting to watch his saintly brother sink into sin.

The one thing Edward had done was studiously avoid women. The bejeweled tarts that fed off the drunken gamers had met snarls and foul looks when they touched Edward’s shoulders.

In fact, the ladies had steered far clear of all the Hart brothers who seemed to have a poisonous effect on women.

He couldn’t shake the look on Harriet’s face as he’d left. But how the hell could she have thought he would publicly call his brother out? Family didn’t do such things. He’d already stuck his neck out by not exiting the church with his brothers.

Couldn’t she have seen that act of support on his part?

He shifted on his seat and swallowed half his glass of brandy. “Edward, if you mention Harriet one more time, I’m going to shove that bottle down your throat.”

“Look here old man,” Edward slurred slightly. “I’m only finally joining you in censure. Didn’t you insist she was Medusa? A soul sucker of men? Well, she taught Emmaline well. She nearly had me. She stole my heart but she didn’t get my soul.”

Garret gaped at Edward. Did the man hear himself? “You really saw her?”

Edward lifted his bottle and took a drink so deep and long his Adam’s apple bobbed several times. The man looked like a cannonball had landed right next to him such was the state of his shock. “She was squirming under Lord Conrade like she couldn’t get enough.”

It was hard to discount. After all, Edward and James could corroborate each other’s stories.

It didn’t improve Garret’s foul mood, knowing that he was unwilling to call out his brother, not just because they were family, but also because they seemed to be in the right.

“Women are evil creatures,” Edward intoned with great drama. “Your Harriet taught her quite well it would seem.”

“You said that already,” Garret said quietly as he curled his hands into fists. It was true. He had defamed Harriet at almost every opportunity. Now, he felt like an utter ass. Because, though ultimately he and Harriet would never trust each other. . . She hadn’t betrayed him. She’d been naive and desperate and apparently unwilling to let him know just how bad her family’s circumstances truly were.

His father, an unscrupulous and manipulative man, had known just how to maneuver her to get what he wanted.

Garret’s disentanglement from a family in trade.

They’d been little more than children, really.

“You know brother, you don’t really know what you’re talking about,” Garret bit out.

“You’ve said over and over. . .”

“Shut up, man. Shut up!” With that, Garret stood and stormed across the crowded, smoke-filled room lest he do exactly as Trent had demanded and suggest pistols at dawn.

Wouldn’t that give James apoplexy? Maybe the logical, now icy-hearted, duke deserved such a thing.

Christ, the way James had made it clear to London society that the Trents were to be shut out of all salons was brutal.

It had left Garret with a terrible taste in his mouth because he still had a prickling feeling that Miss Emmaline Trent had somehow been maligned. He didn’t see how. Not when all three of his brothers had seen her at the deed.

No. In this particular case, his instinct had to be mistaken. Emmaline Trent had to be guilty and had fooled her family as well.

Surprisingly, Miss Harriet Manning hadn’t been mentioned in the banishment.

Which left Garret with the never ceasing feeling that he might turn any corner and suddenly spot her.

Which was why he hadn’t been to a proper outing since his return to London. Hells and gaming holes were his new best friends as was Gentleman Jacksons’. He had little chance of running into her there should she decide to return to the city.

He doubted she would. By God, why would she after that week to end all weeks? The family had been ground in the dirt for God’s sake.

People in trade would never survive something like a duke publicly condemning them.

Any hope that Trent had had of an entrée into society was now dead and beyond reviving.

The whole thing made Garret feel a sort of stomach spinning nausea.

Despite the possible involvement of the young women in their own downfall, the Hart family had been very bad news indeed for Emmaline and Harriet.

He shook the thought away. He’d chosen his course. He couldn’t go about turning his coat every time he had a doubt.

“You look like hell.”

That voice. That deep, damned, booming voice.

Garret whipped around and he arched a brow. “Not dead I see.”

“The devil won’t have me, don’t you know.”

William Deveraux, fifth Earl of Carlyle, gave a wicked grin as he lifted a cheroot to his lips.

The man might give the devil himself a run for his money and Garret and the earl had been friends since their days in Eton. They’d been virtually inseparable in their young buck days when they weren’t being shot at by angry husbands or later, enemy fire.

Carlyle was renowned for his rather unsettling propensity to meet challengers on the dueling field with one simple question. “A shot in the head or a shot in the heart?”

Carlyle didn’t shoot to wound. Usually, said challengers were so shaken they’d cry off immediately. Which was a damned good idea because in ten years Carlyle had never lost a duel.

But then he’d disappeared and hadn’t been seen in two years.

“I thought you were in Africa or South America,” Garret drawled. “Or somewhere far away from Hail Britannia.”

“Oh, I was. I was.” Carlyle took a long draw on his cheroot then blew the smoke up above their heads. “But I cannot resist the inevitable pull of our motherland. Britannia really is a fine figure of a woman, after all.”

Garret snorted. “It’s damp. The food’s bad. And. .”

“And you don’t have to worry about insects the size of your head.”

“Have you been to Spitalfields?”

Carlyle rolled his eyes. “You and I both know there are far worse things than insects there.”

No. In London’s East End, there was enough to be terrified by without evening bringing vermin into consideration. “So, you hankered for all that was England?”

Carlyle nodded, his eyes scanning the crowd. “Something like that. But you? You look like you should have stayed abroad. Perhaps there’ll be another war.”

“France does like to prance about and wave its pistols,” Garret said, wondering when the next call to arms would occur.

“The frogs are always reliable for a spat,” Carlyle agreed.

Another war, to some men, would be just the thing. It would get them away and keep them busy. Professional soldiers did need to keep their profession going, after all. But truthfully, Garret was of a strong mind to sell his commission, buy a small house in the country, and go fishing every day. If he got bored he could always come up to London and get drunk with friends.

He was done seeing young men blown apart by cannon.

Garret took a long drink. “I think I’ll take my chances with London.”

“Well, the ballrooms are a battlefield of their own.” Carlyle eyed him up and down. “It seems as if you’re avoiding that particular fracas.”

“I have good reason.”

“A certain Miss Manning?”

Garret choked on his beverage. “How does everyone know about that?”

“Good God, man, did your balls just leap into your throat.” Carlyle eyed him up and down. “You sound like a girl.”

He
had
rather yelped. But he’d left Edward’s company to avoid hearing about
her
and, now, he’d run into someone who should be completely ignorant of current events given his time abroad. Yet, Carlyle’d brought up Harry within minutes of their meeting.

“Look, old boy, everyone knows just about everything in this town regarding you and the marvelous Miss Manning,” Carlyle said factually. “Especially when it’s as titillating as that story going around about your brother and Miss Trent.”

Garret scowled. “What does that have to do with Miss Manning?”

Carlyle rolled his green eyes. “You never struck me as an innocent miss out for her first airing.”

“Be careful Carlyle or I’ll pop you one.”

Carlyle gave him a cheeky wink. “Is that a promise?”

Just then a commotion broke out at the back of the room. A crowd was gathering and several men were shouting, “Fight! Fight!”

“What the devil?” Garret hissed.

A wild laugh punctured the noise.

Carlyle narrowed his eyes and let out a low growl. “From the sound of that, the Duke of Aston is back in town and he’s gotten some poor idiot to engage.”

The Duke of Aston was a legend. A wild, unhinged duke who’d taken to privateering during the war. . . because, well, he’d been bored and loathed the rules of formal combat.