He dropped onto the sofa like a stone, looking bewildered and uncertain for all his size and muscle. “Can’t you at least call me out?”

Ethan knew the exact contour of his brother’s sorrow: for the little boy created so carelessly, for the brother betrayed, for the stupid young man who might have sired a child without thought, and for the father who hadn’t known his own son.

And Ethan could not allow Nicholas to hold that sorrow too closely. “We’ll manage. I didn’t want this to hurt you, too.”

“How could it not?” Nick pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “You can’t tell him, Ethan. I won’t have the child suffer what you went through because I couldn’t keep my damned pants on.”

Ethan sat beside his brother. Any closer than that, and Nick would likely have tossed him through the window. “You and I are the only people who know the shadow on Joshua’s paternity. Alice knows I may not be his father, but she will take that knowledge to her grave.”

“You never told anyone?” Nick rose and went to stare out the window. “No one at all? Not in a bitter, drunken moment, not when you wanted to fling it in Papa’s face, not when a sympathetic mistress tried to pry it out of you?”

“I’ve had no mistress since I married,” Ethan said. “The whole business was too much bother, and it would have made me a little too much like my wife.”

“Like me, you mean. You’ve been a damned monk, just as I suspected.”

“Not a monk, Nick.” Ethan sighed, sensing they were going to plow through more rough ground. “I had experiences at Stoneham— one experience, really—that rendered me all but indifferent to the pursuits you found so enjoyable before your marriage.”

Nick’s gaze shifted from the grounds beyond the window to his brother.

“What sort of experience?”

“One Hart Collins, now Baron Collins,” Ethan said, and it was no relief, no relief at all to embark on this recounting—though neither did it engender the kind of choking shame it might have even a year ago.

“Collins rounded up his cronies, assaulted me in the stables my first week at school, and while they held me over a pickle barrel, raped me in the only manner one male can rape another. Heathgate came upon the situation while Collins was goading one of his minions to further violate me, and between us, we managed to break a number of bones.” Ethan fell silent for a thoughtful moment. “I understand the term ‘killing rage.’”

The words had come, Ethan marveled. They hadn’t been delicate words, but saying them, saying them to Nick, had left him lighter, not heavier, in his heart.

“You were…” Nick sucked in a breath. “Buggered. Raped.”

“Not a pretty word and not a pretty deed.” And thank a merciful God, Nick wasn’t scoffing at “school boy nonsense” or otherwise trying to diminish the vileness of the act. If he had, Ethan would have tossed him through the window. “It happened half a lifetime ago, Nick. I try not to dwell on it.”

“You never said.” Nick tone was accusing, quietly furious. “You never said a word, Ethan. You would not accept my letters. You would not see me. You shut me out, completely.”

“This is why. It’s hard to explain, Nick, what that kind of experience does to a young man. Ladies can be raped, and as gentlemen we protect them because they are vulnerable. A man does not conceive of himself being vulnerable in the same fashion. He just… does not conceive of it.”

“You were raped at the school our father sent you to. Surely, somebody told him?”

“I assume they did, and he did nothing. I can hope he didn’t know, but Heathgate’s parents got involved, and the other boys were quietly sent home to recover. I haven’t seen them since, nor have I wanted to.”

“Hart Collins is a dead man.”

Oh, Nicholas. He sounded every bit as fierce as Joshua or Jeremiah, and yet Ethan could not indulge him.

“No. You cannot kill him out of guilt over what he did to me, Nick. And I will not take justice into my own hands. If I accused him publicly, he’d be tried in the Lords, and I am, after all, merely an earl’s by-blow. Then too, for all I know, the statute of limitations has run. If he keeps a wide berth from me, I’ll let it lie.”

The ire in Nick’s gaze did not diminish, and that was good to see, too. Misguided, but good to see. “That is not right, and you know it. You have been wronged—by me, but apparently by others as well—and Collins should at the least be gelded for what he did.”

“He should, for he left me all but gelded in spirit. It was part of the reason I was so willing to enjoy what Barbara offered.”

“And what was my excuse?” Nick said, self-disgust resurging. “I went larking and swiving on my merry way, content to leave you to your suffering.”

