Beauty and the Earl Page 18

  “I do now.” Christian reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew two packets of letters.

  He moved forward and set the letters on the edge of the desk near where Liam stood, then took a long step back away from him. Liam stared at them, but made no move toward them.

  “You can read them for yourself,” Christian said. “Keep them if you’d like. But I would be happy to give you the annotated version for the sake of time.”

  Liam arched a brow. “With your own slant?”

  “You think I would lie and then leave these with you to uncover the truth anyway?” Christian asked with a tilt of his head. “You may despise me, but I hope you give me more credit for intelligence than that.”

  Liam let out a long sigh. “Why don’t we start before all that? What made you seek out these answers you claim you’ve found?”

  “Ah,” Christian said and his gaze slipped to the sidebar across the office. “May I have a drink?”

  “Of course,” Liam said.

  Christian crossed to the bar and quickly poured himself a scotch. He held up the bottle and Liam nodded, so he poured a second one. As he returned to Liam, he held out the glass.

  “I was like you, Windbury. I never cared why our families hated each other, I did as I was told to do and as I learned to do. And when Matilda died, well, I lost any sense of reason at all.”

  “As evidenced by your actions toward Ava,” Liam said softly. He motioned to the chairs by the fire and they took them.

  Christian stared at the fire. “Yes. I did something horrible when I took your sister in revenge. But since it ended with our marriage, with the fact that I love that woman more than I have ever loved another person or thing…I won’t apologize for that.”

  Liam flinched. Hearing this man profess his love for Ava still stung. And yet, as he looked at Rothcastle, he could see for the first time that the duke truly felt what he declared. There really was a deep and abiding love for Ava in this man.

  “Are you saying that your marriage to my sister made you wonder about the origins of our family feud?” Liam said, avoiding the tender subject of love.

  Christian nodded. “The more I loved her, the closer we grew, the more I felt I needed to know what had taken things to such a desperate level between our families. And so I began to seek out the answers. I searched family homes, I looked into vaults, I asked questions. And finally, I found the first pack of letters sitting untouched in a secret compartment in my father’s old desk.”

  Liam glanced at them. “All right, Rothcastle, I’ll ask. What do these letters magically reveal?”

  “Your great-grandmother, Eleanor—do you know much about her?”

  Liam wrinkled his brow in confusion at what seemed like a change of subject. “No, she was long dead, as was my great-grandfather, by the time I was born.”

  “Well, Eleanor was quite the diamond of the first water the year she came out in Society,” Christian explained. “She caught the eye of my great-grandfather, Bennett. They even got engaged, and I suppose the world would have been a very different place until she met a dashing young man named Edward.”

  Liam shook his head. “My great-grandfather.”

  “Yes.” Christian sighed. “My letters were ones she wrote to my great-grandfather. The other letters are ones I managed to collect from one of your family estates when I convinced Ava to take me there a few months ago. They are to your great-grandfather, as well as a few other things she wrote or received about the situation.”

  Liam got up and paced to the packets. He lifted them, yellow with age, the handwriting old fashioned.

  “Are you saying she sported with them?” he said, jaw clenching. “Blaming my family for it all, are you?”

  To his surprise, Christian said, “No. Actually, I don’t think she liked the situation. She was engaged to one man and fell passionately in love with another. But she cared for my great-grandfather—it’s evident in her letters to him. Still, she didn’t handle it well, but she was young. And a hatred began to fester.”

  Liam swallowed, trying to think about what he knew of his great-grandparents. Little, for he had never delved with much interest into family history.

  “How was it resolved?”

  “She ran off to Gretna Green with your great-grandfather,” Christian said. “It would have created a huge scandal, but it was all hushed up somehow by their fathers and monies were exchanged. But the two men despised each other and they spent the rest of their lives engaged in a war with one another. A war which they passed to their sons, their sons’ sons and so on until it landed in our laps.”

  “She died young,” Liam mused, fingering the yellowing sheets. “Eleanor, I mean. I recall that from our family history.”

  “Yes, very young.” Christian frowned. “She bore a son, your grandfather, and within two years, she was dead from some kind of wasting disease. But I wonder, was she like our sisters? Was she torn apart by the war between the two men? Was she simply not strong enough, like they were, to weather it?”

  Liam pinched his lips together. “So it was all over a woman.”

  Christian nodded. “It appears so. We have battled and hated and destroyed for four generations…all over a woman who died nearly a hundred years ago.”

  “Does Ava know?” Liam whispered.

  Christian shook his head. “You and I have carried this on. I thought you should know first. And Ava had a great deal on her mind, I didn’t want to trouble her with the particulars of my investigation until I could be certain it would bear fruit.”

  Liam paced the room, the horrible truth of this sinking deep into his soul.

  “God,” he murmured.

  “I know.” Christian nodded. “I felt the same way. It is the horror that binds us, Liam.”

  Liam flinched at the other man’s use of his given name. He’d never used it before. It sounded foreign coming from his lips.

  “We have hurt those we loved,” Christian continued, rising to move toward him. “We’ve broken everything around us in order to hurt each other. Over this. Over something that seems so foolish now.”

