Danger Wears White (18 page)

Nick smiled. Superior bastard. “Have you met Miss Thane, Tony? Miss Thane, this is my reprobate brother, Major Antoninus Beaumont.”

She blinked, and her lovely eyes widened. Tony took great pleasure in performing a perfect bow. “I have had the pleasure of making Miss Thane’s acquaintance.”

Her eyes widened. “Antoninus—Valentinian—“

“And you’ve danced with Nicephorus,” Nick put in. “That’s why people call us the Emperors of London. Our parents took the notion to call us after emperors and empresses of the past.” He shrugged. “It amused them. It’s less amusing to us at times.”

“I can imagine,” she murmured.

Fury heated Tony’s blood when she wouldn’t look at him. Her gaze skittered past his face, even though she met Nick’s eyes and smiled.

Nick smiled back. “I told you we were better company than the Dankworths.” He cast a glance across the floor to where Lord Dankworth stood with his older brother, Alconbury. Dankworth had the temerity to raise his glass to them, shooting them a taunting grin.

“He was kind and he dances well,” she said. “I enjoyed my dance with him.”

“But he isn’t on your list.” Tony infused his voice with all the silky menace he could muster.

He’d read the list in mild astonishment. She actually had a list of men? Why had she made it all second sons? None of them were heads of families. Three of his cousins were named, but none of them the eldest.

One answer occurred to him now. If she married an older son, she’d have to live in his house and leave hers behind. He’d seen her devotion to the beautiful oddity.

In his case, he was only the second son of his mother. He and Nick had different fathers. His mouth firmed when he’d seen her with his brother, handsome, debonair Nicephorus, Viscount Westwood.

He tried not to think of him, especially when he had the one thing Tony wanted above everything else.

The next day, in the relative security of their London residence, Tony bided his time until he had Nick in the breakfast parlor, which was deserted at this time of day, early afternoon. The table was bare but for a tantalus bearing three decanters. Tony resisted the temptation, although he might have need of them later. As soon as Nick closed the door, Tony turned on him. “Leave Imogen Thane alone.”

Nick raised a brow in that infuriated supercilious way he had. “I found her quite charming. Unspoiled, you might say. Also quite astonishingly beautiful.”

“She doesn’t believe it.” Why had he said that? As if his brother needed encouraging.

“Why not?”

Tony shrugged. “How should I know? But she’s mine. I will claim her, and I don’t want you in my way.”

Nick’s lip curled. “And how do you propose to do that?”

Tony met his gaze, his eyes so much like the ones he saw in the mirror every morning. “Do you want to try my practical swordsmanship against your fencing lessons?”

Nick’s face turned stony. “Any time, brother. But I suggest we avoid such measures as our mother—”

Tony rounded on him leaning over the table that was all that separated them. “Don’t hide behind her skirts again! This means more to me than a broken toy or a torn waistcoat.” Naming those incidents from his youth only served to open wounds barely healed. And what he’d done to get away from them.

Nick turned away, walking to the end of the table, toward the sideboard. He touched the polished mahogany, tracing the grain, not looking at his brother. “Childhood incidents best forgotten.”

“Never forgotten.” Tony needed to tell the truth. Since he’d returned from the army they’d skated around the issue, been carefully polite to each other, as men should. Now, when Nick threatened to get between him and the thing he wanted most in the world, he couldn’t allow the issue to fester any longer. “Or rather, put in the shade by other things. Do you ever see her?”

“Who?” Nick didn’t turn around, but his shoulders stiffened.

“Paulina Spencer.”

The name dropped between them like a stone in still water. Here, at the back of the house, little stirred, the silence close to absolute.

“I remember her. Did that rankle, then?”

“Shall we start at the beginning?” Tony recalled Paulina’s lovely face, her sweetness and her joy. She was the brightest thing in his life when he was eighteen, but his resentment against his brother went much further than that. Forced together by their relationship to each other and their close ages, the brothers had, nevertheless, never formed a bond. Not surprising really, considering their history.

“How about when you nearly killed me? When you sawed through that branch? I had never known anyone so clever at that age.”

