Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian

Author:Cat Sebastian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

Six days without so much as a note. Charity was quite proud of herself for having bypassed sorrow and gone straight to irritation.

She had told him that she didn’t want any part of his regret or shame. But that had been naive. She had no control over whether he regretted being with her. For that matter, she wasn’t entirely sure he had any control over it. As far as she could tell, sometimes he wallowed in fits of rectitude the way a dog might roll around in something that smelled interesting but a trifle confusing to its tiny, sadly limited brain. Pembroke’s bouts of moral superiority were no better than one of the Fenshawe hounds covered in goose shite.

Wherever he was, therefore, was of no interest to Charity. Sooner or later he’d return and she’d give him a bath. Metaphorically speaking.

Purely out of curiosity, and certainly not out of any pathetic longing, she walked past his house to check for any signs that he had left town. And there it was—the door knocker had been removed and the curtains were drawn. That did nothing to put her mind at ease—even if he had been called away on urgent estate business he could have found time to dash off a note.

When she arrived home she found Gilbert, Louisa, and Aunt Agatha in the drawing room.

“Gilbert, where has your brother run off to?” She kept her voice casual.

“Alistair?” he asked, as if there might be some other brother he had forgotten about. “I couldn’t guess.”

Charity didn’t know whether to feel better or worse that Alistair hadn’t even let his own brother know his whereabouts. On the one hand, this wasn’t a special excommunication meant particularly for her. On the other hand, she was falling in love with a thoroughgoing bastard.

Because that’s what this was. Love, or something near enough to it. It would end in heartbreak, but in Charity’s experience it generally did. That knowledge was never enough to stop it from happening, though, and thank God for that. Imagine if people carried their hearts around like fragile birds’ eggs, carefully preventing the smallest crack or injury. Everybody would keep a polite distance, safe and protected and utterly alone.

She loved Alistair, arrogant piece of work that he was, and very likely he loved her back. But she knew there was no future between the Marquess of Pembroke and herself. Not that long from now, Robert Selby would disappear.

By the looks of things, that would be soon indeed. Gilbert was plainly smitten with Louisa. Charity hadn’t the faintest notion as to why he hadn’t yet made a formal offer, but had to assume it was forthcoming. Instead, the pair of them clammed up whenever she entered the room. Could Louisa imagine that Charity would try to prevent the match? Even if Charity had any authority over Louisa, which they both knew she did not, an offer from the childless Marquess of Pembroke’s only brother would be nothing to sneeze at, even though Louisa could doubtless have done better.

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