Читать книгу The Regency Bestsellers Collection - Bronwyn Scott - Страница 43

Three weeks later

“The left side needs to be higher,” Daisy said.

Chase put down his hammer and stepped back. Damn it, she was right. The shelf still didn’t look straight.

He fished out a key and opened the locked drawer where he kept his tools—at least a few things had to be kept safe from Rosamund—but instead of a measuring stick, his hand fell on something that crinkled beneath his fingertips. A small, flat package wrapped with ivory tissue and tied off with a lavender ribbon.

He’d forgotten the thing entirely.

Chase couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. It had been meant as a surprise gift for Alexandra, but it had ended up being a gift to himself. A gift he’d given himself weeks in advance, without even realizing it.

An excuse to go to her.

Finally.

“How long will you be?” Rosamund perched on the stepladder, holding one edge of the shelf in place. “My arms are growing tired.”

“Be glad your arms aren’t broken,” Daisy said smugly. “Lift up a bit. Your side is slipping.” The girl was enjoying her supervisory role a bit too much.

“You may let the shelf be,” Chase said. “I’m leaving directly.”

“Leaving for where?” Rosamund asked.

“To speak with Miss Mountbatten.”

“Finally.”

“Can we come along?” Daisy asked.

“Not this time, darling.”

Chase had to do this alone, and he had to do it today, before he talked himself out of it somehow. The gift wasn’t much. Nowhere near what she deserved. But he wanted Alex to have it, even if she refused to accept him.

With a bit of luck and a barge-load of apologies, was it too much to hope she might take both? Probably, but he had to try.

He bounded up to the entrance hall, where Barrow was just putting on his hat.

“We’ll have to postpone our appointment at the bank. I’m going after Alexandra.”

Barrow replaced his hat on the hook. “Finally.”

“She won’t want to see me.” Chase wrestled into his topcoat. “How can I convince her to hear me out? What do I say?”

“You’re the one with the silver tongue. I’m not certain what you want from me here.”

“You’re right. I don’t know why I’m asking advice from a man who proposed to his wife in a haberdashery.”

“At least my proposal was accepted.”

“That’s cold, Barrow.”

“But true.”

Chase yanked the lapels of his topcoat straight. Whatever powers of persuasion he’d amassed in his lifetime, this was the day to use them. “Christ, this is pointless. I treated her so shamefully. You have no idea.”

His brother shrugged. “So you made a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“Very well, multiple mistakes.”

“Try dozens.”

“Never mind the number,” Barrow said. “If you love her—”

“What do you mean, ‘if’? You knew that before I did.”

“If you love her,” Barrow repeated with strained patience, “Alexandra just might forgive you. Think of how many of your flaws I overlook daily.”

“You don’t overlook my flaws. You like them. They make you feel superior, attached as you are to all those smug principles.”

“I’m attached to you, you idiot. You’re my best friend, and my brother by blood. No one who loves you expects you to be perfect. If by some miracle you managed it, we wouldn’t recognize you.”

Chase started to protest, but then he realized he didn’t really want to.

“All you need to promise her is yourself. That’s enough.” Barrow put his hand on Chase’s shoulder. “You’re enough.”

Over his adult life, Chase had built an unparalleled reputation for suave, spontaneous gestures of intimacy. Apparently, he’d fallen out of practice. The hug he gave his brother was the most awkward, embarrassing embrace he’d ever attempted in his life.

Barrow released him with a merciful thump on the back. “Now leave, so I can draw up some marriage contracts.”

“What about the embezzling? Don’t forget the embezzling.”

“Chase, stop stalling and go.”

For once, Chase took his brother’s suggestion. Without argument.

He headed to Lady Penelope Campion’s house first, but the housekeeper said she’d gone to Miss Teague’s. On to Miss Teague’s it was.

Miss Teague’s door was ajar, seemingly to clear out a haze of smoke from within. The house smelled of charred chocolate and cinnamon.

“Chase!” Penny waved him in. “Just in time for tea. Do sit down and have a biscuit.”

“He’s not getting biscuits,” Nicola said, incensed. She whipped the plate from the table, guarding it. “After what he did to Alex? Not even the burnt ones.”

“But he’s sorry now. He’s clearly here to make amends. The poor man looks wretched.”

Chase wasn’t certain how to feel about that. “I don’t have time for tea and biscuits, thank you. I’ve something for Alex. She’ll want to have it at once.”

“Leave it, then,” Nicola said. “We’ll give it to her.”

That was an entirely reasonable suggestion. One he didn’t have a ready excuse to work around. He decided to try the truth. “Please. I need to see her. Speak with her.”

“See, Nic?” Penny said. “He’s miserable.”

“I’m miserable,” Chase agreed. “So, so miserable. Also ashamed, regretful, desperate, ready to grovel on hands and knees.”

“Don’t forget ‘in love,’” Penny said, smiling.

Lord bless Lady Penelope Campion for her indefatigable faith in romance. She had the most open, generous nature imaginable. Chase recognized the quality, because she was the sort of woman he’d always kept at a distance. A heart so completely unguarded was more easily bruised than a ripe summer peach. Someday, he would sit her down and give her a word of caution about being too trusting with devilish gentlemen.

