The Love of a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke #3)(5)

Alex shifted, and knowing it would infuriate him, hooked his ankle over the other. “Yours was not a note. It was a summons. You are quite adept at ordering one about.” He steeled his jaw. “Much like Father, you know. He’d be proud.” Those deliberately needling words had the desired effect. His brother’s eyes became thin slits and rage dripped from his frame.

How neatly Gabriel had slid into that detested role. Alex had been well and truly glad the day his miserable, violent sire had departed to the hereafter, never daring to imagine that Gabriel would become…this.

“Are we done here?” Alex asked, with another yawn. “If you remember, I mentioned I have important business to attend.” Particularly a lush brunette and a delectable blonde at Forbidden Pleasures who’d been quite inventive and eager last evening.

Gabriel sat back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest. “You’ve been losing at whist.”

Faro. He’d had a deuced run of rotten luck. Alex sighed. “My luck always turns.”

“The only thing turning with predictable frequency is your pockets; inside out as you squander away this family’s fortune.”

“My allowance,” he felt inclined to point out. Every shilling of his allowance was a payment owed him for the lash of his father’s birch rod. “I earned that,” he whispered, not knowing he’d spoken aloud.

Gabriel scoffed. “You’ve never earned anything in your life. You’ve never worked for anything or known toil.”

A dull heat climbed his neck at the charge that hit too close to the mark. “As opposed to your very diligent, prideful work?” He arched a taunting eyebrow at the other man, who, by his birthright, was entitled to anything and everything with no consideration of work.

Alas, his brother had grown immune to his baiting over the years. “I also don’t squander away the gift given me as a nobleman’s son.” Gabriel had, however, become more precise with landing those pointed barbs. “Which brings me to the reason for my missive.”

“Summons,” he supplied.

A mottled flush stained his brother’s face. “I’m cutting you off,” he said at last.

Alex slid his legs off the edge of the desk and the heels of his boots scraped along the floor. “What was that?” He really shouldn’t have had that bottle of brandy last evening. Fine, French spirits, some of the best, but still he shouldn’t have had quite so much. For it had sounded as though his brother had said—

“I’m cutting you off,” Gabriel repeated with infuriating composure. He slashed his hand. “No allowance. Let to the pocket. Off at the knees.” He grinned, a hard, cold smile. In that moment, his brother’s face shifted and Alex now sat before the old marquess. Cold, heartless, grinning a vile, black smile and reaching for that birch.

And even at twenty-nine years, his mouth went dry with the familiar terror. He blinked, desperately longing for that fine, French brandy now, for altogether different reasons.

“Nothing to say?” his brother drawled.

When had Gabriel become this methodical bastard? He’d really be quite impressed if his ire wasn’t even now turned on him. “I don’t expect you’re looking for a thank you?” He said it with a half-grin, even as worry filled his belly with knots. He was completely and totally dependent upon that damned allowance—the one thing given him by his father. Of course, the evil bastard, even in death, had a wicked sense of humor by giving Alex’s elder brother ultimate control over the younger, less revered son.

“Is everything a game to you? Your legions of mistresses.” Hardly legions. Never more than one at a time. All in bad form. “Your debts at the gaming tables.” He’d had a rotten run of luck. That was all there was to it. Gabriel ran a disgusted stare up and down his frame. “Tell me this. If you can provide one suitable, sufficient answer, I shall leave your allowance untouched and yours forever.”

Alex braced.

“In your twenty-nine years, who have you loved more than yourself?”

He clenched and relaxed his jaw, unable to meet Gabriel’s gaze and shamed by that unwitting weakness on his part. There had been a time when he’d loved Gabriel in that way, his older brother and champion who’d bravely stepped in and taken lashes meant for the younger, failure of a brother. He loved his sisters now. And that was it. He firmed his lips, content to allow Gabriel his opinions. For Chloe and Philippa, he’d lay down his life.

The rest of the world could go hang. All Society likely saw a self-absorbed, shallow figure of a man. Those people, his brother included, failed to look closely enough to see he cared for those deserving of his love and loyalty.

“No answer?” Gabriel peered down the length of his aquiline nose. “I am, of course, not surprised with your silence.” He pinched the bridge of that same nose. “I’ve thought a good deal about what to do with you.”

Alex steeled his jaw. His brother spoke of him as though he were a stray cat taken in by Cook, wreaking havoc on the kitchens. “There is nothing to be done,” he said, his first defense of himself. “The money is mine.” Alas, his hot temper had never been a boon to him.

“Ah, yes, it should be,” Gabriel, said with entirely too much glee. “And it will.”

Alex probed his brother with a hard stare. He’d learned long ago not to trust. Anyone or anything. Father had doled out plenty of lessons to school him in that particular point. Regardless, he’d tired of his brother’s games. “Then I imagine we are done here.” He shoved back his chair.