In My Wildest Fantasies Read Online Free PDF Page B

you expecting that I would come home and simply wave a hand and make the problem disappear?"
    When his brother gave no reply, Devon studied his expression carefully, then leaned back against the sofa cushions. "Or perhaps you are remembering that I am not the hero everyone always imagined me to be."
    It was why he had left home in the first place three years ago--because he had disappointed everyone to impossible degrees. Vincent and Father especially.
    No...Disappointed was not a strong enough word. Because of his own youthful passions, he had betrayed Vincent's trust and shattered and crushed his father's grand and lofty opinions of him. He had annihilated the man's unfathomable pride in his eldest son.
    Devon remembered every word of their argument as if it happened only yesterday--how his father had told him what a useless failure he was as a son and especially as a man.
    Why hadn't he been able to control the horse? he had asked. How could he have been so foolish as to take that slick, muddy path through the woods that time of year? And what had he been doing with MaryAnn in the first place? Had he no sense of honor or decency? She was his brother's fiancee.
    Devon had listened to all of this at a time when he was leaning on crutches, when the stitches over his eye still burned, and when the guilt over what had occurred was worse than death itself.
    Because MaryAnn--the woman Vincent had loved and intended to marry--was dead.
    You are no longer my son, his father had snarled at him from behind the desk.
    Their argument had ended there. Devon did not even say goodbye the next morning when he struggled awkwardly into the coach to leave for America. He had never written to his father, nor had he received any letters from him, but he had not expected it, such was the intensity of the man's rage that night.
    "We need you," Blake quietly said, interrupting Devon's recollections. "You are the head of the family."
    "No," he firmly replied. "Our father, the duke, is head of the family."
    "Not if he is mad."
    Devon stared uneasily at his brother, then set down his glass. "I am not yet convinced he is mad, Blake, nor will I be until I speak to him myself. As I said, it is probably just old age. There is nothing to be done about that except to be patient and tolerant as best we can until the end comes."
    "Until the end comes, you say." Blake chuckled with some bitterness.
    "Is there something amusing about that?"
    Blake stood and walked to the window. "It is not amusing at all. I only chuckle at the coincidence of your remark. You see, I didn't get to the most distressing part of all this."
    "Which is?"
    Blake faced him. "Father has spoken of the end more than a few times himself over the past month. Come here." He waved Devon over to the window. "Look outside and you'll see what I mean." Devon stood and approached Blake, who pointed at the Italian Gardens. "There he is, out there in the rain."
    Indeed, there he was--their father, the exalted Duke of Pembroke, powerful patriarch of this family, on his knees in the muddy garden. Or at least, what was left of it, for all the plants had been dug up, and there was nothing left but deep holes and piles of dirt. He was now digging up one last rose bush with a shovel.
    "He's been moving all his favorite flowers to higher ground," Blake explained.
    Devon felt his temper rising. "God in heaven, where is the gardener? Why is he not doing it? And why is there no one out there with an umbrella over his head?"
    "Father won't let anyone help him," Blake said. "He insists on doing it himself, and just last week, he fired a footman who tried to push the garden cart for him."
    "But what is he trying to accomplish?"
    "He says he is saving the palace, Devon--his beloved gardens especially--because he believes we are victims of some ancient curse, and that a great flood is coming and we are all going to be swept away."
    "A curse!" Devon blurted out. "Bloody hell, Blake, has he lost his mind?"
    His