  Liam nodded. His stomach turned at that thought.

  “I love your sister,” Christian said. “Perhaps you don’t believe that, but I do.”

  Liam looked at him. “Actually, I do believe that. I see it in your eyes when you talk about her.”

  Christian nodded. “Then you must also know how much I love the child which grows within her too. I cannot allow that baby to endure this foolish battle, Liam. I cannot allow him or her to grow up as we did.”

  “No,” Liam said. “Nor can I.”

  Christian hesitated and then he stepped forward, hand outstretched. Liam stared at the offering. If he took Rothcastle’s hand, he would be turning his back on the hatred. He would be offering forgiveness and receiving it. It was something he had never thought to do. It was something he wouldn’t have been able to do.

  Before Violet.

  He took Christian’s hand and they shook. In that moment, something utterly strange happened. All the hatred, all the pain, all the ugly feelings he had held seemed to melt away. He actually staggered as they left him, and he stared at Christian. The other man had a similar expression to the one he knew was on his own face. Relief and shock, mixed together.

  Liam pulled back first, rubbing his hand as if the emotions had bled out through it. He looked at Christian.

  “So what will we be now? Not enemies, but…what?”

  Christian smiled slightly. “We could start with brothers-in-law. Leave it at that for a while. Though I’m certain Ava will be pressing us to be friends three minutes after she realizes we are attempting to make peace.”

  Liam shook his head with a small laugh. “Yes, that would be our Ava.”

  “Our Ava,” Christian repeated, and he smiled. “This will make her very happy.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it will,” Liam agreed. “But before we speak to her, I have something to discuss with yo
u. She tells me you were the one who found Violet.”

  Christian stiffened slightly. “Yes, I did. But if you believe I took pleasure in sending her here, I did not. I didn’t agree with Ava’s methods, though I went along with them because she insisted.”

  “Yes, she told me that as well,” Liam said. “And I believe her, though it is more natural to me to make you the villain who rubbed his hands together and planned my ultimate heartache.”

  “Those habits will die hard for both of us, I’m certain,” Christian said with a shrug. Then he looked at Liam closer. “But are you saying that Violet’s presence here and her leaving have caused you heartache?”

  Liam drew back. He hadn’t meant to share that much of his heart with this man he was just agreeing to stop hating. They weren’t friends, after all. He had no idea that they ever would be.

  “To say you experience heartache to me means you have feelings for the woman,” Christian said after Liam didn’t answer for a moment. When he continued his silence, Christian shrugged. “I know from experience that love rarely comes along. If you’ve been lucky enough to find it again after the loss of my sister…well, I don’t think you should deny it.”

  Liam stared at him. Was Rothcastle actually encouraging him to seek out happiness? The world was truly spinning off its axis today.

  “I’ll consider that.” He motioned for the door. “Shall we go see my sister? I’m certain she is wearing a path in my parlor rug as she waits for us to either kill each other or come to an agreement.”

  Christian laughed. “That is certainly our Ava.”

  Liam led the way and they walked down the hall, silent and slightly uncomfortable with this newfound peace between them. Liam was certain at some point it would become natural, he just had no idea when.

  But when he opened the parlor door and they stepped in together, Ava turned. Her face dismissed any misgivings he might have about burying the feud with Christian. She lit up as she saw them standing together and tears immediately began to flow down her face as she rushed to them.

  She stopped in front of them. “You are both alive, that is more than I would have hoped for not so very long ago.”

  Liam smiled and would have spoken, but Christian did so first. He touched Ava’s shoulders turning her to face him.

  “This war is over,” he said, his voice soft and yet trembling with emotion. “I swear to you that your brother and I will never, ever bring you pain or fear or worry again. At least not when it comes to each other.”

  She blinked up at him, her lip quivering. “Truly?” she whispered.

  “Truly,” Liam said for Christian.

  Ava turned toward him slightly, reaching out to take his hand. With the other hand, she grasped Christian’s fingers, standing between them as the bridge she had fought to become. The bridge she was and that she and her children would be from now on.

  And Liam would have felt utter and complete peace if it weren’t for one thing.

  Violet.

  He squeezed his sister’s fingers gently before he released them and paced away as thoughts of the other woman pounded through his aching head.

  He felt Ava’s eyes on him as he moved restlessly through the room, as well as Christian’s. He flinched at revealing so much to them, but he couldn’t help it. The resolution of long held hatreds could only take him so far when his mind was tangled up with thoughts of a woman who had set him on his head and heels for three weeks.

  “Why did you bring Violet with you?” he asked, refusing to look at his sister and brother-in-law.

  He heard Ava catch her breath. “I won’t lie to you.”

  He faced her. “Please don’t.”

  She nodded. “I wasn’t certain that you would see me. I have come to view her as a friend to me and I wanted to have her here in case I needed her counsel.”

  His lips thinned at the answer. “So she was to use what she knew against me if you couldn’t get what you wanted?”

  Ava stepped forward. “Are you so determined to think the worst of this woman? I practically bribed her into doing it, Liam. She was terrified to return to Bath and risk your wrath, risk your disdain.”

