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The look of startlement on his brother’s face suggested that Jonathan knew exactly how serious he was on the matter. Even before he responded, Gabriel knew without a doubt that he could trust him not to speak with Miss Chelsea or anyone else on the matter, even their own mother, who would likely sniff out the fact that something was going on sooner or later.
“You have my word, brother, always,” Jonathan assured him, his brow raised still with suspicion. Gabriel’s gut tightened and for just a second he thought of coming up with something else to tell his brother. Then he decided against it. There had been enough withheld information around of late.
“I cannot continue in my pursuit of Miss Chelsea’s friend,” Gabriel announced. He called her such a thing because he knew well that Jonathan would have no clue who he meant when he said Miss Pritchard and he could not bring himself to call her Miss Julia for fear that he might once again be lost in thoughts of her, unable to escape the feelings that had grown towards the beautiful woman he now realised he had not known at all.
“Excuse me?” Jonathan exclaimed. His mouth practically dropped open and Gabriel thought his brother’s jaw might hit the surface of the desk. “But things were going so well between the two of you. I would have guessed you were well on your way to thinking of a betrothal by now!”
Gabriel cringed at that because, in truth, he had been. That was until the very moment when Miss Pritchard admitted to him who she was and he had come to realise he could not allow himself anywhere near her.
“I admit, I was definitely thinking about it, but she has explained to me who she truly is and I can see now that we could never make a match,” Gabriel said, feeling his heart drop even further with every word he said on the matter.
He could see the confusion and frustration that started to mix upon his brother’s face and it was clear that he could not understand or follow a single word he was saying.
“I do not understand,” Jonathan confirmed before he asked, “Who could she possibly be that would make even you unwilling to marry her? I cannot imagine there is a scandal large enough to overcome our own.”
Gabriel gritted his teeth at that. Clearly, his brother had gotten entirely the wrong end of the stick. “That is exactly why I could never marry her. She is entirely untainted, innocent, and all too well connected. I could never allow my own scandal to attach itself to a woman so marvellous as she.”
Again, his brother looked stunned. Gabriel opened his mouth to explain further, but Jonathan cut him off with a question. “What is she? A princess? For only a princess could be so high and mighty as to warrant such a gentlemanly gesture.”
Gabriel’s stomach twisted until he felt like it might upend. “She may as well be. She is the daughter of Viscount Chalmers.”
At those words, understanding and realisation spread across Jonathan’s face. There was silence for several moments and Gabriel felt it sucking at him, making him wish that he could say something, anything, just to fill the void that had opened up between them.
“Now you are simply being ridiculous!” Jonathan exclaimed after some time in utter silence. He jumped up from where he had been perched on the edge of the desk and loomed over Gabriel with his hands on his hips, showing just how utterly irritated he was. “After all these years, I never expected that even you would come to listen to all the gossip!”
“What do you mean?” Gabriel asked, but his brother appeared as though he was far too wound up to answer.
Instead, he continued to reel, “I never believed that you would come to think we are as unworthy as they have tried to make us.”
The way he glared at Gabriel made the elder of the two brothers feel quite sick indeed. Even more so because he sort of agreed with his brother’s anger.
“All this time, we have both been working to prove to ourselves and to others that we are worthy of the things we inherited from our father!” Jonathan continued without leaving Gabriel a moment to even breathe, let alone respond.
“And now here you are, practically proving them right by refusing to be all that you could be while getting exactly what you want in the perfect match!”
At that, Gabriel forced his way in. “How could we possibly be the perfect match when nobody will ever see past the fact that they believe we are half-bred mongrels with no real claim to the earldom, only waiting for us to pass back into shadow so that someone else more worthy might take over?”
“Who could possibly be more worthy than the son of the last earl?” Jonathan snapped back at him. “It was your birthright from the moment mother brought you into this world, just as I was destined to walk in your shadow as the second-born!”
“You and I both see that,” Gabriel pointed out through gritted teeth. Beneath the desk, his hands were tightened into fists. “But you know as well as I do that the English are not nearly so accepting of things. Especially when their own rules are bent, and that is exactly what happened when mother and father married.”
“And we have been paying the price ever since,” Jonathan put in firmly. “It's time we finally got a reward for all the hard work we have done to prove everyone wrong.”
“Oh, yes, we worked very hard to prove to them we were worthy of the titles given us, while also making a name for ourselves as rakes,” Gabriel said sarcastically, rolling his eyes at his brother.
Back in the day, he hadn’t really worried about his own loose morals or that of his brother, not with all the scandal and gossip already attached to them. He hadn’t expected that it would ever matter. But of late he had been forced to realise that it would.
“Don’t you see that I cannot allow Miss Pritchard to attach herself to me, especially when she and her family are directly linked to the King of England! Can you imagine what they would say about her? How that would make her feel?”
Jonathan looked him dead in the eye then, crossed his arms over his chest, and stated, “Have you mentioned any of this to her? Perhaps that is a decision she ought to make for herself.”
“No.”
Gabriel glared back at his brother, silently warning him that he should not go back on his promise and speak to Miss Pritchard behind his back in the hopes that it would change anything. Jonathan opened his mouth as if to protest, but Gabriel quickly cut him off again.
“I will not be held responsible for destroying that woman’s good name,” he stated, though even as he said the words, he thought of what had happened in the carriage that afternoon, how he had defiled her and deflowered her, and he knew that if anyone were ever to find out about that, then he had already done so.
“You cannot be serious!” Jonathan protested. “I have seen the way the two of you are together, and I have never seen you as happy as you are when you are with her.”
