* * *

Colonel Lord Harcourt Haddonfield, fourteenth Earl of Bellefonte, had not enjoyed a decent bowel movement in weeks, by which evidence he concluded that death was indeed stalking him. He had some time, maybe even weeks, before the filthy blighter actually took him down, but when a man couldn’t preside competently over the lowliest throne in the land, what dignity was there left in living?

Neither one of his deceased wives would have understood that sentiment or appreciated its vulgar utterance even in private, which thought provoked a faint smile. Good ladies they had been, but ladies through and through.

His heir shared his appreciation for the fairer sex, which was a bloody damned relief. George, the third boy, was a nancy piece. Beckman was deuced independent, and Adolphus, who aspired to professordom, would be unlikely to marry young.

“My lord,” Soames intoned, “a Mr. Ethan Grey to see you. He did not leave a card.”

Soames had been with the earl for only ten years and could be forgiven his ignorance. He could not be forgiven for sneaking up on his employer.

The earl turned a glacial blue eye on the hapless man. “Soames, if you have to pound the damned door to sawdust, you do not intrude on your betters unannounced, and you do not intimate I am going deaf, when I can hear every damned footman and boot boy sneaking about and pinching the maids.”

“Profuse apologies, my lord.” Soames bowed low, his expression betraying not a flicker of amusement or irritation. “Shall I show the gentleman in?”

“The gentleman is my firstborn,” the earl said more quietly. “Of course you show him in, but give me a minute first, and hustle the damned tea tray along, if you please.”

“Of course, my lord.” Soames bowed again and glided out.

The earl waited, wondering what one said to a wronged child grown into a wronged man. He’d kept track of Ethan, of course. He’d also paid his bills through university, managed his late mother’s little property, managed the modest sum he’d set aside for the boy, and was managing it still, as the cheeky bastard—well, no, probably not the wisest word choice—the cheeky devil wouldn’t touch a penny of it.

“My lord.” Soames had on his company face and used his company voice. “Mr. Ethan Grey, late of London.”

“Thank you, Soames.” The earl waved him off and took in Ethan’s appearance with poorly veiled gratification. He’d most recently caught a glimpse of Ethan three, maybe five years ago, and in the intervening years the last vestiges of the youth had been thoroughly matured out of the man. At thirty-some years old, Ethan was quite tall, like all the Haddonfield men, with golden-blond hair, arctic-blue eyes, and a damned good-looking bas—fellow to boot. He had a little of Nick’s aristocratic features, too, but more hauteur than Nick aspired to and a leaner frame.

“Ethan. I would rise, but lately I cannot even attempt that without assistance. I suppose your arrival confirms my impending death—you, and a lamentable lack of intestinal regularity.”

“My lord.” Ethan gave him the barest nod, his expression so disdainfully composed the earl wanted to laugh. Ah, youth… Except behind the boy’s monumental cool lurked a significant hurt, for which his father knew himself to be responsible.

The earl waved him over to the massive estate desk. “You can glare at me ever so much more effectively at close range, sir.” He waited until his son had prowled away from his post by the door. “One of the advantages of age is I no longer have to hear or see so much of this benighted world, but upon inspection, I must say you are looking well.”

“And you are not,” Ethan said, taking a seat across the desk from his father. Rude of him to appropriate a seat unbidden, but the earl was certain his own wretched appearance had sent his son to his figurative knees.

“I look like hell. The divine wisdom therein is that all will be relieved when I shuffle off this mortal coil, because if I get any uglier, my own daughters will be unable to stand the sight of me.”

Ethan smoothed a wrinkle on a perfectly tailored pair of riding breeches. “You don’t seem particularly perturbed at your approaching demise.”

“I’m not.” The earl’s lips curved in a faint smile. “I’ve lived my three score and ten, and eked out more besides. The earldom is in good condition, thanks largely to your brother, and my children are provided for. One grows tired, Ethan, and the indignities of great age are every bit as burdensome as you suppose they are. The alternative, however, ceases to loom as quite such a fearful option. Why are you here?”

“Because you swived my mother.”