“I had to be,” Nick said. “Papa would have killed me.” His mouth tightened. “In any case, nearly killing you wasn’t my aim. Destroying your perfect tree house was. Yes, I resented you. What do you expect me to say? Despite being the second child, you were the darling. My mother doted on you. Your father, not surprisingly, preferred you to me and made me call him Papa. Now it’s habit, but at the time I hated it. I had a father, and I bore his name. My mother forgot him as soon as the earth was cold on his grave.”

“Come, now, you’re hardly Hamlet,” Tony scorned. “Or are you saying that my father killed yours?”

That was patently foolish. Thaddeus Beaumont would rather cut off his own arm than cause his mother an instant’s pain, even if that meant tolerating his predecessor. He’d adored her for years, but kept at a distance until they were wed.

Nick shook his head. Slowly he turned, facing Tony. He folded his arms. The bleak expression on his face shocked Tony. “I only had my resentment to see me through many years. I received training as the holder of the title. Nothing else. Your father brought wealth. My mother brought prestige. They only had eyes for each other. And you.”

“You were never given bad treatment.”

Tony met his gaze. Nick didn’t look away this time. “No, I was not. But in a thousand little ways, it was made clear to me that you were the favored child. So I resented you, set little traps, tried to get you into trouble. Childish behavior for which I am sorry. It wasn’t well done of me. All I can say is that I was bitterly and devastatingly alone. That it hurt.”

Tony thought back. Seen from his point of view, it was very different. “I knew you resented me.” He pressed his fingertips to the table, watching the tips turn white. “I could do nothing about that. I tried to befriend you. You were my only brother, and I very much wanted the same relationship between us as existed between others we knew.”

“Our cousins.”

“Exactly.”

Their preposterous names had brought the cousins together, but most of the families had warm relationships between themselves. “I always wanted that, too. But you wouldn’t let me close.”

Nick regarded him closely. “That was a mistake. As was Paulina Spencer.”

Paulina had drifted through society like a feather in the wind. She was ethereally beautiful and her sunny nature drew every young man to her that season, and the not too young as well. Tony had fallen as hard as his brother. That was when the real trouble between them had burned brightly. And society had watched them fight for her. Tony had no intention of allowing history to repeat itself.

“Not a mistake, but what we did was. Do you see her at all these days?”

Nick shook his head. “She went into the country with her husband. They married shortly after you—left.”

“Joined the army, you mean.” Better that than face a trial. Except he’d rushed off too early. That was always his way, to run into things without thinking first. The army had taught him discipline and some measure of forethought, particularly when it concerned others, but the impulsive part of him remained.

Never more so than that morning when he’d dueled his brother at dawn and very nearly killed him. “I thought I’d killed you. There was so much blood.”

“Papa smoothed matters over. He would have bought you out.”

“I know. I didn’t want it.” He turned his head and stared out the window to the peaceful garden. In the far distance, a gardener was carefully pruning roses, his mother’s favorite flower. The garden here was replete with them, as was their home in the country. His father saw to that. He’d even bought her a rare yellow rose. They adored each other, even after all these years.

“I realized what I’d done wasn’t easily to repair. I needed to get away, to change what I did and how I did it.” That was the nearest he’d come to apologizing for that day. And his brother deserved the apology. Justice demanded it. “There was no excuse for it.”

To his shock, his brother laughed. Actually laughed, the peal breaking the quiet like church bells on Sunday morning. “I was as much at fault as you. I adored Paulina, or I thought I did. And you did, too. That only spurred me to act. I provoked you. I wanted the advantage. When I chose swords for the duel, I knew what I was doing. I’d been taking lessons for months. Extra lessons, with sabers and foils and double handed. I chose the sword and dagger because I knew you’d come at me like a madman. I could take you. Faugh!” His exasperated yell echoed around the paneled room. “I was prepared to kill my brother.”

Tony went cold. “I challenged you, but only because I wanted to spite you. I could have avoided it.”

“No you couldn’t have. I was determined you would not. But you would have chosen pistols. You were always the better shot of the two of us. We shouldn’t have met.” Nick leaned against the sideboard and folded his arms. “It wasn’t Paulina, was it? It was years of resentment boiling up in us. It should have ended in an honorable draw, not the fiasco it turned out to be. If I hadn’t fainted from lack of blood, you would never have left. As soon as I came to I realized what a fool I’d been. And to cause such a scandal, to grieve our mother so.”

