Compromised for Christmas (The Jennings Family #1)

27. Fitz

27

Fitz

F itz’s head rocked against the squabs of his carriage like his neck muscles had deserted him as the conveyance rolled out of the drive of his family’s country estate. He was to London. To win his wife’s regard. Because it had been clear at breakfast that there were two other men who currently held it.

He slammed his head against the squab. Stupid, stupid, stupid . Why did he have to go and fall in love with her? Why did he have to do something so quintessentially Fitz-like and accidentally compromise a woman who desired men like Ironcrest and Dunmore? Men so unlike Fitz that he couldn’t fathom ever attaining their standard of sensuality. Not in his wildest dreams. But he had to try. If he wanted to be in his wife’s wildest dreams. And he did. A searing pain shot through the pathetic slab of muscle in his chest.

His eyes slid shut, and a woman’s visage stared back at him. But it wasn’t his blonde-haired, green-eyed wife. It wasn’t kind. It was dark-brown eyes swimming with disgust. Mocking.

He let the words fall over him, each one a heavy iron link in the chain of inadequacy that hung over him. The words Miss Eloise Browning had hurled at him when he’d found her in a state of undress in his brother’s study. The words that had been so sharp, so scathing, that they’d sliced right through his flesh. Straight to the heart. She’d been spitting mad, infuriated at his brother’s rejection of her advances. She’d spoken, intending to maim, to wound. And she had succeeded.

He’d stood there, incapable of words. For once from shock and wretched pain, rather than nerves.

“I h-had thought,” he wheezed. “We were courting. I was to sp-speak—To p-propose.”

“Marry you?” She scoffed. “You cannot even speak. Why on earth do you think I would accept such an offer? Not that it truly is one, though, is it? You’re a second son who stutters and sweats profusely.” She grimaced, turning up her nose. “You never had anything to offer me other than access to your brother.”

And Fitz had jerked back as if slapped. Because that was what the words had been. He probably should have seen the signs. How she had always seemed excessively friendly with Felix. But he never thought anything of it. Felix wasn’t the least bit interested in her—considering she wasn’t a man. Fitz had completely forgotten the rest of the ton wasn’t aware of—couldn’t be aware of—this fact about his brother, that women would still vie for Felix’s hand. Like the woman Fitz had become completely enamored with. All a ruse. Use the oblivious, bumbling fool to get to the Earl.

She’d never been seen in London again. Felix had made sure of that. Lord, the fury on his brother’s face during that catastrophe. Fitz had actually feared his brother would harm a woman. But Felix was always in control. And what he dealt her was far worse than any physical blow.

He’d made it abundantly clear within their circles what she had done. Abundantly clear in his first year as the new Earl, that the Earldom of Bentley was not a family to be crossed. Their father may have recently passed, and Felix may have only been four-and-twenty, but the Jennings stood by each other. Always. Through anything. Just as they had stood by Felix after his trauma.

Fitz may be different, even from the rest of his family, but that didn’t lessen the strength of the Jennings’s bond for him. He was inordinately grateful for his family, and leaning on them had been what had gotten him through Miss Browning’s betrayal and disparagement.

But he hadn’t loved Eloise.

Enamored, infatuated, besotted? Yes.

But not love.

Egads, how had this even happened? He’d known Georgiana for barely over a sennight. He was no expert on the subject—it wasn’t Italian, after all—but wasn’t falling in love supposed to take a touch more time than that?

The offending muscle residing in his chest said otherwise, thrumming in a soft undeniable rhythm: Gi-gi, Gi-gi, Gi-gi.

It no longer beat for him.

It beat for her.

Fitz couldn’t lose Georgiana because of his ineptitude.

He rested his hand over the letter in his pocket. He would get to London and get this letter delivered.

He would make sure he was the only man his wife wanted.