He spun around so quickly, she stumbled back. “I have everything to be guilty of,” he barked. “In my advances, I am no different than Montclair. No,” he gave his head a sad shake. “There is no recourse but marriage.”
The sadness and unease lifted from her eyes and a familiar spirit and fury ignited within their blue depths. “You would be high-handed with your sister and you think to be high-handed with me. I am not yours to look after or care for.” Did he imagine the trace of regret in those words? “You would wed me to do the honorable thing.” She planted her arms akimbo. “I do not want you to do the honorable thing. I want my freedom. I want my school.” Her chest moved with the force of her emotion.
Jane’s message could not be clearer—she did not want him. Where was the sense of relief in avoiding that institution he’d sworn to never enter into? Surely, it would come later but for now, only regret churned in his belly. He managed a stiff nod. “Very well, madam. It is not my place to force your hand. I will speak to your father in the morn.” He made to step around her.
She stepped into his path. “My father?” She flattened her mouth into a hard line and gave her head a brusque shake. “You do not need to speak to my father.”
“Don’t I?” he arched an eyebrow. “You’ll not wed me.” Her stony silence stood as testament to that. “And if you’ll not remain here as my wife, then you cannot remain here. Where will you go for the next two,” one month, three weeks, and two days, “months’ time?”
She jutted her chin up, but by the flash of unease in her eyes, the young woman knew she was without options.
He flicked an imaginary piece of lint from his sleeve. “Now if you will excuse me, Miss Munroe, I bid you goodnight.”
With that, he turned on his heel and left.
Chapter 18
The following morning, with a meeting scheduled with the Duke of Ravenscourt, Gabriel sat in his office. He glanced across the room at the long-case clock and frowned. Where in blazes was he? He’d sent a missive around last evening and had been quite clear in—
A knock sounded at his office door. At last. “Enter,” he barked and tossed his useless pen down.
Joseph opened the door.
His brother, Lord Alex Edgerton, once rogue, now notoriously infatuated, thoroughly besotted, and hopelessly in love husband, stood at the entrance.
“I sent around a note late last evening,” Gabriel said without preamble, as he shoved back his chair and stood.
Alex, consummately unaffected, raised a dark eyebrow. “Do you mean a summons? You sent ’round a summons.” Those eerily reminiscent words flung at him not even two months ago, when Gabriel had worked at putting Alex’s disordered life to rights, raised a dull flush on his face.
The butler’s lips twitched as he pulled the door closed behind him and left the two Edgerton brothers alone.
A groan of impatience climbed up Gabriel’s throat as he reclaimed his seat. “I do not have time for games,” he said tersely, adopting his most coolly, distant tone.
An inelegant snort escaped his brother as he strode over to the sideboard and helped himself to a brandy.
“Isn’t it a bit early for a brandy?” he asked with an automaticity that came from years of scolding and lecturing his brother, and then from the corner of his eye registered the nearly empty glass upon the corner of his desk. With a silent curse, he placed himself in front of the snifter and hid it from his brother’s line of focus. Then, with the time he’d had of it since Jane’s appearance in his life, he’d taken to drinking a good deal more brandy, at all godforsaken hours of the day.
Alex paused mid-stride and wheeled around. A half-grin formed on his lips. “I daresay with the time you had of it last evening you could benefit from a strong glass of spirits as well.” He resumed his march to the sideboard. “And I recommend beginning with the consumption of that snifter at the edge of the desk before you move on to your finer spirits,” he drawled without so much as a glance back.
His neck heated and with his brother’s attention on the crystal decanters before him, Gabriel removed the snifter from the mahogany surface and carried it around the desk. In a bid to reassert the order and logic he’d perfected over the years, he claimed the familiar chair behind the mahogany piece that had once belonged to their father.