Page 105 of Courting the Wrong Duke

He hesitated, searching once more for the beginning. There seemed no sensible way to explain the end of the night without beginning with the absurdity that had preceded it.

“When I returned home last night, I found Gabriel lying in the garden.”

Rosalind blinked. “Lying in the garden?”

Despite everything, the memory drew the faintest smile from him. “Apparently Miss Hartwell had given him reason to reconsider his entire existence.”

“Oh dear.”

“Quite. It took some time to persuade him that death upon the lawn was perhaps an excessive response, but eventually I managed to get him inside and settled in one of the guest chambers.”

The brief amusement faded almost as quickly as it had come.

“Afterward, I did not go to my own chambers. I kept thinking about the evening, about what you had told me before you left the ball, and I knew sleep would not come easily. I thought I might find something to read.”

Rosalind's expression grew serious again.

“So I went to the library.”

William paused, remembering the thin line of light beneath the door and the first impossible sound of Augusta's voice.

“Someone was already inside.”

“At that hour?”

“Two people.” His jaw tightened. “My brother and his wife.”

Her surprise mirrored his own from only hours earlier.

“They had returned?”

“Apparently, they had never truly gone.”

“But the carriage—”

“Left exactly as I saw it leave. They returned later by another route.”

Rosalind's expression tightened. “Why?”

William looked ahead. “That was precisely what I wanted to know.”

Even now, he could remember the shock of hearing Augusta's voice through the library door. The exhaustion in it. The desperation. His brother answering her with a weariness William had never before associated with him.

“I overheard enough of their conversation to know something was wrong. Augusta was telling him that he could not continue as he had been. That he needed help.”

Rosalind said nothing, and William was grateful she did not press him before he was ready to continue.

“When I entered the library, I demanded an explanation. I accused Algernon of lying to me about leaving London, and somewhere in the middle of the argument, my mother appeared in the doorway. Apparently Gabriel's lamentations in the garden had already disturbed her sleep, and our raised voices finished the task.”

Ordinarily, the absurdity of it might have amused him. This morning, William could find very little humor in anything that had followed.

Rosalind seemed to understand. Her expression remained solemn as she asked, “What did your brother tell you?”

William's throat tightened.

He had known this question was coming. He had summoned her here because he needed to tell her what he had learned, yet now that the moment had arrived, he found himself struggling to put into words something he had scarcely begun to understand himself.

His gaze drifted across the square, following the passage of a carriage without truly seeing it.