Read Online Duchess in Love by Eloisa James - Free Book Online

votes in the upper house, I can always count him to be on the right side.”
    Cam shrugged irritably. “So Bonnington’s a bloody saint. He isn’t right for Gina, and if you ask me, he knows it. He looks like a sick cow. She’s going to drive him around the twig within a month.”
    â€œWhat on earth are you saying?”
    â€œThe man’s regretting it,” Cam stated, flinging himself into a comfortable chair.
    â€œDo you mind if I smoke?” Stephen took out his pipe.
    â€œYes, I bloody well do.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Anyone could see that he looks hunted. Probably asked her in a rash moment. Fell in love with her beauty—God, who would have thought that little Gina would turn out so well?—but he forgot to consider what she would be like at the breakfast table.”
    Stephen was stamping down his tobacco. “I think she’d be a fine breakfast companion,” he put in.
    Cam shuddered. “Too lively by half.”
    â€œI disagree about Bonnington as well,” Stephen continued, putting a match to his pipe. “From everything I know, he’s head over heels in love with your wife, and he considers himself lucky to have her.”
    â€œBut he’s only beginning to realize what he has,” Cam put in. “The devil! Didn’t I tell you not to smoke?”
    â€œI didn’t ask your permission. I only asked if you minded.”
    â€œWell, I do mind. I hate that bloody smoke in my face.”
    â€œWhat’s put you in such a foul mood, then?”
    â€œBrandy,” Cam snapped at a footman. “Foul mood? I’m perfectly cheerful. This is the real me, cousin. You’ve forgotten.”
    â€œI didn’t forget anything. I used to have to thrash you once a week after you turned six or so.”
    â€œWhat I remember is trying to beat the tar out of you on your twelfth birthday.”
    Stephen shuddered. “Do you remember the consequences? God, I thought your father would never let us out of that sanctuary.”
    Cam’s eyes darkened. “He was a nasty piece of work, my father. I’d forgotten about that part. Spent all day in there, didn’t we?”
    â€œAnd half the night. It was dark and cold. I remember getting terribly hungry.”
    â€œI just remember being terrified. He’d told me that my mother would haunt me whenever I was naughty. I was frightened by dark places for years.”
    Stephen put down his pipe and looked across the table. “That was unconscionable, Cam. Did he really make your mother out as a ghost?”
    â€œUnfortunately. Took me years to get over the idea that my mother might jump out of a closet dressed in a white sheet and scare the living daylights out of me.” Cam helped himself to a glass of brandy from an offered tray.
    â€œI had no idea. I remember you telling joke after joke to make me stop crying. I felt miserably ashamed because you never shed a tear, even though you were five years younger than I.”
    â€œYou were visiting for the summer, weren’t you?”
    Stephen nodded. “My parents went to the continent.”
    â€œI was used to it by then. But I still have a horror of the dark. And I still tell jokes to make it palatable.”
    Stephen drew on his pipe, his eyes somber and kind.
    Cam shifted his gaze. He hated pity, but he hated a false front even more. In the life he’d carved for himself, there was no place for lies only to protect his consequence. That had been his father’s specialty.
    â€œShe doesn’t blame you for never coming back,” Stephen said, after a pause.
    â€œWho? Gina? Why on earth should she?”
    â€œBecause you’re her husband, you ass. Because you had—have—responsibility for her, and you’ve neglected it for years.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about? I’ve never taken a ha’penny from the estate, you know. I swore to the old man in