“Ethan Grey is not a bastard,” Nick insisted, voice hoarse. “Say it, or I’ll break both your arms, Ethan. I swear I will.”

Ethan renewed his efforts to break Nick’s hold, but Nick had several inches and two stone on him.

“Ethan! You are not a bastard. Say it!”

Ethan went still, Nick’s point finally becoming clear. “Ethan Grey,” he said softly, firmly, “is no longer a victim.”

“No.” Nick shifted off of him. “He’s not. You’re not.” He regarded Ethan, who’d pushed up on all fours and then sat back on his haunches, lungs heaving. “You’re not. Come here. God, you’re stubborn.” Nick draped an arm across Ethan’s shoulders and gave his brother one hell of a squeeze. “I have missed you until I’m crazy with it, and all this time, you were just ashamed, Ethan?”

Nick withdrew his arm, and Ethan could breathe again.

“Just ashamed.” Ethan said the words as one might say, “mere plague.”

“I could kill Papa,” Nick whispered. “How could he leave you at Stoneham? How could he have sent you there?”

“I don’t think he knew anything, Nick.” Ethan sighed, settling in the grass beside his brother. “And I don’t care. It’s over. Now it’s well and truly over.”

Nick slugged Ethan on the shoulder. “Call me bloodthirsty, but like Jeremiah, I’m glad Collins is dead.”

“So am I,” Ethan admitted, because to Nick, he could admit such a thing. “Now will you come see the boys with me?”

“How can I face them, Ethan?” Nick plucked at the grass idly. “I am a disgrace. In their eyes, I will be a disgrace, and I can only imagine what Leah will think of this.”

Ethan found a long blade of grass and split it with his thumbnail. “Firstly, children do not uniformly approve of their parents, nor we of them. This is not in the contract, so to speak. We love each other, and that suffices. Secondly, Leah knew you were a tomcat and will not hold this against you. Thirdly, you need to know these children. They will fall to your care should anything happen to me.”

“That’s right. You did that even before Papa died, didn’t you?” Nick pounced on this realization with palpable relish as he pushed to his feet.

“I did it the day I knew Barbara had conceived,” Ethan said, accepting a hand up. “Joshua’s situation only makes it all the more imperative you make his acquaintance.”

“But, Ethan, do we have to tell him?” Nick sounded so uncertain, it nearly broke Ethan’s heart.

“Not now, Nick,” Ethan said gently as they moved off toward the house. “Soon, so it doesn’t strike them as a big, dirty secret rife with sexual connotations an adolescent blows out of all proportion. You and I are half brothers. Joshua and Jeremiah can adjust to being possible half brothers too.”

“You’re so matter-of-fact about this,” Nick said as they gained the back hallway.

“I’ve had seven years to adjust to it, and you’ve had less than a few hours.”

“True, and in all this commotion, I’ve not told you Hazlit’s latest information.”

“Which would be?” Ethan led them in through the kitchen, then to the back stairs.

“You are not a bastard,” Nick said, humor lacing his voice. “He’s confirmed your mother was still married to Colonel Markham when you were born, but the story is almost sweet.”

Ethan paused on the narrow stairs to peer down at Nick on the step behind him. “Almost sweet?”

“They were lifelong friends,” Nick said, “and he wanted his commission. She wanted to leave her parents’ house and was good friends with his sisters. They married, and he used her dowry to buy his commission. She went to live with his sisters, and she kept up a lively correspondence with him, though they were never intimate. Your mother was faithful to my father once she met him, though they weren’t fated to have much time together. She was married at the time of your birth, though, so technically, you are not a bastard.”

“And she couldn’t marry the earl, lest bigamy rear its head. Almost sweet.”

“The earl paid a great deal of money to the solicitors to keep her adultery quiet,” Nick went on as they gained the stairs. “Damned silly of him, if you ask me, but he was protective of her memory.”

Ethan shrugged. “I wish he’d protected me more and her memory less.” It felt odd to say such a thing out loud, except Nick was the one person to whom he could make such a disclosure.

“You and me both.” Nick huffed out his disgust. “We’re not sending our sons anywhere but Eton, are we?”

“And maybe not even there,” Ethan said. He tapped once on the door to the nursery and opened it, finding both boys wreathed in smiles, sitting side by side on Joshua’s bed.

* * *

“You need to rest.” Felicity, Marchioness of Heathgate, frowned at Alice with maternal concern. “You are pale, you have shadows under your eyes, and you aren’t using your right hand to lift even a teacup.”

