“Ahearn was—”
“Pay him the animal’s worth, if you have any conscience about you. After all I have done for you. Sheltering you and educating you and raising you beside my own son, though I must say you never deserved it. You were a wicked child. It is quite providential your mother died in childbirth, for she certainly could not have loved such a sinful child as you.”
He’d heard the words so many times he was dull to them. He focused on holding her eyes and not looking away, his one show of defiance, however small.
“Now get out of my sight.”
He left the chamber at her dismissal and rushed in his first breath of odorless air. He shook his mind free of her words.
As if he could ever be free of them.
“Seventy-six guineas.” William slid the leather pouch across the dining room table—perhaps with too much vigor, because it slipped over the edge and into his cousin’s lap.
Horace grinned and jangled the coins. “I daresay, Mother does have a way with you. Did you have a nice visit?”
William stabbed his fork into his partridge. From the opposite end of the dining room table, Horace’s no doubt port-scented breath mingled with the roasted fowl, boiled potatoes, white soup, and baked apples.
He wouldn’t let his cousin ruin his appetite though. Horace ruined quite enough without being given that power too.
“I won’t have you going to Miss Ettie about me, hear?”
“I have not yet spoken with her today.” Besides, when had William ever run to their childhood governess with complaints? She couldn’t do anything more about Horace than William could.
“You told her of my drinking.”
“I imagine she did not need to be told.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“That everyone in this house knows how much you drink.” William pulled the napkin from his cravat. “For mercy’s sake, what are you trying to do? Drown yourself in it?”
“Enough.” Horace’s bloodshot eyes looked away as he choked the stem of his goblet in a beefy fist. “I have nothing else to allure me in this forsaken place.”
“You might go to London for the season.”
He harrumphed.
“Or take up hunting. Or riding.” William scooted back in his chair. “There are a number of things you could do if you really wanted to, but you don’t. You would rather sit about all day and feel sorry for yourself instead of trying to build yourself into the man your father would have wished you to be.”
“Leave Father out of this!”
“He would have wished you to—”
“At least my fatherwantedme. Yours won’t even admit he has a son. You’re just a …”
William’s heart leapt to his throat as he waited for the sentence to continue. It didn’t.
“Finish.”
“I have.” Horace rubbed a hand to the side of his neck, eyes bulging, then stood. He staggered toward the door—
William rushed to the threshold and blocked him. “My father has been dead my entire life. Explain what you just said to me.”
“I am drunk.”
“Explain.”
“Never mind what I said. I told you … I am unclear of mind.” Sweat formed along his upper lip, and he wiped it away without meeting William’s gaze. “Now out of my way.”
