The accidental groom

Unveiled Vendetta

Unveiled Vendetta

"I had one brother." He reached for the bell pull and was surprised to find his fingers trembling, damn them. He willed the shaking to stop. "As you know he is already dead."

"I'm sorry." Her voice was nearly a whisper.

"Just as well." Alexander threw the bedcovers and got up and made a deink for himself. "He was the elder, so I would never have attained the title had he not seen fit to shuffle off this mortal coil." He took an overlarge sip of the drink. It burned all the way down his throat. He set the glass down and rubbed at his right index finger.

She was silent, watching him from too-intense eyes. He was so complicated, too complicated. All along she'd thought his silence and hard edges were arrogance, the arrogance that came from a life of power and affluence, but she was beginning to see there was more here than arrogance. There was a great deal of pain.

Alex intentionally didn't let others in. Alex didn't want anyone close.

"Besides," he continued, "he was rather an ass, Andrew was. Always worried about the right thing and whether I was living up to the family name, which of course I never was. He'd call me down once or twice a year to the family estate and look at me with lugubrious eyes as he enumerated my many sins and the size of my tailor's bill." He stopped because he could no longer continue.

He recalled how he and Andrew had often played together. His brother had read him ancient records of the estate with awe in his voice, reverently turning the old hide pages and peering endlessly at the cramped script of their forebears. He had teased Andrew so, reminding him that the old knights had been an ignorant, unwashed lot, and had probably never even seen the records, much less writ them in their own hand. "Shut up, Alex," his brother would say mildly. "I'm reading."While Alexander had chased serving maids and escaped his tutor to ride wild over the estate, Andrew had dived heart-first into training for his eventual role as duke. The history and the heritage had been enough for Andrew, enough to make up for the whippings, for the howling tirades, for the days of wide-eyed fear and nights of cringing in their rooms. The old duke, their grandfather had been mad, only no one seemed to realize it but them. Their father left them there for months at a time to be "brought up in the tradition of the dukes of Cambridge," a tradition that apparently required heavy blows and howling abuse.

"Andrew was the shining apple of everyone's eyes. He knew how to charm-both the young and the old-and he could lead men. The local farmers came to him with their squabbles. He never met a soul who didn't like him." Lizzie watched him. His voice was expressionless as he described his brother, but his hand twisted slowly at his waist. She wondered if he was even aware of their movement. "You make him sound like a paragon."

"He was. But he was also more. Much more. Andrew knew right from wrong without having to think about it, without any doubts. Very few people can do that." He realized that he was holding his glass so tight that his knuckles were white .He loosened his grip .She must've made a sound.

Alexander glanced at her. "My elder brother was the most moral person I've ever known."