“That is your heartbreak talking,” Ethan said gently. “You were the one who arranged for us to meet at Lady Warne’s after so many years of silence. That… was timely. I was done with university, and I still hadn’t been able to regain my balance in certain areas.” The word for it was impotence. Ethan had read the medical treatises, hoping desperately it was a medical problem, knowing it was not. “I was on the verge of”—he looked for another delicate phrase, and abandoned the search—“making a permanent mistake. I felt hopelessly dirty, unlovable, useless, and ugly. It was five years later, and I still felt… Then I got your note, and you said you had to see me again, that my siblings worried for me and asked for word of me. It was more timely than you will ever know.”

Silence stretched, while Ethan’s gaze sought the miniatures of his sons. A man could not promise to keep his loved ones safe from all harm, else Joshua would not have fallen ill. If any son of Ethan’s had endured what transpired at Stoneham, then Ethan could only hope he’d be the sort of father to know about it and take appropriate measures.

Somewhere in that sentiment lurked forgiveness for the old earl—an astonishing notion, and welcome.

While a weight rose from Ethan’s heart, Nick remained by the window, staring down at the Tydings park. “Ethan, what is that pony doing without its rider?”

Ethan was at the window in two steps, a father’s dread congealing in his gut.

“That is Jeremiah’s pony,” Ethan said, “and he said nothing about riding out this morning, Nick. I don’t think he’d leave the stables while his brother lies ill, not without a gun to his stubborn little head.”

“Let’s go.” Nick beat Ethan to the door. “Alice went down to the stables with him, and I doubt she’d get on a horse without you there to supervise.”

“For God’s sake, make haste. We’ve trouble afoot.”

* * *

“Why in the hell did you turn the damned pony loose?” While Alice watched in horror, Hart Collins turned his gun barrel on his own minion.

“Begging your lordship’s pardon,” Thatcher drawled back. “You were going to shoot the pony, and that would have brought half the shire down on us in a heartbeat, since Grey is known not to hunt game. The little beast will stop and graze hisself into a colic as soon as he’s over the rise. Now, we’d best stop arguing and get moving, or your little plan to hold the brat for ransom will be over before it starts. With these two”—he gestured to Alice and Jeremiah doubled up on Waltzer—“we’re not going to move quickly.”

“Oh, yes, we are.” Collins’s eyes gleamed with malice. “Grey’s mounts are prime flesh, and we’ve got three of his best horses here. If anyone slows us down, it will be you, and if you’re caught, you’ll hang for horse thievery.”

Alice knew not how it was possible, but in twelve years, Hart Collins had become uglier, meaner, and stupider. She sent up a prayer that Jeremiah at least came through this debacle safely.

“Let’s go.” Collins kneed Argus sharply, as Thatcher kept a sullen silence. “And you.” He turned an evil smile on Alice. “Keep the boy quiet, or it will be a well-used body Ethan Grey ransoms—or two.”

Alice nodded, but inside, her guts were churning as the horses cantered off at Collins’s direction. Twelve years without laying eyes on Collins, and still, she became a terrified fourteen-year-old at the mere sight of him. He’d gained weight, and his hair was thinning, and the air of pure evil was thick around him, like a stench.

His plan was clear: hold Jeremiah for money, lots and lots of money. Ethan had the money and would turn it over along with both of his arms, his eyes, and his very life if it meant Jeremiah would be safe.

When Collins sent them pelting off through the woods, she clung to that thought, even as Jeremiah clung to her, his arms locked around her waist. He managed to whisper the occasional word of advice to her regarding control of the horse, but mostly, Alice sought not to fall off. She held the reins, but her control was limited by the lead rope kept in Thatcher’s gloved hands and by the skirts she’d had to bunch awkwardly in order to sit astride the horse. Thatcher was mounted on Bishop, the gray nervous but still sane. Collins had appropriated Argus for himself and was apparently enjoying the horse’s fights for control—enjoying the excuse to use crop and spurs on a high-strung animal.

“How much farther are we going?” Thatcher shouted to Collins. “Ye can’t run the horses like this much longer.”

A quarter mile later, Collins halted Argus with a jerk on the curb and led the way through a break in the trees lining the bridle path. Thatcher followed, with Waltzer on the lead rope bringing up the rear.

“Don’t go inside the building,” Jeremiah whispered. “I’ll say I have to use the bushes.”

Alice nodded, keeping her eyes forward. Her hip hurt like blazes from riding astride at breakneck speed, her hands ached from gripping the reins, and her head pounded with fear.