Chapter 27

CHAPTER 27

S omething tickled her nose, but Bridget shifted her face from the irritant—only to meet another. She twisted again—but the same thing happened, and irked, she resisted the initial tugs of wakefulness, but she couldn’t ignore the irritant anymore.

Her eyes fluttered open and realized the irritation—William’s chest hair. She was sprawled like a starfish over his chest and feeling his heat under her cheek made her body warm all over. Last afternoon returned to her in a flash, and joy flamed so brightly within her that she did not dare to move.

I am truly his wife now.

She closed her eyes to the flickering firelight and thought back to the soft, sweet words in her ear as he moved within her. Her skin flushed at the memory of his weight on her, the musk of his skin, and the thick pressure of him inside her.

She basked in the glory of waking in her husband’s arms, atop his very muscular, very naked body.

“I could feel you staring at me.” William’s voice rumbled under her ear.

Humored, she raised her head to look at him. His hair was tousled around his face with sleep like a boy’s. The lines on his face were eased, and a smile was in his eyes. He had never looked more handsome.

“Can you blame me? You are relatively handsome,” she replied.

“Relatively?” his brows shot up. “I am insulted.”

His husky grunt rolled over her at the same time that he did. Pinned beneath him, she could not help but snicker. “Troglodyte.”

“ Your troglodyte,” he murmured, pinning her arms over her head before slanting his mouth over hers.

He gave her a gentle, almost courtly kiss. She tasted herself on his lips, and despite her satiated state, titillating anticipation rippled through her. When he released her hands, she ran her fingers over his shoulders and down his arms.

“Another round then?” she asked, feeling his arousal against her inner thigh.

Pulling away, he buried his head in her shoulder, and laughed, “As much as I would like that, I need to get to Gentleman’s Jacks this morning.”

“To train?”

“Yes,” he replied. “A light round, because later tonight, my dear, is the final match of the Circuit. And I must win.”

“May I attend tonight?” she asked.

He considered it. “I am sure you can, but I will have to make sure you’re protected. Lightholder and Pembroke will be there with you. I will not have any man try to approach you.”

“Jealous?”

“Extremely,” he swung his legs out from under the sheets and stood.

“May I invite my brother’s friend Baron Howell as well?”

He twisted his head, expression dark and pondering, “About him, I never got to say before but I do not like the way he looks at you. You may think of him as a friend, but I do not believe he feels the same.”

Bridget made to tell him about the numerous times Adam had proposed marriage—jestingly, she was sure—but bit her tongue on that. If anything, it could give William more fuel to the fire of his assumptions.

“He’s not like that,” she said, sitting up and laying on his back. “He’s a second brother to me.”

William rolled his neck. “I am only telling you how men think, lass. We’re like buzzards, circling and circling until the prey gives up the fight. But if you are certain he is no threat, you can invite him. I trust you. Care to join me for a bath?”

While he had his pack with him, William’s focus was on finding the man Ginger had told him about, Reginald Huffington . It was the final day of the Circuit—every prizefighter in their right mind would be out in numbers.

Stepping into the exercise room, he found he was right; every square had two men sparring in them and he wound through the other men who were waiting for their turns.

He found the gentleman in question. An ex-army man, Huffington was in his forties, tall, dark-haired with cold, dark, onyx eyes. It spoke of a man who had seen too much darkness in his life to count the light.

“Huffington,” he greeted him. “May I have a minute of your time?”

“Your Grace,” he inclined his head to a quiet corner. “What can I do for you?”

“I have it on good authority that you used to mentor a man named Frederick Wycliffe, the current Viscount of Marchwood. Do you know where he is?”

Huffington gawked at him as if William had asked him to fetch cheese from the bottom of the ocean or pluck it from the moon. Uneasy, William waited for his answer.

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” William asked.

With a muscle in his jaw clenching, Huffington ground out, “I told that daft boy not to push himself too hard, I warned him, but he did nae listen. Already hell-bent on winning that fortune for himself and his sister, he stepped into the ring with the masked marauder, with you —twice.”

Dread began to settle in William's gut, and it built until it clogged his throat with a lump the size of a West Indies Island. “With me? Twice ?”

Huffington’s response came as a silent nod.

The entirety of his world seemed to dawn on him all at once. “Wait. Do you mean… do you mean Ricky was—”

“ Frederick ,” Huffington affirmed lowly. “An alias of his he acquired in the army. And you, good sir, put him down for good a month ago.”

Horror and disbelief made caustic rounds in his breastbone and almost took his knees out from under him. Slapping a hand to the wall, he swallowed over the bile racing up his throat while his vision splintered in two.

The memory of Ricky falling over, frothing at the mouth made his blood chill and acid burn right through his stomach.

He had killed Bridget’s brother. Unknowingly and unintentionally of course but that did not negate the fact that his blow to the chest had sent the man to his grave.

How could he tell Bridget? Should he tell her at all?

“Don’t take it too hard, Your Grace,” Huffington muttered, clapping William’s shoulder. “As determined as he was and as foolhardy as he was, someone else woulda’ landed the blow. It was only a matter of time.”

Huffington’s cold comfort did not make much of a difference; in his mind’s eye, William could only see over and over the distress and hatred radiating from Bridget’s eyes when he told her. A heated spear jammed itself in his heart at the thought. What curse was this?

He could not tell the lady he loved he had murdered her brother.

She would hate him to the day he died and in the life after.

Was it not just yestereve she wished she hadn’t asked of you to look for her brother? Was it not that moment she was about to choose you over him?

It did not matter a whit. Frederick was her brother. Didn’t family ties trump a marriage?

“I buried him in a pauper's grave in Highgate Cemetery.”

“I—I—” William raked fingers through his hair and grabbed the roots in confused frustration and grief. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Get a drink,” Huffington advised. “Some of the good stuff. It’ll help.”

No, it won’t.

Teeth grit, William went to change; he needed to work off sudden aggravation. She is going to hate me to the day I die, and I do not think my love for her will be any balm. I will just have to prepare myself to lose her. After tonight.