“On the contrary,” Abe said, sipping his drink. “You still needed me back then. What is going on in that gilt-and-feather head of yours, though? I know it’s something.”
“Why don’t you guess?” Freddy suggested with a tilt of his head. “Isn’t that what you do?”
“Guess? Never,” Abe said, obviously affronted by the observation of objective truth. “I investigate. There is a wide berth of difference.”
“Is there, though?” Freddy replied, which successfully annoyed the other man away from him.
He passed another hour needling the others over this and that, thoroughly enjoying being back in his own home. He’d never spent any time with Silas here as adults. Because Silas himself was their father’s bastard, and because his mother lived only a couple of hours away in Stow-on-the-Wold, his visits had often been sporadic and limited to his father’s study or one of Tommy’s grueling nature walks.
Unsurprisingly, those visits became less frequent as Silas aged, and by the time Freddy was old enough to actually enjoy his brother’s presence, Silas had taken off to study law in some dusty university library.
It was a pity. He had always taken his older brother for granted as a frowning, ice-veined killjoy, but since getting married, he’d really become much more palatable to spend time around. It would probably be even better if he’d married a stranger rather than the woman Freddy jilted, but if wishes were horses and so on.
“Is that sherry?” Freddy asked, looming over Silas’s glass and trying to take a sniff. “Are you drinking sherry?”
“Get out of here, you little insect,” Silas barked, swatting at him with what Freddy had come to recognize as good-natured dismissal. “Drink your water.”
So Freddy had. He’d taken his leave, whistling and pleased with himself, and tracked down a member of the staff to direct him to wherever the hell Claire had banished his luggage to. He half expected it had gone directly into the cellar, where the old limestone vein still ran through the buffed (but uneven) stone ground. Perhaps she’d also include a ratty blanket as a courtesy.
But alas! She’d given him an actual bedroom in an act of polite decorum.
He’d have preferred the aggression. It would have been more personal, in any event. What was she about, treating him like a respected guest?! It wouldn’t do.
“Which room is it?” he’d asked the maid, a knobby-handed granny of a woman who had worked here longer than England had been a single kingdom.
“Your old one, Master Freddy,” she answered with a rheumy grin.
“The nursery?” he replied, baffled.
“No, after that,” she answered, pointing at the staircase like that clarified anything, “before the old earl died. The one in the eastern corner.”
“Oh, right,” said Freddy, frowning. “That one.”
It wasn’t that there was anything at allwrongwith the bedroom he’d had through his adolescence and early adult years. No, of course not. It was a very nice room indeed. It was only that those years were when the trouble had started.
Was he superstitious? Had he finally become one of those fools who had lucky socks and a fear of housecatsafterhe’d kicked the gambling?
That would just figure.
Besides, those years were also the ones in which his father had been alive. He’d never say out loud that the trouble and the father were related, but perhaps it was worth considering. Quietly.
He wondered if the chamber was still a horror of aspirational decor as he’d left it, sporting prints, more antlers than were seemly at all, a little bookshelf stocked with liquor, and, of course, a tiny games table in the corner.
God, he’d been an insufferable little git.
Maybe someone had turned it into a sewing room or something. He’d prefer hideous floral wallpaper and a bunch of very low chairs any day. A couple of baskets of wool yarn would hardly be amiss, would it? Lovely!
He clicked his teeth together, steeling himself for the possibility that history loomed yonder, and pushed the door open.
Ah, there was a God.
There was still quite a lot of tartan, but the room had clearly been reoutfitted into a guest chamber. The bed was the same, there were still some antlers, and he would bet his hat that there was still a bottle of a truly terrible plum cordial under the fourth floorboard from the wardrobe, but of course, he didn’t bet his hat anymore.
As a rule.
It was different enough to not feel like a portal to the past. That was plenty.
And there was his luggage, stacked a little more haphazardly than it had been at the foot of Claire’s bed. He chose not to read into that.
