Alexei chuckled. “He did,” he said. “There were times when I would try to hide from him but he would always find me. He wanted to know everything.”
War smiled weakly. “He did to the point of annoyance,” he said. “You were always gracious to him, Alexei. I never thanked you for that.”
“There is no need. It was an honor.”
War’s smile faded as he returned his attention to the landscape. “I know you think we should not be traveling to Castle Questing right now,” he said. “But I have my reasons. My father would not have wanted me to sit around and grieve him. He would have wanted me to continue my life as normal.”
“Your reasons for traveling to Castle Questing are not in question, my lord,” he said. “But we are concerned for you. We know you and your father were close. It is never easy to lose a parent.”
“Is your father still alive, Alexei?”
Alexei shook his head. “He died when I was newly knighted,” he said. “We attended a battle together and he fell right in front of me. I held him as he breathed his last.”
War closed his eyes for a moment as if to ward off that horrible thought. “I did not know,” he said softly. “I am sorry, Alexei. Very sorry. But how… how did you overcome it?”
“His death?”
“Aye.”
“It was difficult at first,” Alexei admitted. “But I drew upon our affection for one another. If you remember the good times, sometimes it eases the sting of the loss. My father told great stories, you see. For example, if a man had a nice sword, then my father once had a nicer one. That is what he would say. If a man traveled to a faraway land, then my father had always gone further. According to him, he saw everything and he had doneeverything. I once joked that my father had done everything except childbirth.”
War laughed softly. “He sounds like quite a man.”
“He was. And not only in his own mind, but in mine.”
“And remembering his stories gives you comfort.”
“Aye,” Alexei said, putting an affectionate hand on War’s shoulder. “In time, it will be the same for you.”
War’s smile faded. He and Alexei were close and he considered the man his one and true closest friend. He always had. He knew that Alexei was trustworthy, but more than that, he trusted the man’s opinion.
There was something more eating away at him that Alexei didn’t know.
William de Wolfe.
Perhaps that was what had War the most unbalanced in all of this. He was grieving the loss of the man who raised him, the man he thought was his father until Edmund’s deathbed revelations. Part of him was angry at Edmund for doing that to him, for waiting until the end of his life before divulging such shocking information. Surely Edmund would know what turmoil it would bring him, now on top of losing the only father he’d ever known.
But another part of him was angry with de Wolfe.
He’d promised Edmund no vengeance, no rage. Having thought the circumstances of his conception over, he was coming to see that de Wolfe wasn’t at fault other than the obvious. He’d lain with a woman who loved him and wanted to marry him, but that marriage never happened. It had been Jane de Percy who had withheld the information from him and also from Edmund when she married him, so his mother, whom he loved dearly, was really at fault in all of this.
It wasn’t de Wolfe and it certainly wasn’t Edmund.
But both were affected by her secret.
Still, War found that he needed an impartial opinion in all of this. Alexei was a mature man, a man of the world, who had seen and done many things in his lifetime. Monty would simply side with whatever War felt and Clement wasn’t a candidate in the least.
Perhaps Alexei could help him see the situation clearly.
“There’s… something more in all of this,” War finally said. “Something more than grieving my father. Something that is troubling me greatly.”
Alexei looked at him with both interest and concern. “What is it?”
War was having a difficult time looking at him. “You must never repeat this.”
“I will take it to my grave.”
“If you do not, a great many people may be affected, including me.”
