In the thirteen days since Rhys had arrived for his brother’s house party, his life had come full circle.
“What in the blazes are you doing?”
The following morning, the sun not even yet risen, Lettie stormed the billiards room, stealing the futile moment of peace Rhys had been in search of.
“I thought it would be self-explanatory,” he drawled. He let his cue stick fly, landing a perfect strike. “I am playing billiards.”
The crack of the balls filled the room, usually calming, and now—
Nothing.
Alice had been in Pup Pratt’s arms. She’d had that pompous bastard’s lips on hers. He’d given her leave to sever their arrangement before the house party had concluded. Nothing could have provided a greater death knell to their whirlwind courtship than Alice being discovered… with her former love.
His grip tightened reflexively around the stick, draining the blood from his knuckles.
“Alice,” his termagant of a sister clipped out. “I’m speaking of Alice and… you.”
Alice and Rhys. They had done it. They had crafted a masterful display for his family and friends. “What of her?” he forced himself to say, infusing a bored nonchalance to that query. “It is my understanding the lady took her leave this morning.” Even as he said it, agony sluiced away at his chest; the jagged ache of a thousand knives being thrust into his heart. They’d known one another thirteen days. Thirteen damned days. And yet, she’d shown him how to laugh again. She’d kicked down the walls he’d built about himself, keeping the whole world out, and let her inside. Fool. You bloody fool.
Lettie slammed her palm down on the felt. “That is what you’d say?” she cried. “You are in love with her.”
Love her? Alice? It was preposterous. Madness. It was… true. God help him, somewhere along the way, truth and pretend had merged, and upended his entire world. He swallowed around the despair stuck in his throat. I love her.
Feeling Lettie’s eyes on him, Rhys started a path around the table, considering his next shot.
Planting her hands on her hips, Lettie moved into his path. She wrinkled her nose. “Are you cup shot?”
“No.”
His too-clever-than-was-good-for-anybody sister knitted her eyebrows into a single line.
“Very well, I’m a little foxed,” he mumbled. The half-bottle of brandy he’d consumed since Alice had fled the hall last evening, however, had little effect on his misery; despair continued to invade corners of his being that had been previously empty, parts of himself that she’d brought to life.
And now she is gone.
Rhys’ throat moved spasmodically as the energy drained from his legs. Sliding to the floor, he leaned against the billiards table, borrowing support from the mahogany leg. “She is gone,” he forced himself to say those three words aloud.
Their game of pretend had come to an end, serving them both well: Rhys had been spared his mother’s matchmaking attempts and, by the passionate embrace he’d stumbled upon last evening between Pratt and Alice, the pup had been gripped by jealousy. Red, searing, vicious poison that destroyed. The kind eating Rhys alive like a fast-moving cancer even now.
The floorboards groaned and he dimly registered Lettie settling onto the floor beside him. His always garrulous sister laid her head against his shoulder and, this time, she said nothing.
“I miss h-her.” His voice broke.
“Then go to her,” Lettie urged. She gave another wrinkle of her nose. “Not now necessarily. You stink like you’ve been rolling around the stables.”
An agonized laugh escaped him. “Oh, poppet.” He ruffled the top of her head, the same way he once had when she was a small girl. “It’s complicated.”
She swatted at his hand. “I’m not a child. You love Alice. Alice loves you.”
“Alice loves Pratt.” That admission cracked another part of his heart and the already useless organ crumbled under the truth there.
His sister worried at her lower lip. “Is this about her being discovered last evening… with him?”
“You know about that?”
“I overheard Mother speaking to Miles,” she muttered, layering her cheek against her skirts. “I did not believe it.”
“I saw it,” he said gruffly. How was his voice so steady?
Lettie stared contemplatively at the doorway. “There has to be more there. There just has to. She never loved Henry. Not truly.”
The portion of his foolish heart that lived only for hope, jumped. “Did she tell you that?”
The hesitation there told Rhys more clearly than words the answer before his sister spoke. “No. But I know her and I’ve seen you both together and it is… magic.” She clasped her hands to her breast and, in this moment, she was transformed back into the troublesome, starry-eyed girl of long ago.
It was pretend. That answer hung on his lips. In the end, he couldn’t shatter Lettie’s naïve but poignantly beautiful dream of love.
A light rapping on the door spared Rhys from saying more.
“Enter,” they both called out.
Philippa ducked her head inside. She did a search of the room, and then her gaze snagged on where Rhys and Lettie sat. “Forgive me for interrupting,” she said quietly. “I was wondering if I might speak with you.”
“Of course,” Lettie said, hopping up.
“No…” Philippa’s pretty blue eyes went to Rhys. “Your brother, that is.”
Oh, bloody hell. Intervention from his sister-in-law now, too.
Lettie inclined her head. “I must warn you,” she said, skipping over. “He stinks.” His youngest sibling lowered her voice to a whisper loud enough to be heard around the room. “Badly.”
Philippa grinned. “I will uh… take care to leave a sizeable distance between us when we speak.”
Lettie winked and took her leave. She slammed the door hard in her wake.
Reluctantly, Rhys came to his feet. “Philippa,” he greeted, dropping a deep bow.
The lady jerked to a stop several paces away. She touched gloved fingertips to her nose. “Uh… yes. Well, it appears your sister was not exaggerating.”
“How may I be of assistance?” he drawled, fetching his cue stick.
“Miles shared with me the situation you and he both stumbled upon late last evening.” She folded her hands primly at her waist.
“The situation?” he echoed, taking his next shot. “Is that what my mother has taken to referring to it as?”
Philippa went silent.
Rhys looked over his shoulder.
A frown marred her lips. “She cannot very well take to calling it a scandal when she still carries the hope you’ll marry Miss Cunning.”
No, that had always been the aspiration and expectation. He brought his arm back and propelled the stick forward. “My dear mama will take great care that…” A vise strangled his heart as the memory assaulted him. Pratt’s hands on Alice as she’d been in nothing more than her nightshift. The other man’s groans as he’d—“My mother will say nothing,” he finished in deadened tones.
His sister-in-law frowned. “Is that what you believe?” she said crisply. “That I have some worry about what will be said about my house party?” Hurt outrage tinged her voice.
He scrubbed his spare hand over the stubble on his unshaven cheeks. “Forgive me.”
Philippa waved him off. “That lady loves you, Rhys Brookfield. That is what I’ve come to say.”
The stick slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor. It rolled to a stop at his sister-in-law’s slippers.
“You are wrong,” he said hoarsely, wanting her to be correct. Wishing it were so.
“Sometimes, I am.” Her eyes twinkled. “This, however, is not one of those times. Prior to the situation in the hallway, we had spoken in her chambers. I mentioned you were in the billiards room with my husband.”
Hope flared in his chest, born of his want and desperation. “You spoke to her?”
She nodded.
He took a frantic step forward and then forced himself to stop. “What did you…?”
“What did I say to her?” She arched a brow. “I encouraged her to follow her heart.”
Follow her heart.
And that is precisely what she’d done. She’d followed it all the way to Pratt’s arms and an embrace that would be forever etched in Rhys’ mind.
But what if Philippa is correct…?
The tantalizing prospect whispered forward.
“And you believe that talk you shared was leading her to me?” he ventured hopefully. How to explain then that kiss? That bloody embrace that fueled Rhys’ bloodlust, filling him with a primitive need to tear Pup Pratt apart limb from scrawny limb?
“I would never presume to know what is in her heart,” Philippa said regretfully. “I do believe, however, you know the answer to that better than I, or anyone, ever could.”
With that, Philippa took her leave and Rhys was left alone with only that veiled statement for company.