Chapter 21

"Colin, wait up!"

Colin did not even bother to turn around when Ethan called out for him. He continued to walk quickly back to his study and then paused before turning on his heel and heading back to the dining hall.

They had reached the now empty room when he felt a hand on his shoulder spinning him on his feet. He glowered at Ethan, who was looking at him like he had lost his mind.

In truth, he just might have.

"What the hell are you doing?" Ethan demanded, a look of exasperation clear on his face. "Why are you running away like a bloody dog with its tail tucked between its legs?"

Colin shrugged his hand off his shoulder. "What dog?" he bit back bitterly. "Am I not a Wolf, as most of the ton's impressionable young debutantes have dubbed me?"

"You are hardly acting like a Wolf now," a deep voice remarked. Hudson was standing just behind Ethan, eyeing Colin coldly. "And you know that very well."

"It is just a fake betrothal, anyway," Colin groused, looking away from their piercing gazes.

His two friends knew him all too well. They would know why he ran away—and why he was acting the way he had been for the past week.

Hudson folded his arms over his chest. "If it is a fake betrothal, then why are you acting the way you are now? If it makes you that uncomfortable, then why not make it real?"

"You do not understand!" Colin bellowed in frustration, running his hand through his hair as he paced nervously. "You know very well why I cannot. For her own sake, I cannot…"

The Duke of Wolverton stared him down, his dark gaze implacable and containing a touch of something he had never before seen—pity. Hudson was actually looking at him in pity.

Colin turned and found Ethan looking at him with the same emotion in his eyes.

He sighed in frustration as he poured himself a glass of brandy that the servants had prepared earlier for the gentlemen guests. His grandmother had the rather odd ability to know just what was needed. Had she perhaps guessed that he was going to turn to spirits to calm his disordered thoughts?

He downed the first glass and poured himself another one.

"You saw how she looked at the parlor," he told them quietly, guilt heavy in his voice. "She should not have to fear for her safety simply because she was being nice to Ethan. You saw how I reacted. I was absolutely livid. I am just like him."

Silence hung heavy in the dining hall as Colin drank another glass, the liquid burning down his throat as it went. It was far better though than the irrational anger that coursed through him and the turbulent confusion that addled his mind.

"You are nothing like him."

Colin closed his eyes, stiffening slightly as he felt Ethan's hand on his shoulder. He could still see the discomfort on Alice's face. If she saw more of this side of him, that discomfort would soon turn into fear, and that was something he could not bear.

He did not want her to fear him, but his father's blood apparently ran strong in his veins. He had managed to keep his emotions in check, but for how long? How long until he lost all control and ended up hurting those around him?

"Hey." Ethan's voice was one that he might use on a wild horse. "You probably would not have done anything more than punch me—which I might have deserved, might I add?—"

"Enough." Hudson's voice was sharp enough to cut through steel and boulders. His eyebrows had snapped together, his eyes boring into Colin.

"How long do you intend on pampering him, Ethan?" he demanded, his gaze flicking briefly to Ethan before returning to Colin. "He is just afraid."

Colin glared at his friend. "Shut up, Hudson."

But Hudson simply continued to look at him with that same cold glint in his eyes. "You are right, Colin, you do not deserve the young lady. Worse, you are running around like a headless chicken, telling her one thing and doing another. And that," he bit out, "is a far worse thing than your father had ever done."

"You do not know anything!" Colin growled. "You do not know how that man destroyed our family. How he killed my mother and then proceeded to kill himself because he was too much of a coward to face the consequences of his actions!"

"And you are not?" Hudson's retort was cold and meant to cut to the bone. "Is that what you want to hear? That you are just as bad or worse than your father?"

Colin staggered back at the weight of his friend's words. For the past half of the decade, he had borne the guilt of what his father had done and the chaos that his actions had wrought on their family.

He was no stranger to the man's outbursts of jealousy. How he had all but confined his mother to the estate and forbade her from seeing any of her friends.

How his actions had culminated in the disaster that still haunted him and Evelyn to the present.

"If you cannot make up your bloody damned mind, then let her go." Hudson's cold voice pierced through the silence. "Do not raise her hopes. Do not toy with her emotions. Let her go and find someone far more deserving. After all, is that not what she aims to achieve with this fake betrothal of yours?"

The final question was thrown scathingly at him before Hudson quietly turned on his heel and left him and Ethan in the dining hall.

"Good grief." Ethan shook his head with a rueful smile on his face. "You just cannot make a mistake with him, can you?"

Colin managed a slight smile. "He is not wrong, though."

"Do not tell me that you actually agree with what he just said?" His friend frowned and poured himself a glass of brandy as well. "He has always been so exacting with himself that I wished even he would take some time and loosen up."

"Hudson would probably rather kill himself."

"No doubt about it."

The two friends shared a look, and Colin instinctively poured them both another glass. Hopefully, it would see him through the next day, and Ethan looked as if he was all too willing to accompany him in his misery.

"I should just end this fake betrothal," he muttered as he swirled the amber liquid in his glass. "End it all before she hands her heart over to me. Either that or I take her body and soul."

The crisp sound of the glass hitting the table nearly jolted him out of the quagmire of misery he had immersed himself in. He looked up to find Ethan glaring at him with a steely look in his eyes.

"Really, Colin? Is that what you got out of the whole spiel that Hudson just put up?" he demanded.

Colin felt the frustration build up from within him. But then again, how could even his two closest friends understand the kind of turmoil that had been raging within him?

"You might not agree with my decision, but that is what must happen," he bit out, all but slamming his empty glass back on the table as he glared at his friend. "My father set my mother on fire, Ethan. And you think that I, his son, who takes after him in nearly every way, should marry someone?"

He could not stomach the thought of harming anyone the way his father did, let alone one as bright and spirited and cheerful as Alice Barkley. He would only wear her down and kill the light in her eyes.

He heard the sound of a chair scraping across the floor and looked up to find Ethan standing over him. His friend's eyes were clouded with some emotion. Was it pity? He supposed he did present a rather pitiful sight.

"I am sorry."

It was all Ethan said before he walked out of the dining hall without even sparing his miserable friend another glance. He did not care to elaborate and left Colin to wallow in his wretchedness.

Colin sighed as he poured himself more brandy. They would never understand him, nor the guilt and fear that plagued him ever since he had heard of his parents' death. He had dealt with the aftermath, but people were bound to talk, and his father's jealous fits were hardly a secret.

The ton would never accuse a deceased duke outright of murdering his own wife before killing himself, but there was talk of it. Colin had spent the last few years making sure that it never reached Evie, that she would be shielded from all the darkness that shrouded Blackthorn Estate.

He never thought that it would be Alice and her vivid green eyes who would stoke the fires and wake the beast that he had thought he had long put to sleep.

He sighed as he raked his fingers through his disheveled hair. None of them understood, and it was all for the best. He would bear the burden of his father's sins alone, and when he died, Colin would make sure they died with him.