AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Honestly! Did he think her memory was so poor he could say something so ridiculous? “Well, then you certainly chose an interesting way of proving your devotion to me.” After all,hewas the one who’d left her when she’d begged him not to. It hadn’t been her finest hour, but that was what she’d done. And now he was the one who’d returned to Town after many years away and hadn’t thought to seek her out even once. Though, none of that was neither here nor there at the moment, and she really shouldn’t let him distract her from her purpose. “Whatwasthat about? With Papa just now?”
Gabe cast her a sidelong glance and heaved a sigh as the two of them navigated past Sarsden and Zinnia near the windows, but he said nothing in response, not even after they were far enough away from her cousins to not be overheard.
Truly, he was the most frustrating man on Earth. “I would very much like an answer to my question, Major. What conversation did you and Papa mean?” she tried again.
Gabe’s lips thinned to a straight line and a muscle ticked in his jaw. “That conversation was between your father and me, Sophie. It’s not your concern.”
It certainlywasher concern. Something had happened, something very important in that conversation, apparently. “Since neither of you seem to care for the other, but you’ve both meant a great deal to me, Iamconcerned whether you think it’s my concern or not.”
“And do you still care for me, Sophie?” he asked, pinning her with a look of such earnestness that her heart ached anew for all the years he’d been away.
But how was she supposed to answer him? Earnest looks aside, he had not done one thing to declare himself or put his heart on the line while she had made quite the fool out of herself over him once upon a time. She certainly was not going to do that again. Once was painful enough. “I—”
“Ahem!” Someone cleared their throat, and Sophie turned toward the sound to find her grandfather’s butler glancing in her direction. “Major Prideaux, His Grace has requested your presence in his study.”
“I imagine your feelings one way or the other are immaterial at this point.” Gabe slid his arm from Sophie’s grasp and then started across the drawing room to the ducal butler without even a glance back over his shoulder at her.
Her feelings were immaterial? She didn’t even know what her feelings were, but whatever they happened to be, they werenotimmaterial.
A moment later, Charlotte filled the space where Gabe had once been, a look of concern flashing in her light eyes. “What did he say?” she whispered.
“Nothing,” Sophie replied, because he hadn’t said one blasted thing that meant anything.
“Nothing?” her sister echoed. “He had to have said something. And nowGrandfatherwants to speak to him?AndPapa?”
And that was a conversation Sophie was going to overhear, one way or another.
“Sophia,” her mother called. “Charlotte,” she added. “Eleanor was just asking after the two of you.”
Sophie and Charlotte shared a look, neither of them believing for one moment that their Aunt Eleanor had done anything of the like. Their mother was simply trying to manage them. Poorly. Mama was not terribly good at that. She never had been.
“Stay for a minute or two,” Charlotte whispered. “Then excuse yourself to the privy. She can’t deny you that.”
CHAPTER 11
The door to Chatham’s study was open, but once Gabe stepped over the threshold into the duke’s domain, the man’s butler closed the door quite firmly behind him. Chatham commanded the room behind his ducal desk and Beckbury stood off to the side, his arms folded across his chest in a most resolute manner.
“Beckbury says you’ve shown an interest in my granddaughter,” the duke began, his dark eyes raking across Gabe as though looking for anything to recommend him or perhaps the opposite of that.
Gabe heaved a sigh. “I’m certain he also told you he rejected my suit.”
The duke flicked a glance toward the viscount and said, “I do not always agree with my son-in-law, but I have never had a reason to doubt that he has my granddaughters’ best interest at heart.”
What was Gabe supposed to say to that? “I’m certain he does.”
“And he found you lacking,” Chatham cut to the chase.
Finding Gabe lacking was a generous way to put it. But had Beckbury told the duke more than that? Had he told him all of it? The man had vowed that he would not, not if Gabe left Hampton Hall and never looked back. But now that Gabe had returned to England, had the viscount changed his mind about that? “If he’d found me acceptable, Sophia would have been my wife the last four years.”
“And following the drum all across the godforsaken continent?” the duke grumbled. “Hardly the best sort of life for a girl of her breeding.”
Many officers had their wives with them, and many with pedigrees that rivaled Sophie’s. But none of that was neither here nor there as Gabe’s offer of marriage had been soundly rejected. “I have not returned to England to ask for Sophia’s hand.”
“A wise decision as I understand it would be considered a step up for your family to even be consideredbad ton. You are hardly an acceptable choice.”
Gabe’s gaze shifted to Beckbury.Hadthe man really told Chatham all of it? If so, the earldom Gabe was trying desperately to salvage would be nonexistent.
“Northwold is even now, in an asylum,” Beckbury added. “A syphilitic madman, I understand.”