  He arched a brow. “What did you bribe her with?”

  Christian cleared his throat. “She needed a residence in Romwell and I assisted her with finding an arrangement as well as bought her home in London so that she could move as soon as possible.”

  Liam squeezed his eyes shut. Of course she would want to go to her son immediately. She would go to the life she had desired for so many years. Though he doubted she had told his sister and Christian that. It was a private pain, even if he had spent the past few days refusing to allow her even that quarter.

  “She’ll leave for the north as soon as our business here is concluded,” his sister added softly. “Which I suppose will be today now that you have seen me, now that we have made our peace and can finally move forward with our lives.”

  Liam didn’t respond. Move forward with his life? He had spent so much time avoiding just that and now he was going to be forced to do it without Violet. Without the woman he…

  He broke the thought off. There was no way he could feel what his mind was screaming at him that he felt. Love was something he had been lucky enough to find once. There was no way he could feel it again for a woman who had come to him under false pretenses. Who had lied to him. Who had used him.

  Who had tenderly cared for him. Who had offered him solace and painful secrets. Who had given herself over to him and asked him to do the same.

  A woman who meant everything to him.

  He shook his head as the emotions he had been fighting washed over him fully. He loved Violet Milford.

  “Liam, come back with us to the home we’ve let here,” Ava urged, moving toward him to touch his arm. “Come back and talk to Violet.”

  He shook his head. The very idea was terrifying. “I can’t do that.”

  “You can,” Ava whispered. “Please, Liam. Come back with us and see her.”

  He felt the ice he’d kept around himself melting. He wanted to see Violet. It felt like an eternity since he’d smelled her, touched her, held her. He needed it like she was water in the desert, food in a famine, and perhaps that was exactly what she had been to him. Rescue after years of being lost and alone.

  “I will,” he whispered with a shaky nod. “I’ll come. I’ll see her.”

  When they entered the house in Bath less than an hour later, Liam’s hands were shaking. He stood in the parlor, a servant taking his coat and hat, saying words he didn’t understand as he stared up toward the chambers on the second floor.

  Somewhere up there, Violet was waiting.

  “What do you mean she left?”

  His sister’s voice pierced through his fog and he jerked his face toward the servant, truly seeing the man for the first time. “Left?”

  The butler cleared his throat and shot a quick glance toward Christian. “Y-Yes sir. Miss Milford departed about an hour after Lord and Lady Rothcastle left to visit your estate, my lord.”

  Liam staggered back. “Could she have simply gone shopping?” His eyes went wide. “Or perhaps to visit a friend she has here in town, Olivia Cranfield?”

  The way the servant’s eyes went down, but not before Liam saw the pity in his glance answered the question, but the man spoke anyway. “Miss Milford took all her belongings, my lord. And she said that Lord and Lady Rothcastle would find a note of explanation in her room.”

  Liam clenched his fist at his side, exchanged a brief glance with his sister, whose cheeks were pale and eyes wide. Then he turned on his heel and started up the stairs.

  “Where was she staying?” he demanded.

  He glanced back to find the butler looking at Christian for permission to answer this question from a man he had never even met. Christian bobbed out a quick nod that made Liam happy they had set their differences aside.

  “Up the stairs and to your right, my lord,” the servant explain
ed as he motioned upward. “The third chamber on the left was Miss Milford’s. I haven’t yet had it cleaned since I wasn’t sure what their Graces would have me do.”

  “You did the right thing, Simms,” Ava reassured him softly. “Will you leave us for a moment?”

  The servant seemed just as pleased to depart as Liam was to see him go. Liam turned on his heel and moved up the stairs. His breath came short, not with exertion, but with emotion as he turned toward the room the man had indicated. He hesitated before the chamber and slowly reached out to touch the door handle, as if it would shock him.

  As he stepped inside, his knees very nearly buckled. Indeed, the room was empty and there was no indication anyone was returning to it. But even though she had only been there a few hours, he could smell Violet’s perfume in the air. He could feel her presence, and it cut him down to the bone because she wasn’t there.

  She had gone without even trying to see him.

  He rested a hand on the back of a chair and leaned heavily, staring at the bed she had never slept in, thinking of her in his bed.

  “Liam?”

  He turned to find only his sister standing at the door. Although he and Christian had made peace, the man seemed to respect and understand that they had not yet reached the point where Liam wished to share this darkest moment of his soul with a man who had been his greatest enemy up until just hours ago.

  “Please,” he whispered as he turned away. “A moment.”

  He heard her sharp intake of breath, but she didn’t leave. Instead, she stepped inside the room, briefly squeezed his arm as she passed him and then moved toward the bedside table he had been too distracted to fully notice. There was a note there, folded, with Ava’s name written across it in Violet’s flowing, expressive script.

  “Shall I read it?” his sister asked. “Or would you like to do it?”

  He stared at her, stared at the letter not meant for him. It was torment to hear Violet’s words read to him, but not knowing what she said was worse.

  “The letter is yours—you may do as you wish,” he forced himself to say.