I’m in love with Fiona. Now that he’d acknowledged it, everything was falling into place. When did I come to feel this way? Oh, surely from the very start. Otherwise, I never would have been able to pretend to be her lover.
“I was only a minor nobleman, but I was forced to erase my entire existence in order to defy my family’s wishes as their heir and live my own life,” Reginald said, his voice resonating in Giles’s ears. “You carry the weight of the Bancroft earldom on your shoulders. Are you truly capable of doing what it takes?”
Of course I…
A long silence filled the room. It was ultimately broken not by the forceful Reginald, but by Giles.
“You’re right,” Giles admitted. “At present, I’m not prepared. I won’t deny that.”
“Thought so,” Reginald singsonged.
With a slight, elegant toss of his head, Giles freed his chin from Reginald’s grasp. A mesmerizing smile took over his handsome face, and Reginald made an inquisitive sound. Giles said, “That was a very illuminating piece of advice. I owe my father an apology.”
“Hmm? Wait, what?” Reginald asked. Giles looked like a heavy weight had just been lifted from his shoulders, but his relief was contrasted by Reginald’s wide-eyed shock. The predator had just become the prey. “Wait a minute. That’s…unexpected.”
“Oh?”
“Oh, don’t be so aloof. Ah! Say, can I ask ya something?”
“What is it?” Giles gently brushed and straightened his jacket. His mind was already elsewhere, as if his conversation with Reginald were already over.
“Just a hunch, but were you unaware you’re in lo—”
A knock on the office door cut Reginald’s question off. He and Giles both turned around with a start just in time to see Fiona walk in.
“Fiona,” they gasped.
Fiona answered with a mysterious little smile. “Pardon me, gentlemen. Uncle, sorry, I just need to scoot behind you.” She made her way to the cabinet behind Reginald to retrieve some documents. “Mrs. Bennett is waiting, so I’m not staying. She wants the auction date and the list of items to be sold… Aha! Here it is.”
When she held the papers aloft triumphantly, Giles whipped them from her hand.
“Lord Giles?”
“I’ll come with you,” Giles said. “I still haven’t thanked Mrs. Bennett for sewing your clothes so quickly.”
“You, um, want to do that now?” Fiona asked, confused. Giles marched out of the room with the documents, and she scrambled after him. “Um, but I thought you and Uncle were in the middle of a conversation.”
“We just finished.”
“Y-you did?”
Giles grabbed her thin hand. “It’s not a problem,” he assured her, then steered her toward the reception room in which Mrs. Bennett was waiting.
Behind them, Reginald said, “Aww, well, guess I’ll join you.” He sounded dissatisfied.
“We can’t leave the precious art in this room unguarded,” Giles snapped back. “You must be tired from your travels. You stay in here and take a break. If you’ll excuse me.”
There was a politeness in Giles’s curt rejection, but he had the air of a man that would not take no for an answer. Fiona was still bewildered by the series of events, but between the waiting guest and Giles’s firm grip, she had no choice but to leave. “Um, well, anyway, I’ve got to go. See you later, Uncle!”
The door to the office banged shut, and Reginald heard their footsteps grow faint as they walked away. Left alone in the quiet room, Reginald slowly lowered his arm, which was still raised in protest of the couple’s quick exit. He floated over to the sofa and flopped onto it, then leaned back against the backrest and stared at the ceiling, his sigh gradually changing to laughter. “Ah, now it all makes sense. Ha ha…ha ha ha!”
Giles was in love with Fiona. Reginald had seen that in Giles’s eyes the moment they met. The heir to an earl and the daughter of a local baron—the gap in social status between them was uncrossable. It was understandable that Fiona would tread carefully around him, but intuition told him there was something else altogether standing between them.
When Reginald caught wind of a secret, he wanted to expose it. That was his nature. Regardless, if Giles did not want to tell Fiona about his feelings for her, Reginald would respect his wishes.
That didn’t mean, of course, that Reginald had no concerns regarding the man’s sense of restraint. Reginald did not like noblemen, but he understood their minds. He knew that Giles was the sort of man who rarely discussed his feelings. But for his part, Reginald was an unrestrained and half-baked nobleman, and a stranger besides. He’d thought that one blunt attack from him would be all it would take for Giles’s mask to slip, and then he would hear Giles’s true feelings.
“Hoo boy,” he said to himself. “And here I thought I’d make him either lose his temper or blurt out a secret.” Giles’s actual reaction had been outside the realm of Reginald’s expectations. How could Giles not have noticed just how deeply in love he was? Was it even possible for a man to be that oblivious? “So much for my plan. Maybe I should’ve just let him be.”
Had Giles remained unaware of his feelings, his relationship with Fiona might have ended during Reginald’s visit to the capital. But now that Giles acknowledged his feelings, it was anyone’s guess what he might do. Reginald felt like a man who’d reached into a hole out of idle curiosity and yanked out a giant snake.
Baron Clayburn was clearly worried about their courtship. Reginald’s brother-in-law was a doting father who would undoubtedly find fault with any man who courted his daughter, but he had been worried enough about Giles to pull Reginald aside and tell him, “I’d sooner you whisked my daughter away overseas than have her marry into the Bancroft family.” He was reluctantly accommodating of Fiona leaving the house, but he never offered his direct support for her relationship with Giles. Looking at it that way, it became clear how trapped he felt.
The arranged marriage with Norman had been decided because the baron wanted a distant relation to marry into the Clayburn family. Reginald had not been consulted for his opinion on the matter. Had he been invited to share it, he would have discouraged the union. In his view, Fiona and Norman acted like sister and brother, nothing more. Frankly, expecting Fiona to remain at home or marrying her off to another noble house was consigning her to far too dull a life.
Reginald cared nothing about appearances, but if traveling the world with Fiona as his assistant proved to be too difficult, he wouldn’t have minded marrying her, if only in name. That was how fond he was of his niece. Putting that aside, though, he knew that Fiona was more than capable of thriving in an earl’s house. She would be judged harshly for her inexperience in high society, and she couldn’t exactly count on material support from her family, but her husband could make up for that with his support.
Then there was the big brother side of him that wanted his niece to live a comfortable life within her means and without any needless strain. That was familial love; Reginald would not bother denying it, though it was difficult for him to empathize.
When he saw Fiona again for the first time after a long absence, he noticed that she had changed—not physically, but emotionally. Her amber eyes went soft whenever she talked about Giles. Reginald recognized that look, having seen it in his sister after she met her husband-to-be, but his keen eye did not miss the sad tinge to Fiona’s gaze. The light in her eyes when she looked at Giles was cool like moonlight, and he did not know why.
“If the worst happens,” he murmured, “I’ll have to apologize to my brother-in-law.”
How would the chips fall? He was eager to find out.
Reginald gazed at the paintings on the table, and his lips quirked up in a cheeky smile.