Chapter Twenty-Two

" F ather." Anthony looked up at the greying man sitting opposite him at the breakfast table. For the past few days, he had stalked through the halls of his father's house in angry silence. He had left Cecilia lying naked in his bed and ridden to his father's country estate, unsure of where to go or what to do to be rid of her. He needed time to let himself think. But he had not been rid of her for one moment. He felt her insistent, desperate caress in every movement of his clothing against his body. The autumn breeze through his hair when he went riding was her breath on his face as she whispered "I need you." Every classical statue in his father's garden called her poise to mind, drowning him with longing to relive their first meeting. Every night was plagued by fitful dreams of Cecilia's skin, red with blood. Cecilia's lips, open in a cry of pleasure. Cecilia's luscious hair, lapping against his chest in the bath. Cecilia's honest, trusting eyes. He slept naked, hugging the sheets to him as if they could in some small way replace her touch, her warmth. He woke every morning cold and miserable, with the same condemning thought gnawing at the corners of his mind. Need or love? Need or love? Need or love?

"Yes?" his father said.

Anthony swallowed. "I have been considering matrimony, Father."

His father looked back down at his morning paper and shrugged. "You know my requirements. Is she rich and titled?"

Anthony's lip curled in distaste. "She is the daughter of a duke. And she is rich as Croesus."

"Make an offer then, before someone else snatches her up." The Earl of Huntington took a bite of poached egg.

"That's just it, though," Anthony said, setting his fork down with much more force than necessary. "She's perfect. For you, that is. But I want to make sure she's perfect for me."

The Earl looked at his eldest son over the top of his paper and raised an eyebrow. "Don't be sentimental, Anthony."

Anthony continued, ignoring him. "It's been a week since the thought first crept into my mind that I might actually love her. And the moment I thought that, I ran away." His father raised another eyebrow. "And not for the reasons you think. Not because I didn't want to find myself wrapped around a woman's finger. I feel the greatest pleasure of my life when I'm with this woman. If this is what love feels like," he pounded a fist dramatically into his chest, "then I do not fear it at all.

"But every time I think of her, I think of you. Of your mercenary, though I will admit simple, criteria." The Earl frowned and opened his mouth in protest, but Anthony would not let him get a word in. "And I think, she is rich and she is titled. She is perfect. And then I think of you and mother, God rest her soul, and the cold, miserable existence you slogged through while you were married. And I think, it cannot be right to put love and familial obligation into the same thought. If what I feel is love, then it is warm and giving and all-forgiving, and it is nothing like what you had. Considering you and mother never seemed to love each other, how am I to judge my own love? I have nothing with which to compare it. Is it love I feel? Or is it a fierce but passing infatuation that, if saddled with matrimony, would sour like your own marriage and leave me miserable. And if you know me at all, you know that I am married to my own happiness. I could never put myself or a woman through what you put mother through. So I am left with the opinion that I cannot, in good conscience, consider the object of my affections and your own wishes at the same time. If I am to examine my emotions, I must forget everything you've instilled in me. It has been excessively difficult." He paused.

"What exactly are you saying?" his father asked, his voice hard.

Anthony took a deep breath and pressed his fists against the edge of the table. He focused on his father's cravat pin, rather than the man's stony glare. "Did you and mother ever love each other?"

The Earl snorted. "She was my wife. Of course not."

"Did you ever love anyone else?" Anthony asked. The Earl frowned. "Anyone?"

"I certainly didn't raise you to be this mawkish," Anthony's father sneered. "I can hardly recognize you as my son."

"How can you?" Anthony asked. "How can you be so cold and yet live?"

"Be careful what you say, Anthony," the Earl warned. Anthony did not heed the warning.

"I cannot uncover my own feelings until I have freed myself from yours, Father."

The Earl leaned back in his chair but said nothing.

"I am cutting myself off," Anthony said finally, his words quiet and certain.

"Think before you act."

"I am cutting myself off. I do not want your allowance. I do not want your opinions. I do not want your ridiculous ultimatums about my future wife. I want to think for myself. I want to be in love." I want someone to love me.

"You need my money," the Earl admonished.

"I won enough money at the faro tables last month against Lord Darling alone to set me up modestly for the next year. And should the woman I love return my affections as I am sure she does, provided I have not irrevocably insulted her by my abrupt departure the last time we were together, then my pride is not so great that I would not allow her to support me, considering how fabulously wealthy she is and how much she would enjoy having me at her mercy. In fact, I have learned in the past fortnight that feeling dependent on a woman is not an unpleasant feeling at all, provided the woman on which one is dependent is..."

… is Cecilia Warenne .

The Earl huffed in disgust and set his paper carefully on the breakfast table. "You are a fool, Anthony."

"Well, that decides it then, doesn't it? Didn't someone once say men are all fools in love? So I must be in love," Anthony proclaimed, and a satisfactory shade of red overcame his father's face.

"I have put up with your ungentlemanly behavior and waste of money for nearly thirty years, Anthony," The Earl spat. "If you continue to treat my fatherly affection with such distaste I shall have no qualms in seeing that all you ever get from me is my title upon my death. Not even a penny with which to burnish it."

"That was the idea," Anthony smirked. The further he pushed, the more certain he felt. That must mean he was either heading for a monumental fall, or he was doing the right thing.

"You will regret this."

"I regret not staying in Bath in the arms of the woman I love and sending you a letter to this effect rather than coming here."

"If you give up your inheritance, I shall give every last cent to your brothers."

"And no doubt they will drink and gamble it away as I have for the past nine and twenty years," Anthony said and rose from the table. "Goodbye father, and wish me happiness, if you can find it in your egotistical heart to do so." He made a curt bow and walked out.