Lucien scoffed. “Apart from the fact that you cannot know that, it doesn’t matter. What you have done is beyond stupid, in fact it is the most profoundly and unforgivably stupid thing you have done in your life. You have ruined that young lady, Henry. You have compromised her! And in doing so, you have behaved like the worst rake imaginable.”
Henry’s face flushed--with anger or shame, Lucien wasn’t sure--and his jaw tightened. “I did not compromise Miss Holloway!” he said, a bit more forcefully. “We were only talking. I love her, Lucien, and I just wanted to make sure that she felt the same way.”
“It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do with her here!” Lucien shouted. “By bringing her to a place such as this, unchaperoned, you compromised her. It doesn’t matter what did or did not take place, it matters what it implies about her and her virtue!”
Henry’s stubborn anger seemed to be disappearing, replaced by panic. “But--”
“You say you love her, but no gentleman who loved a lady would ever put her in this kind of position! It is one of the worst things you could have done to her!”
“What would you know about it?” Henry shot back, the fire in his eyes blazing now. “What would you know about how a gentleman treats a lady he loves? You have never felt a flicker of love or affection for anyone in your entire life! Not even for your family!”
“Howdareyou--” Lucien began, but Henry cut him off.
“Miss Holloway knows I would never dishonor her. She knows I only wanted to talk to her and ascertain the depth of her feelings.”
“You aren’t listening to me!” Lucien snarled. “Nor are you convincing me that Miss Holloway is a good match for you if she would allow you to get her alone like this without a chaperone!”
“I am listening to you!” Henry shouted back. “You aren’t listening to me! Just because you never had a burst of passion for a lady in your life and needed to be alone with her doesn’t mean that the rest of us are like you! Some of us are willing to risk a little scandal in order to follow our hearts--in order to spend at least a few minutes of privacy with the woman we love! Courtship in thetonis impossible, Lucien! Everything has to take place surrounded by other people. Even your mostintimate conversations are overheard by a chaperone! It makes it impossible to share your true feelings, or get to know someone on a deep level, to know if they are really the right person for you. That’s why I wanted to come here with Georgina today: just to make sure that we really knew each other and what we want before we commit to spending a lifetime together! If you don’t understand that, it’s just because you are every bit the heartless, feeling-less wretch thetonknows you as!”
His brother’s eyes narrowed, and a look dangerously close to hate filled them. “Not all of us can marry a girl we hardly know and act as if it makes us noble! Not all of us are obsessed with performing our duty above following our hearts!”
Lucien felt as if he had been slapped across the face. He was reeling. His brother had never spoken to him like this, and to hear these words now brought up more feelings than Lucien could handle. He felt anger, of course, that his little brother would insult him like this. But he also felt other things--more complicated emotions--like guilt and even envy.
But why should I feel guilty because I have never snuck off with an unmarried lady? I have always done the right thing, and that is an admirable quality.
“I won’t be made to feel bad because I have never dishonored a lady and tried to justify it by saying I was ‘following my heart’,” Lucien said at last. “Nor will I tolerate you speaking of my marriage to the duchess as if it was something I did in order to appear noble--I married her for one reason and one reason only: to save our family reputation after you behaved in oneof the most reprehensible and irresponsible ways imaginable. A behavior, I might add, that you have repeated here today on an even more egregious scale.”
Henry’s eyes shone with anger, but he said nothing, and Lucien drew himself up to his full and considerable height before continuing.
“What you have done here today is unforgivable. Not only have you dishonored a respectable young lady, but you have risked our family’s reputationagainand betrayed your duty by leaving your younger sister alone and unchaperoned during her first Season, risking that someone might have taken advantage of the opportunity to ruinherreputation. She is entirely unprotected now! How can you justify that? Even if you try to justify the fact that you compromised Miss Holloway, there can be no justification for abandoning Leah!”
At last, the anger in Henry’s eyes melted away, and a look of shame and guilt filled his eyes. He dropped his head and looked down at his feet, shuffling slightly.
“I am very sorry I left her alone, Lucien,” Henry muttered. “I know there is no justification for it. When Miss Holloway arrived, I found myself completely distracted, and when I saw that you and Emery had left, I knew it might be my only chance to speak to her alone without you discovering. I’ll admit, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I saw Leah speaking to all those young ladies and thought she would be okay on her own for several minutes. I see now that I was wrong and that I should have stayed withher no matter what. I am deeply sorry, Lucien. Please, you don’t have to forgive me, but I want you to know I am very sorry.”
Lucien shook his head. “I’m glad you are apologizing for this, at least, but you’re right: I don't have to forgive you, nor do I think I can. What if Leah had been hurt? What if some other rakish gentleman decided he wanted totalkwith her alone? How would you feel if it had been her and another gentleman that you’d come across here in the hedge maze? Would you believe his attempts to tell you he was only trying to follow his heart?”
Henry looked back up at Lucien and swallowed. “No,” he said dully. “I would want to kill him for dishonoring Leah like that. I would tell him that if he truly loved her he would court her the honorable way and call upon her at the house.”
“Exactly.” Lucien sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t understand where I went wrong with you, Henry. First the debacle with the wedding and now this. Ever since our parents died, I have tried to be a model for you as to how to behave with honor and do one’s duty. But time and time again, you behave in ways that make me believe I failed you. This is my fault, I know.”
“It’s not your fault,” Henry began, but Lucien shook his head.
“I thought I had made it clear to you what love does to a person, how it makes them thoughtless and irrational; how it poisons their minds and makes them betray their families and what is right in order to follow the whims of their hearts. But clearly, I did not do enough. Clearly, you are just as foolish andthoughtless as our parents, and there is nothing I can do to change you.”
Henry’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he looked at Lucien with curiosity for the first time since he’d been discovered.
“What areyoudoing here in the hedge maze?” he asked suddenly. “Why did you and Emery leave the party?”
“My wife and I are allowed to spend time alone together,” Lucien snapped, even as a hot ball of dread began to form in his stomach.
“Not in a place like this,” Henry said. “Even for a married couple, being alone in the hedge maze is scandalous.”
“I--I do not have to justify myself to you!” Lucien snapped. “You are the one who has made the mistake here, not I.”
“Or you also are capable of behaving in irrational ways when feelings are on the line!” Henry cried. “Which makes you every bit as foolish and selfish as I am!”
Lucien wasn’t going to take this any longer. His brother had insulted him long enough.