But not today.

Nicola finally answered his question. “Alexandra isn’t here.”

“When will she be back?”

“She won’t be. Not for some time,” Nicola said.

“She’s gone to—”

Lady Penelope’s reply was cut short. From throughout the house, what seemed like hundreds of clocks began to chime the hour. And naturally, the hour would be noon.

Within that minute of bonging and clanging, Chase imagined a hundred dire endings to Penny’s sentence.

She’s gone to the docks to catch a ship.

She’s gone to the Philippine Islands, to find her mother’s family.

She’s gone to grab the tail of her comet and soar away to a planet that deserves her.

She’s gone to someplace, anyplace where you aren’t, you contemptible bastard.

She’s gone to Malta.

It didn’t matter, he vowed. Wherever she’d gone, Chase would follow her, find her, pledge his love, and beg her to come home. Nothing would deter him. There was no journey too far. No obstacle too great.

“She’s gone to stay at Ashbury House,” Penny finished. “Across the square. Ash and Emma leave for the country tomorrow. They’re taking Alexandra with them.”

Ashbury House. Brilliant.

He would have rather gone to Malta.

Chase’s reception at Ashbury House was as he expected. And, quite honestly, no worse than he deserved.

The duke grabbed Chase by the lapels and slammed him against the wall.

“Listen, Ashbury. I know she’s furious with me, and for good reason. But I’m trying to make it right. Just—”

“I warned you,” the duke said in a fiendish whisper. “I told you what would happen if you hurt her.”

“Yes, I recall,” Chase choked out. “Something about my ballocks, a closet, and a demonic cat.”

“Oh, that’s only to start,” the duke growled low. “You clod of wayward marl.”

“I don’t have to stand for this.” Chase shrugged off Ashbury’s grip. “And I don’t need your permission to speak with Alexandra. You’re not her keeper.”

“I’m her friend. And you are not her anything.”

The words gutted him. Ashbury might be correct, but Chase had to see this through to the bitter end.

“That’s for Alex to decide.” Chase sidestepped him and lifted his voice. “Alexandr—ack.”

Ashbury tackled him from behind, wrestling him down to the carpet and clapping a hand over Chase’s mouth. “Shut up, you blackguard,” he snarled quietly. “Not another word. Or a set of shredded ballocks will be the least of your problems.”

Good Lord. Could there be anything worse than shredded ballocks? His stones retracted into his abdomen at the very mention. Chase could imagine only one sort of pain that could possibly eclipse that prospect.

Losing the love of his life.

Chase planted his boot on the floor, levered for the advantage, and flipped them both. He straddled Ashbury’s chest and stared down at his scarred face. “I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt on Alex’s account, but now I’m angry. I may not have a bloodthirsty cat, but I know a girl who can make a small bowel obstruction look like an accident, and I have a great deal of experience giving eulogies.”

“If you so much as—”

Chase planted his hand on Ashbury’s face. By pushing the duke’s head into the carpet pile, he lifted himself just enough to call out. “Alex!” he shouted. “I need to speak with y—”

A set of duke-ish, entitled teeth sank into the heel of his hand.

“Fuck.”

Chase jerked his hand away, and Ashbury made use of the momentary confusion to reverse the power once more. Scrabbling with knees and elbows, they rolled across the carpet no fewer than three times before colliding with a table.

Unhappily, Chase ended on the bottom of the tussle. Ashbury’s knee sank into his gut. “God Almighty, man,” Chase said. “What the devil’s wrong with you? Besides all the obvious things.”

“You veriest varlet.” Ashbury lowered his mangled face to within an inch of Chase’s nose. “This. Is. Nap. Time.”

Chase was nonplussed. “What?”

The duke rolled aside, resting on his elbow as he worked for breath. “My infant son is currently upstairs, sleeping for the first time in nineteen hours. The only thing keeping me from disemboweling you here in the entrance hall, you cream-faced rooting hog, is that you’d probably wake him with all your sniveling and sobbing for mercy.”

“Oh.”

Somewhere upstairs, a thin wail pierced the silence.

Ashbury closed his eyes. “I hate you.”

“Just let me speak to Alexandra.” Chase stood and straightened his coat.

“She’s not here.”

“You bastard. Why didn’t you say so? You could have spared us all of this nonsense.”

Ashbury struggled to a standing position. “I needed the exercise.”

Chase glared at him. “The papers had it right. You are a monster.”

Ashbury shrugged in admission.

“So if Alexandra’s not here, where’s she gone?”

“She went out to the shops.” A woman who was presumably the Duchess of Ashbury stood at the top of the stairs, bouncing a baby in her arms.

“Don’t tell him,” Ashbury complained. “He doesn’t deserve to know.”

She shrugged. “He ate the sham. And the tuna-ish. He’s at least earned the chance to talk to her.” To Chase, she said, “Alex said she had a few things to purchase before we made the journey.”

“What sort of things?”

“I don’t know the full list.” The duchess hesitated. “But she mentioned books.”

Books. Of course. He should have known it would be books.

“Do you know which shop?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

Well, then. He’d done too much dashing about London to stop now.

Chase would simply have to check them all.