Page 35 of A Wicked Business

“I should say you’re already there, you great pillock,” Larkin replied frankly.

Felix groaned. “Oh, Lord. I’ve made a mull of things, I know, but Larkin, you don’t understand. You can’t know what she does to me. She… She makes me so… so…” He clenched his fists with frustration at being unable to articulate the wild surges of emotion Belinda provoked in him. “God, I want to shake her!”

Larkin snorted and shook his head, smirking at Felix over the rim of his coffee cup. “No, dear boy. That is not what you want to do to her, and we both know it, and this is the source of your vexation as you would realise for yourself if you troubled to think about it for above five minutes. Lord, the mess some of you fellows make over falling in love.”

Felix stared at Larkin in outrage. “You, of all people, dare to say that!”

“Yes, I dare. I dare precisely because I went to the devil,” Larkin said crossly. “I fell in love, and I didn’t hide it, and I got my fingers burned and my heart kicked around. I hurt and drank myself half to death to drown the pain, but I didn’t deny it! I never pretended I hadn’t got my heart broken, I never pretended that I didn’t care. But you, clever fellow that you are, can’t see what’s bloody obvious to me. You care for Lady Belinda. You are afraid of what will become of her if you don’t intervene, but you’re scared to death because it’s all happening too fast and you’re not ready to commit yourself to her. Well, you’ve heard of love at first sight, you’ve heard tales of whirlwind romances. Perhaps this is yours.”

Words crowded on Felix’s tongue, fighting to burst out of him and deny the accusations with everything he had. Larkin lifted one eyebrow, daring him to do so. Felix couldn’t do it, remembering the awful sensation of having lost something important that had plagued him from the moment Belinda had turned and walked away from him. He felt it again now, a sharp-edged presence in his heart, jagged and angry and full of remorse. Perhaps he didn’t want to marry Lady Belinda maddening Madox-Brown, at least, not right at this moment, but the devil of it was he didn’t want any other bastard to marry her either. The thought made him feel sick, if he were honest. That she might throw herself away upon some bloody fortune hunter simply to thwart her father’s plans made him want to do violence to whoever the nameless sod might be.

“But I don’t want to get married!” he protested, hearing the words and knowing he sounded like a petulant child. “I’ve… I’ve got too much to do. Businesses to run, a fortune to make. How the devil am I to show my father I’m worthy of my inheritance if I’ve got a woman like that distracting me at every turn?”

“Don’t ask me, ask your father,” Larkin said with a laugh. “He seems to have managed it. A fine-looking woman, your mama, and no shrinking violet either, if I’m not mistaken.”

Felix glowered and then put his head in his hands.

“Damn me,” he muttered. “Damn me. What the hell am I going to do?”

“Now, now. There’s no need for that,” Larkin said, his voice maddeningly calm.

“There damn well is. I can’t just turn up at her door and grovel on my hands and knees, can I? Her father would set the bloody dogs on me. Larkin, you know her. Can you get a message to her for me?”

Larkin considered this. “Yes, I think perhaps I would be accepted as a morning caller, but what we need is a plan.”

Felix sighed and allowed Larkin to refill his coffee cup instead of demanding he fetch the brandy like he’d promised. A plan would be a start, he supposed morosely, but what he really needed was a blasted miracle. Apologies did not come easily to him, being rather too stubborn in the manner of his own sire. Apologies to Lady Belinda were bound to be painful in the extreme and horribly humiliating. Yet it was everything she deserved for the shabby, dishonest way he had treated her. So, what else was there for him to do?