In the Prince’s Bed by Sabrina Jeffries (20)

Chapter Twenty-six

The day after Alec watched the Merivales’ hired carriage disappear into the night, he awoke to a splitting headache that had less to do with the blow to his skull than with the cheap brandy he’d drowned his sorrows in last night.

Not well enough, apparently. Because he could still feel that hollow emptiness in his chest where Katherine had ripped out his heart. He hadn’t even known he had one, until she’d said in that sweet, innocent voice, “I love you.” Right before she’d brought his world crashing down around his ears.

With a groan, he buried his face in the covers, then cursed roundly. He could still smell rose water on them, mingling with the scent of…

Burned coffee?

His head shot up. Emson was coming through the door with a tray bearing what Mrs. Brown probably considered to be a decent breakfast.

At least poison would put him out of his misery.

“Mrs. Brown knows you do not like her coffee, but she says it will give you strength, and I agree. You should eat something, my lord. You ate no dinner last night. If you still plan to return to London today, you shall need nourishment.”

To beg creditors for more time, arrange for loans…begin courting another heiress. The thought churned his stomach, yet it was either that or give up Edenmore entirely.

Or get Katherine back.

No, after her parting words, that was impossible. Until then, he’d been sure he could eventually talk her round to seeing why he’d done what he did, to understanding that he really cared about her.

But if she believed he could be so callous as to spread nasty rumors about her chastity or sue her for breach of promise, she was right—she didn’t know him at all. He’d be damned if he’d go begging her to take him back when she thought so ill of him.

She had reason to be upset, but he’d had a perfectly legitimate reason for what he did, too. Why couldn’t she see that?

Emson put the tray on his writing table where he liked it, then brought his coffee to him. As Alec sipped the nasty brew, Emson drew a book out of his pocket. “I found this in your great coat, my lord. I thought you might want it.”

Frowning, Alec took it from him. The Rake’s Rhetorick. He’d forgotten all about that blasted book.

As Emson went to lay out his clothes, Alec thumbed through the chapbook, his temper flaring as he skimmed lines here and there. No wonder she thought ill of him. How could she trust any man after she’d read all this nonsense?

Never tell a woman the truth about what you want, not if you plan to get it.

He winced. All right, but he’d been justified in keeping the truth from her. He wasn’t some rakehell bent on pleasure, blast it, doing whatever he must to gain the use of a woman’s body.

No, just the use of a woman’s fortune.

Damn his blathering conscience—what he’d done wasn’t the same.

Lifting his coffee cup to his lips, he turned a page, started…and poured hot coffee down the front of his bare chest.

“God rot it all!” he swore as he thrust the cup onto his bedside table and swabbed coffee off himself with the coverlet.

Emson came running. “Good heavens, are you all right, my lord?” He whipped out a handkerchief the size of Ireland and began blotting Alec’s chest.

Alec shoved his hand away. “It’s fine, Emson. I merely…er…”

Too late. Emson was now staring at the book that still lay open to a picture of a man and a woman doing exactly what Alec and Katherine had done last night. Only these people were in a more…creative position, and the man was leering as he thrust into the woman with breasts like grapefruits.

“Good to see you indulging in light reading for a change,” Emson remarked dryly.

Scowling, Alec shut the book with a snap. “It’s not mine. I acquired it by accident.”

“Of course, my lord,” Emson said smoothly as he stuffed his coffee-soaked handkerchief back into his pocket. Then he delicately removed the book and placed it into the drawer of the bedside table. “All the same, perhaps we should spare the maids and Mrs. Brown any chance of exposure.”

Impudent devil. “Thank you, Emson.” Katherine had said the Rhetorick had pictures, but my God—No wonder the woman had known what to expect of him that day he’d made love to her in the orangery.

The thought of her finding this book in her father’s effects and realizing what that said about the man’s habits unnerved Alec. Could he blame her for being suspicious of men? Especially one who admitted to wanting her fortune.

“Will you have some breakfast now, my lord?” Emson asked.