Truly, a son to be proud of. “You always were the quickest of my children.” The earl’s smile widened, but he held his verbal fire until the tea tray had been set on the desk. “You’ll have to pour, lad. My hands shake too badly, and I can barely hold up the teapot. Mine should be only half full, and cool it down with some cream, for I’m likely to spill it.”

Ethan flicked a glance at his old papa spouting off so cheerfully about his egregious infirmities, and then his eyes shifted to his father’s hands, which the earl could not have rendered steady had he wanted to.

“You’ve learned a little restraint,” the earl decided as his son poured for them both. “Can’t say as I ever got the knack, myself. The ladies despaired of me.”

“Was it lack of restraint that caused you to send me off in such disgrace?” The desk was so large Ethan had to get up, walk around it, and hand the earl his half-full, heavily creamed cup of tea. The earl knew a moment of something—shame, relief, glee… gratitude?—when Ethan wrapped his father’s cold fingers around the warm cup.

The earl carefully—and shakily—brought the teacup to his mouth.

“Used to like it hot,” the earl mused on a sigh, “but a lapful of hot tea modifies one’s priorities. Now…” He turned his gaze on his firstborn and saw a handsome man in his prime, completely composed, shrewd and patient enough to wait him out. But approaching death had only heightened the functioning of the earl’s bladder, so waiting all afternoon wasn’t an option.

“The disgrace was mine,” the earl said, looking his son straight in the eye. “I know full well you did not attempt to burn your brother with that iron.”

Ethan took a delicate sip of his tea. “Were you merely being petty and tyrannical then, when you turned the little thugs and perverts of Stoneham loose on me?”

“Perverts.” The earl tasted the word, found it foul. “Interesting choice. I’d discovered you asleep in Nicholas’s bed just the night before, and not for the first time.”

“Of course I was in his bed,” Ethan scoffed, “or he was in mine. How else were we to stay up half the night whispering without waking the younger boys?”

Ethan’s anger swam much, much closer to the surface, so close the earl perceived that the frigid cool in Ethan’s eyes was not impatience, annoyance, nor anything else half so tame.

A betrayed boy yet lurked in the man who’d come to call. A devastated, betrayed boy.

“I comprehend now, Ethan, that you and Nick remained innocent of the most lamentable adolescent behaviors. It took some time, Della’s incessant carping, and raising several more boys before I understood my mistake. By then, you were no longer speaking to any of us, save Della, and things turned out for the best.”

Ethan took another measured sip of his tea, then another, clearly trying to absorb the explanation the earl offered, but no doubt stumbling over the emotional enormity of the wrong done him, and not for the first time.

“In what manner,” Ethan spoke very softly, “do you consider things turned out for the best?”

“The two of you were entangled. You protected Nick. He protected you.”

“Is that not what brothers do?” Ethan asked with chilly civility.

“Not when one will take a seat in the Lords and the other is merely an earl’s by-blow. Sooner or later, you and Nicholas were going to have to face facts. I did neither of you any service by letting you get so close in the first place.”

The earl reassured himself of this version of the facts regularly. Things had worked out for the best—or they would soon.

“So having made that mistake,” Ethan said, but not quite dispassionately, “your only recourse was to compound it by separating us the way you did, bellowing accusations, and setting us against each other?”

The earl let his teacup clatter unsteadily onto its saucer. “I’ve said I was wrong, both in what I did and how I did it. I am not a perfect man, as you well know. But admit to me, please, that both you and Nicholas thrive, and despite my errors, you are both people to be reckoned with, capable of standing on your own two feet.”

Ethan rose to those two feet with an ease the earl tried not to envy. “You think old age alone has impaired your hearing and vision, sir. I can assure you, your faculties have long been wanting, else you would have realized Nick and I have always been capable of standing on our own two feet, regardless of our relationship as brothers or friends. Good day.”

He departed in a few brisk strides, closing the door with enviable decorum.

Round one to the pup, your bloody uncrapping lordship. The earl sat back with a sigh, sipping his cooling tea disconsolately. God willing, there would be a round two.

* * *

Valentine took a seat at Nick’s Broadwood and folded down the music rack, then petted the instrument as if it were an obedient mistress. “So tell me what you seek in a wife, Nicholas. The hunt doesn’t seem to be progressing, and the Season doesn’t last forever.”