“But you stayed to face the scandal and support her.” He still felt bitter about that part, and with a jolt of realization, he knew that disgust with himself rather than rivalry with his brother had driven him.

Nick’s voice gentled. “You would have done the same thing. There was nothing to gain by having both of us at home. You proved your worth repeatedly in the army. Dare I say it was the making of you?”

Tony couldn’t deny that. He’d borne the burden of being the instigator in the duel for years, made any excuse rather than come home when he was on leave. He’d volunteered for tasks, taken on diplomatic commissions, extra duties, anything, until his father had written to him and positively commanded that he came home when he could. He’d faced London and found the scandal an old story, long superseded by others, and society perfectly accepting of him. He hadn’t brought ruin to his family after all. “Yes, it was.”

Nick was right. Without the army, Tony might still be a resentful younger sibling, trailing in the wake of his brother. Stepping forward, he held out his hand, the first true gesture of friendship he had ever offered his brother. “We will do better this time.”

Instead of shaking his hand, Nick used his hold to drag Tony forward into a quick hug. “We certainly will.”

Tony returned the hug, but drew away. It still felt awkward. Although he’d long recovered from his childhood sulk, his relationship with his brother had rarely breached the cordial. But perhaps, after all, there was hope for more. He’d welcome it. “What will you do about Imogen?” he asked.

His brother shrugged. “Is she another Paulina?”

The notion repulsed him. Paulina had been an excuse, a way of challenging his brother. He felt entirely differently about Imogen. “Paulina was pretty, but she didn’t have a great deal between her ears. She’s the perfect biddable wife, and she is much better off where she is.” He shook his head. “I’ll fight for Imogen with everything I have. It’s not you or anyone else. Without her, I’m nothing.” Even while he said it, the truth of the statement hit him hard. “I would fight anyone for her. Not just you.”

Even that list didn’t stop him. He’d thought about it hard and long, and decided he would just have to be the best person on it.

Nick didn’t hesitate. “In that case, brother, you have my blessing and any help I can give you. But you know you might have a hard time of it, don’t you?”

Tony snorted and finally reached for the brandy decanter and a couple of glasses. This new understanding deserved a toast. “You don’t know the half of it, brother mine.” He poured two generous brandies and handed one to Nick. Nick accepted it and clinked his glass against Tony’s.

“If you want her, you shall have her.”

“If she’s willing.”

Nick’s brow rose. “My, you have changed. Indeed. And if she doesn’t?”

“I will do everything in my power to give her what she wants. Whatever that is.”

For the first time in their lives, the brothers drank in perfect amity, and something inside Tony stilled and settled.

* * * *

“You have a visitor,” the footman told her. “He is waiting for you in the green parlor. A lady is with him.” He gave her the salver and she snatched up the cards, but thrust them in her pocket. She knew exactly who it must be. Tony had come at last. He would beg her forgiveness, and she would grant it. Perhaps. She wondered who he had brought as chaperone. His mother.

Wasting no time, she headed for the parlor, but when she fumbled for the cards she realized she must have dropped them on the way. No matter.

A footman stood outside the door to open it for her, as if she were too feeble to do so herself. Her heart soaring, she went inside.

Only to come to a complete halt as the recalcitrant vessel sank the bottom of her pretty satin slippers.

“I came to see how you did,” he mother said, “and look who offered to accompany me!”

Imogen bowed to Lord William Dankworth. “I am happy to see you, sir.” How had the princess not known he was here? Surely such a prominent Jacobite wasn’t welcome here. A suspicion crossed her mind, and she wished she’d not been so careless with the visiting cards. He could have used her mother to get in here. Mrs. Thane had an excuse, a legitimate one, so she could have been his Trojan horse.

Imogen’s suspicions were confirmed when, after a desultory conversation, Mrs. Thane excused herself on a spurious excuse. “I will return in ten minutes. No less, now!” She shook a finger in a roguish gesture, one Imogen instantly disliked. The motion appeared strange on her normally stately mother.