“I suppose.” Though he didn’t know if he’d ever have an appetite again. Except for a certain winsome, fiery-haired miss—

No, she was gone. He had to get that through his thick skull.

Despair weighting him, he left the bed to walk over to his writing table and stare at the breakfast tray. It contained an apple, two boiled eggs, and a slice of what looked suspiciously like real bread rather than sawdust formed into bricks.

“No hemlock?” he said acidly.

“Fortunately for you, Mrs. Emson sends me breakfast every morning on the sly, and I thought it would suit you better. Only the coffee is Mrs. Brown’s.”

Emson’s wife had been the lady’s maid at Edenmore until the death of Alec’s mother. Then the woman had married Emson, the valet-turned-butler who’d always fancied her. They’d both left service, and he’d probably never thought to return. But here he was, still waiting until Edenmore could afford another butler.

Alec sighed. The old man would be waiting a while longer. He pushed the tray aside. Even good food couldn’t tempt him. “It might be better for everyone if you gave me hemlock.”

“Nonsense. Your lady merely needs time to consider the situation rationally. Then I am sure she will return.”

Alec gave a harsh laugh. “She won’t. You don’t know her. She has principles, and they don’t bend for anyone. Certainly not for a bastard like me.”

He’d meant “bastard” in a figurative sense, but when a long silence ensued, and Alec glanced over to find the hoary-headed servant staring oddly at him, a chill swept over him. “You know? About my…”

Emson nodded tersely. “I did serve your father for forty years, my lord.”

A shiver ran down Alec’s spine. “Who else knows?”

“Only me and my wife. It was hard not to notice when our mistress turned up with child, even though the master had not gone to her bed in months.”

Alec sighed. Servants always seemed to know things before anyone else. “I suppose you also know who my real father is.”

“Your mother told Mrs. Emson it was a certain…royal personage.”

“She told me the same.” That was something else he hadn’t told Katherine, and she’d definitely deserved to hear it. “Odd, isn’t it? The earl wasn’t even my father, yet despite all my efforts to avoid his mistakes, here I am, right in his place. At least he managed to hold on to the woman he married for money.”

Emson looked perplexed. “The old earl didn’t marry your mother for money. He loved her then. Thought the sun rose and set in her.”

Alec snorted. “Yes, I could tell from how he treated her.”

“But it was not like that when they were courting. Your mother considered his lordship a very attractive prospect, and he thought her quite amiable. Yes, she had a fortune, but that was merely icing on the cake. She was young and pretty and made him laugh, something you know he rarely did. So he was sure that once they married, she would be the one to help him overcome his problem.”

Alec glanced at him, perplexed. “What problem?”

Emson stiffened. “I beg your pardon. I thought you knew. Since you know all the rest, I thought somebody must have told you—”

“Told me what, damn it?”

Emson actually blushed. Alec didn’t think he’d ever seen the man’s papery cheeks turn pink. “The old earl could not”—he gestured to the drawer that held The Rake’s Rhetorick—“attain the physical state required for those activities illustrated in your reading.”

Alec gaped at him. “He was impotent?”

“I believe that is the term for it, my lord,” Emson mumbled.

“How in God’s name would you know such a thing about him?”

“I was his valet in his salad days, if you will recall. I slept right off his room for many years. And whenever he brought…er…ladies to his rooms, I was the one who…paid them. For services or nonservices, as the case may be. Not to mention that my wife was your mother’s—”

“Enough.” He’d have to watch what he told any valet he ever hired. “So in all the years the earl was married to my mother, he never—”

“Never, from what your mother said to my wife.”

Alec wheeled away from the writing table, hardly able to take it in. He’d painted the old earl as the devil incarnate when the truth was far more complicated.

A sudden thought occurred to him. “That’s why the old earl spent all that money on quack remedies, isn’t it?”

Emson nodded. “He wanted a son very badly.”

“His own son,” Alec bit out. “Not another man’s bastard.”

“It was not merely that. He did love your mother enough to want to—”

“Love? That ass had no idea what love is. He was always calling her vulgar and cold, while she spent her nights crying.”