Alice reminded herself that this soft-spoken, pretty redhead held the keys to the marquis’s kingdom, and to his heart as well. Formidable was a polite term for the lady’s determination when a guest’s welfare was at stake.

“I will rest.” Alice sipped her tea, an excellent hearty black that should have been fortifying. “It’s difficult when every time you move, the pain jars you awake.”

Her ladyship’s eyes filled with sympathy. “I am so thoughtless. Of course your shoulder hurts. You’re sure you don’t want some laudanum? You don’t want me to fetch Fairly?”

As if a physician or the poppy would cure what truly ailed Alice.

She set her teacup down. “I think I’ll go upstairs now, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll walk you to your room. Once Heathgate and Fairly start talking commerce, you’d think there were no other acceptable topics. Lord and Lady Greymoor will come for dinner, because it’s been an age since we’ve seen Fairly.”

“He’s a very kind man,” Alice said as they made their way up the steps.

“Too kind, sometimes,” Felicity said with a sister’s asperity, for the physician was brother to her and Lady Greymoor. “He and Letty are perfect for each other. I suspect she inveigled him into traveling with Nick, knowing that would earn us a visit with him as well.”

“You are fortunate in your family.” Even coming up with clichés was an effort.

“As are you. I’ve met your brother Benjamin, you know. Heathgate respects him, and his lordship’s respect is not easily given.”

“Benjamin would be complimented, my lady.” They neared the door to Alice’s guest room, her sanctuary, her prison. Lady Heathgate was a dear, but Alice could not stand the weight of the woman’s gaze boring into her soul with more insight than Alice’s sore heart could tolerate.

“You’ll want a tray for dinner, won’t you?” Lady Heathgate followed Alice into the bedroom. “Your shoulder is injured, but that’s not the worst of it, is it?”

Alice sat on the bed, dignity deserting her. She nodded dumbly at her hostess as the marchioness pulled draperies over the windows.

Her ladyship sat on the bed beside her guest. “Heathgate said Baron Collins was a bully and a parasite. He put Thatcher up to kidnapping Master Jeremiah because his own funds were gone, and he had unnatural relationships with any number of men, not all of them willing.”

Alice nodded, feeling tears threaten. Collins was a bully and a rapist. Had been for years.

“I would hug you, but I’d hurt your shoulder. Is there anything I can do?”

Alice shook her head, wondering if there were any way to erase the morning from her life. Except that would mean Collins still roamed the earth, free to visit his violence on any unsuspecting victim.

“I’ll leave you in peace, then.” Lady Heathgate rose and brushed a kiss across Alice’s cheek. “Whatever it is, when you’re rested and feeling better, it won’t be so bad. And if we can help, you must not hesitate to let us know. Benjamin would insist, and so do I.”

Alice nodded, staring at her lap.

There was nothing anybody could do, and the ache in her shoulder was a twinge compared to the ache in her heart. Ethan had heard of her disgrace, heard how she’d been unable to help her sister, heard she’d not brought Collins to justice when she’d had the chance.

Ethan was a brave man, the bravest she’d ever met. He’d waded into Collins’s pistol sights, orchestrated a rescue, and seen justice done. There was no way on earth a man like Ethan Grey deserved a woman in his life who’d failed miserably to keep her sister safe from the menace that had been Hart Collins.

Twenty-one

“She asked about you,” Heathgate said, apropos of nothing. His mare walked along the bridle path beside Ethan’s golden gelding, the leaves crunching underfoot in a sound characteristic of the woods in autumn.

“And what did you tell her?” Ethan had no dignity where Alice was concerned, hadn’t had any for weeks.

“I told her a pack of lies,” Heathgate said. “You’re hiring trollops from London, becoming a drunken sot, carrying on with the tweenie.”

“That is not humorous.

“The two of you aren’t humorous.” Heathgate brought his horse to a halt. “Talk to the woman. She mopes around Willowdale like a ghost, smiling only at the children. Lady Heathgate is concerned she’s going into a decline, and she catches your Alice crying at odd moments. She doesn’t eat much, save her desserts, and she spends a prodigious amount of time in bed.”

“She’s had a blow,” Ethan said. “Seeing Collins, much less being taken by him at gunpoint, will put her off her feed.” Finding out that the man she’d taken to her bed had been intimate with Hart Collins was more than a blow.