When He Was Wicked (Bridgertons #6)(30)

And then he stomped up the stairs to his room—which still felt too bloody much like John’s room, not that there was anything he could do about that just then—and yanked off his boots.

Or tried to.

Bloody hell.

“Reivers!” he bellowed.

His valet appeared—or really, it seemed rather more like he apparated—in the doorway.

“Yes, my lord?”

“Would you help me with my boots?” Michael ground out, feeling rather infantile. Three years in the army and four in India, and he couldn’t remove his own damned boots? What was it about London that reduced a man to a sniveling idiot? He seemed to recall that Reivers had had to remove his boots for him the last time he’d lived in London as well.

He looked down. They were different boots. Different styles, he supposed, for different situations, and Reivers had always taken a stunningly ridiculous pride in his work. Of course he’d have wanted to outfit Michael in the very best of London fashion. He’d have—

“Reivers?” Michael said in a low voice. “Where did you get these boots?”

“My lord?”

“These boots. I do not recognize them.”

“We have not yet received all of your trunks from the ship, my lord. You didn’t have anything suitable for London, so I located these among the previous earl’s belong—”

“Jesus.”

“My lord? I’m terribly sorry if these don’t suit you. I remembered that the two of you were of a size, and I thought you’d want—”

“Just get them off. Now.” Michael closed his eyes and sat in a leather chair—John’s leather chair—marveling at the irony of it. His worst nightmare coming true, in the most literal of fashions.

“Of course, my lord.” Reivers looked pained, but he quickly went to work removing the boots.

Michael pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and let out a long breath before speaking again. “I would prefer not to use any items from the previous earl’s wardrobe,” he said wearily. Truly, he had no idea why John’s clothing was still here; the lot of it should have been given to the servants or donated to charity years ago. But he supposed that was Francesca’s decision to make, not his.

“Of course, my lord. I shall see to it immediately.”

“Good,” Michael grunted.

“Shall I have it locked away?”

Locked? Good God, it wasn’t as if the stuff were toxic. “I’m sure it is all just fine where it is,” Michael said. “Just don’t use any of it for me.”



“Right.” Reivers swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed uncomfortably.

“What is it now, Reivers?”

“It’s just that all of the previous Lord Kilmartin’s accouterments are still here.”

“Here?” Michael asked blankly.

“Here,” Reivers confirmed, glancing about the room.

Michael sagged in his chair. It wasn’t that he wanted to wipe every last reminder of his cousin off the face of this earth; no one missed John as much as he did, no one.

Well, except maybe Francesca, he allowed, but that was different.

But he just didn’t know how he was meant to lead his life so completely and smotheringly surrounded by John’s belongings. He held his title, spent his money, lived in his house. Was he meant to wear his damned shoes as well?

“Pack it all up,” he said to Reivers. “Tomorrow. I don’t wish to be disturbed this evening.”

And besides, he probably ought to alert Francesca of his intentions.

Francesca.

He sighed, rising to his feet once the valet had departed. Christ, Reivers had forgotten to take the boots with him. Michael picked them up and deposited them outside the door. He was probably overreacting, but hell, he just didn’t want to stare at John’s boots for the next six hours.

After shutting the door with a decisive click, he padded aimlessly over to the window. The sill was wide and deep, and he leaned heavily against it, gazing through the sheer curtains at the blurry streetscape below. He pushed the thin fabric aside, his lips twisting into a bitter smile as he watched a nursemaid tugging a small child along the pavement.



Francesca. She wanted a baby.

He didn’t know why he was so surprised. If he thought about it rationally, he really shouldn’t have been. She was a woman, for God’s sake; of course she’d want children. Didn’t they all? And while he’d never consciously sat down and told himself that she’d pine away for John forever, he’d also never considered the idea that she might actually care to remarry one day.

Francesca and John. John and Francesca. They were a unit, or at least they had been, and although John’s death had made it sadly easy to envision one without the other, it was quite something else entirely to think of one with another.

And then of course there was the small matter of his skin crawling, which was his general reaction to the thought of Francesca with another man.

He shuddered. Or was that a shiver? Damn, he hoped it wasn’t a shiver.

He supposed he was simply going to have to get used to the notion. If Francesca wanted children, then Francesca needed a husband, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. It would have been rather nice, he supposed, if she had come to this decision and taken care of the whole odious matter last year, sparing him the nausea of having to witness the entire courtship unfold. If she’d just gone and gotten herself married last year, then it would have been over and done with, and that would have been that.