“It was easier on his pride, I expect, to blame her.” Emson shot him a veiled glance. “Some do say that it is the woman’s fault if the man cannot perform his duties. So he may even have convinced himself that such was the case.”

Alec bristled. “My mother was the sweetest, best—”

“I am not saying he was right, my lord, either in his beliefs or in his actions. Clearly in later years, he took the blame upon himself or he would not have sought cures. I am just saying it weighs sorely on a man when he cannot bed his wife.”

“I suppose that’s true.” He sucked in a heavy breath. “And it probably weighs sorely on the woman, too.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, after the old earl and your mother married, and he realized she was not…the solution to his problem, he lashed out at her. That wounded her feelings and made her uneasy around him, which in turn made him more bitter and on and on. It got worse until finally—”

“She let the Prince of Wales seduce her.”

Emson nodded. “And then the marriage became as you knew it.”

“With the earl always berating her and her believing she was of no worth.” His jaw tightened. “And that her son was a reckless ne’er-do-well who would never be a credit to his name.”

Alec glanced away. He couldn’t believe he was talking about this with Emson. But then, who else was he supposed to talk to about it? The only other people who would understand were his half brothers, who weren’t around, and—

Katherine. If she’d stayed, he could have told her. The woman who’d ached for him because he was “poor” and seemingly too proud to tell her might not have flinched at the idea that he was secretly a bastard because his father had been impotent. She might have understood and accepted it, as she’d done with so many other things about him—why he’d worked with horses, why he’d hidden his past…why he liked to break the rules.

But he’d driven Katherine away. And all because he’d been too much of a coward to trust her with the truth from the beginning.

Just like the old earl.

Alec stared blindly at his servant. “I thought it was the fortune that made it impossible for them to be close. He was always swearing that he wouldn’t have married her if not for it.”

Emson nodded. “The master was wrongheaded and too proud for his own good. Trouble is, his sort of pride has no place in love. A man must be humble enough to show his whole self, bad and good, to the woman he loves if he is to gain her trust.”

“Which I didn’t do,” Alec said.

Emson shrugged. “You weren’t marrying for love. You were marrying for money. That’s different.”

“I wasn’t marrying only for—” He stopped short. He had been. His deceptions and manner of wooing had all been to lessen the risk of losing Katherine’s fortune.

None of it had been to lessen the risk of losing her love. And now that he’d lost both, he saw that he’d put all his attention in the wrong place. Because losing her fortune didn’t mean losing Edenmore. He could always find another heiress or borrow more money—assuming that Katherine kept silent about him in society, which he somehow knew she would.

But he didn’t want another heiress. He only wanted Katherine. So losing her love meant losing it all, because without her…

The reality of what he’d done sank over him like a funeral shroud. Oh, God, how would he live without her? What did it matter if he restored Edenmore to a brilliant and efficient estate if he had no Katherine to share it with?

No Katherine to laugh at his puny jests, no Katherine to fuss over him, no Katherine to love.

He groaned. He loved her. Like an idiot, he’d gone and broken his own rule—not to fall in love with the heiress.

But she loathed him now. And too late, he understood what she’d been trying to tell him. How can I ever separate the things you said to win me, from the things you said to win my fortune?

He hadn’t thought of it that way. He’d been too busy scheming to realize that his one deception would make her regard everything he’d said to her as a lie.

Even if it wasn’t.

But how could she know that, when he’d never shown his true self? When he’d kept parts hidden purposely to deceive her? How could he expect her to know what was real and what wasn’t?

He couldn’t. That damned fortune of hers would always be between them, convincing her that he’d never really cared for her at all.

Unless he gave up the fortune.

The thought hit him like a low branch knocking a rider out of the saddle. If he gave up the fortune, arranged in the marriage settlement for the entire thing to go to her family, then she’d have no reason to balk anymore, no reason to distrust him. She would have to believe he’d meant every word he said.

And he’d forever lose his chance to restore Edenmore to what it had once been.

He could have one or the other: Katherine or Edenmore. Somehow he must find the strength to make the right choice.