Page 13 of A Perfect Gentleman

“Stop saying that!” Anger bubbled up in Graeme, the frustration of the past few days mingling with memories of the fury and pain he had felt on his wedding night. “I didn’t—”

Prescott overrode his words. “And, as if humiliating her in front of two continents was not enough, you completed the devastation by throwing in her face that you loved another woman. You doomed her to a loveless, bitter future. Abigail was eighteen and alone in a foreign country, too young and foolish and starry-eyed to realize that a British ‘gentleman’ is all courtesy and no kindness.”

“Damn it, you’re in love with her, aren’t you?” Graeme flared, too furious to care that their voices had risen until all conversation around them had ceased as everyone turned to stare.

“What if I am? What difference does it make? She’s married to you.”

“Then take her! With my blessing. Take her and leave London. I don’t care if she has an affair with you or any man. I just want her gone.”

Prescott’s fist shot out, catching Graeme on the mouth and sending him staggering back.

chapter 5

Graeme slammed into the wall and came back swinging. His fist connected with Prescott’s chin, snapping his head back, but it didn’t knock him down. Prescott launched himself at Graeme, and they crashed into a small table, knocking it and the decanter of whiskey it held onto the floor. The two men rolled across the floor punching and wrestling as voices rose around them.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” A disgusted voice finally sliced through the others, and someone hooked his hand in the neck of Graeme’s shirt, hauling him up. Prescott came after him, but the gold-knobbed end of a gentleman’s cane in the center of his chest held Prescott off until two other men grabbed his arms.

Graeme turned to look into his cousin’s cool gray eyes, all his momentary fury draining out of him. He was humiliatingly aware of the fact that he was standing, bloodied and disheveled, in the middle of his club, with a circle of gentlemen gaping at him. “Bloody hell.”

“Just so,” Sir James de Vere agreed, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “Cousin, you are turning into a veritable fountain of scandal.”

With something like a snarl, Graeme jerked out of his cousin’s grasp and stalked off.

When James caught up with him on the front steps, Graeme didn’t even turn his head. “Go away.”

“You can’t seriously think I am going to allow you to walk off with nothing more than that.”

“I don’t see why not. It’s not your concern.”

“It will be when the dowager countess calls me into her drawing room tomorrow afternoon to account for this little brawl.” He matched his long stride to Graeme’s. “So tell me why I walked into White’s to find you grappling on the floor like a schoolboy. With an American, no less.”

Graeme related the entire conversation to him.

“Ah,” James said when he finished. “I suppose that puts a different slant on one’s view of your spouse.”

“If you believe him,” Graeme said grudgingly. “Well, he does believe it, clearly. It’s whether you believe her.”

“And you don’t?”

“I don’t know!” Graeme scowled. Blood trickled down beside his eye, and he wiped it away. “I was sure she knew all about Thurston. When I told her, she didn’t say a word of protest. No denials, no apologies. Then she hied off to New York, didn’t even wait for an apology. Does that sound like a naïve, helpless, innocent girl to you?”

“I try to have as little acquaintance with naïve, helpless, innocent girls as possible.”

Graeme ignored James’s comment, deep in his own thoughts. “I shouldn’t have spoken so harshly to Abigail. I went round the next morning to apologize.”

“Of course you did.”

“Damn it,” Graeme said a little sulkily. “I’m not accustomed to being in the wrong.”

His cousin chuckled. “Oh, one becomes used to it after a while.”

After a moment, Graeme said abruptly, “It was what he said to me.”

“What who said? Prescott?”

“No. Thurston Price. Her father. After he had humiliated Father, ruined him and brought me to heel. Gotten everything he wanted. That evening, after the first waltz, Price pulled me aside.” Graeme’s mouth twisted. “And he said to me—in this complacent, oh-so-jovial voice, as if we were boon companions sharing a smutty jest—‘Now, go on, son, take her upstairs and get to work on producing my grandson.’ As if I were his possession, bought and paid for. Of course I was, but that only made it more infuriating. I thought, I’ll be damned if I let his bloodline into the Parr family.”

They walked on in silence for a moment. Graeme sighed. “Before that, I hadn’t intended to be so sharp with her. So blunt. I would have phrased it differently.”