You May Kiss the Bride(109)

In the morning, he told himself he would be civil, magnanimous, as kind as humanly possible when encountering the joyful couple. He went down to the breakfast-parlor like a man facing his own execution. But only Hugo was there, making his way through a plate heaped high with ham and sausages and fried potatoes.

“Hullo, coz!” said Hugo cheerfully. “Beautiful day. I say, do have some of this ham. It’s excellent. I’ve left you two slices.”

“Thank you.” Gabriel tried not to grit his teeth. It would not do to murder his own cousin. He sat, stared at his empty plate as if he had never before in his life seen such a thing. This was going to be harder than he had thought. Surely, he chided himself, it wasn’t worse than the time he had outmaneuvered that hostile Prussian count who (sporting an outlandishly greasy set of black mustachios) had laced his conversation with thinly veiled references to an oubliette beneath their feet. Or that evening in Vienna when he’d been forced into a rather nasty fight with a French spy who, without warning, had leaped upon him brandishing a very sharp, very deadly navaja.

“May I—” He noticed he had been clenching his fists, and deliberately he relaxed them. “May I offer my congratulations on your upcoming nuptials? I hope you will both be very happy.”

“Dashed kind of you, coz. Although you’re perhaps a little premature.”

Premature? After what he had witnessed yesterday? If Hugo was going to treat Livia with such shocking cavalierism, he would murder him. “I assumed,” Gabriel said carefully, “that it was settled between the two of you.”

Hugo laughed, and Gabriel had to resist the urge to leap across the table and throttle that immense column of a neck.

“Now that would be a trick,” said Hugo cheerfully, “seeing as how I haven’t yet spoken to her.”

“You haven’t spoken to her?” He knew his face was going a deep red and he could only hope his eyes weren’t bulging with fury.

“Why, coz, how could I? I say, if you’re not going to eat that ham, I’ll have it.”

With icy civility Gabriel passed the platter. “If you’ll forgive my bluntness, it seems to me that a gentleman would speak to her today.”

“I assure you I would if I could,” said Hugo amiably. “But I would dearly love to know how you think I might do so given the distance between us.”

At this vacuous reply Gabriel finally snapped. “You’re under the same roof, man!” he snarled. “Go and talk to her!”

Hugo lowered his fork and stared at Gabriel. “I beg your pardon?”

“Go talk to her! What are you waiting for, you fool?”

“I am going, but we’re hardly under the same roof. Gad, you haven’t been drinking, have you? Because if I may say so, you look like hell.”

In his despair and confusion Gabriel grasped the one thread of the conversation that had any connection to reality. “You’re going? Going where?”

“Why, home to Whitehaven. That’s where my wife-to-be—that is, if she’ll have me—lives.”

“Your fiancée lives in Whitehaven?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you,” answered Hugo patiently. He poured Gabriel a cup of coffee and pushed it across the table to him. “Here. Daresay you need this. Don’t take this the wrong way, coz, but you’re acting like a horse has kicked you in the head.”

Gabriel ignored the coffee. “Let me understand you. You’re going to marry some female—for whom I already feel the deepest sympathy—in Whitehaven? Not Livia?”

“Livia? You’ve been drinking and a horse has kicked you in the head, because evidently you’ve forgotten that you’re engaged to Livia.”

“Yes, but—” It was only in the nick of time that Gabriel refrained from spluttering in a completely undignified way. “But I saw you and Livia yesterday—embracing—and I assumed that the two of you were—well, in love.”

“In love? With a tame embrace like that? I assure you, coz, that when I’m embracing a girl with amorous intent you’d know it at fifty paces.”

Gabriel digested this new information. This new, wonderful, soul-reclaiming information. He could feel himself smiling. Breathing a deep sigh of relief.

“You know,” Hugo said reproachfully, “you’d have saved yourself a great deal of trouble if you’d only asked what was going on.”

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” Gabriel couldn’t stop smiling.

And then he remembered.

The smile was wiped from his face.