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Drake nodded, satisfied that Richards would do nicely. “Good. I want you to do something very important for me, Richards.”
The eager servant stood up straighten “Anythin’, yer grace.”
Drake pointed in the direction of Alex’s room. “At the end of the hall is her grace’s bedchamber. The duchess is exhausted, and I want nothing and no one to disturb her sleep.” He gritted his teeth as the sound of splintering glass pierced the quiet of the slumbering house. “I want you to stand guard outside her door, Richards. Under no circumstances are you to venture one step away. I will go down and see to the situation in the library.” He almost smiled at the look of utter relief on Richards’s face. “I repeat: do not budge from her grace’s door until I return. Should there be any problem, you have my permission to shout for me at the top of your lungs. Is that understood?”
Richards nodded emphatically. “Yes, yer grace. I understand.”
“Good. You may go now.” Even as Drake’s words left his mouth, the footman was hurrying down the hall, obviously proud of the responsibility entrusted to him by the duke himself.
Convinced of Alex’s safety, Drake took the steps two at a time, heading purposefully through the dimly lit lower level of the manor and flinging open the library door.
An utterly disoriented, thoroughly intoxicated Sebastian turned glazed eyes in Drake’s direction. The blood had been washed from his face, but his lips and nose were swollen and limp strands of hair hung down over his flushed face. In his hand was an antique vase that he had been about to hurl against the bookshelves. A considerable amount of broken glass was already strewn across the exquisite Oriental carpet, and chairs had been heaved about and now lay on their sides.
Drake stepped into the room and slammed the door behind him. Scathing emerald eyes raked the pathetic human being who was his brother.
“Put it down, Sebastian.”
Sebastian paused, lowering the vase to his side. “Why, your grace,” he mocked, weaving unsteadily in his attempt to regain his balance. “What brings you down here?” He lifted his other hand, which clutched a bottle of claret, bringing it to his lips and swallowing. Pointedly he added, “I would’ve thought you’d be comforting your little wife. S’matter, brother? She tire you out already?”
Drake fought the violent surge that rose inside him at Sebastian’s taunting, baiting words. “You sicken me.”
“Perhaps, but I don’t sicken your wife,” he sneered back. “Does it bother you that your duchess wants me more than she wants you?”
Anger exploded in Drake’s skull. He stalked across the room, tore the bottle out of Sebastian’s hand, and slammed it down on the table.
“I want you away from Allonshire by dawn,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “You are no longer welcome in my house, now or ever.”
At Drake’s words all the mocking amusement left Sebastian’s face, replaced with a hatred as sinister as evil itself.
“Your house?” he snarled, his teeth barred with rage. “Your house? But for some cursed fate, this would have been my house.” His unnaturally bright gaze moved restlessly about the massive room. “Allonshire and everything in it should have been mine. You never wanted it, never gave a damn about everything that would someday be yours.” He stared back at Drake, but his glassy eyes were unseeing. “I was the one who wanted it … all of it. And I would have had it—the title, the land, the wealth, all of it—if you had died, as the missive reported. But, damn you, brother, you came back. After all that time, and when I was so close to having it all, you came back.” Malice was etched in every line of his flushed face. “Why couldn’t you be dead?” he spat out. “Why?”
Drake stared at Sebastian’s wild, half-crazed expression and, in that moment, he had his answer. Sebastian’s hatred was more than enough to provoke him to murder.
“You have a sick, diseased mind.” With great effort, Drake kept himself from pounding Sebastian. “I want you out of my house and out of my sight.”
“One day Allonshire will be mine,” Sebastian shot back.
The ominous threat pushed Drake beyond any semblance of control. “That day will never come, brother. Never.” Drake bit out each word. “Regardless of any ill fate that might befall me, you will never inherit my title or my land. Do you know why, you miserable bastard? Because the next heir to Allonshire is growing inside my wife’s womb.” Sebastian’s head shot up, but Drake was beyond stopping, beyond rational thought. “That’s right, Sebastian. Alexandria is with child. And, with the tendency toward producing male offspring in our family, I have no doubt that it will be a son. So hate me with all your heart, and wish me dead and in hell. No amount of hatred can change Allonshire’s future!”
Sebastian just stared at him for a moment. Then an insane, primitive roar erupted from his chest. The delicate vase in his hand shattered from the force of his grasp, splintering into bits, spattering droplets of his blood on the carpet.
“No!” he screamed, shaking with the force of his rage. “It’s impossible! You’ve always taken everything that should have been mine, but not this! Not this … not after all my planning!”
“Planning?” Drake’s voice was suddenly deadly quiet. “What planning, Sebastian?”
His brother’s expression was that of a madman. “I was so blasted close. Why did you live? It was so easy until then. He was weak and pathetic … always was. Even Mother was too much for him. He was so damned trusting. Never even suspected.”
An icy wave of foreboding swept through Drake. “Never suspected what, Sebastian? What was it that Father never suspected?”
Sebastian gave a wild, crazed laugh. “All those men. You knew about them, didn’t you? And he thought she was the epitome of virtue. What a fool! She laughed at him, you know. And I don’t blame her! It was just as easy for me.”
The surprising knowledge that Sebastian also had known about their mother’s affairs was insignificant at the moment. Drake teetered on the bitter edge of discovery.
“Even the timing was perfect,” Sebastian continued as if he were alone in the room. “The grieving father withering away over the death of his beloved elder son. Who would suspect he was being poisoned? And then it would have been mine. All of it.” He turned his unfocused stare to his throbbing hand, watching small rivulets of blood trickle along his wrist.
“God …” Drake breathed, pain and rage uniting into a knot of explosive emotion in his chest. “You black-hearted bastard, you killed our father. You murdered him in cold blood … for a title?” He stared at the evil man before him, a man he had never really known at all.
A self-satisfied smirk played upon Sebastian’s lips as he turned back to his brother. “Neither of you deserved the title. He was too weak; you have no use for it. Only I am worthy of being the Duke of Allonshire. Only I.”
