"No. There was nothing you could have done, Benjamin. You were a child."
"Perhaps." Benjamin sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry you went through such horrors. I'm sorry you had to watch me living an idyllic childhood while yours was so terrible. That must have been maddening—horrifying. I'm sorry I accused you of making too much out of nothing. I had no idea."
"No one did," James said. "When I tried to tell people, they didn't believe me, and for a while I doubted it myself. It was only once I was an adult and had left the house and researched the effects of strychnine that I felt sure of it. And then I came home once and looked into Father's books, and I saw that therewas a connection with a name I didn't recognize—a man who turned out to be a black market dealer. Leopold Hartigan was his name."
"You never reported him? Never tried to involve the authorities?"
"There was nothing I could have done. This was years after the last time I had been poisoned, so I had no objective proof that it had happened at all. The evidence made it obvious to me, of course, but Father would have spoken against anything of the sort having happened, and I would have lost. The man would have gotten away. And by then, I was eager to simply put the whole affair behind me."
"And that's why you fell out of contact with the family," Benjamin realized. "You didn't want anything to do with any of us after that."
"I just needed to get away from it all."
"I can understand that," Benjamin said. "But James—I hope we can become brothers again. I'm getting married."
"I heard that you were."
"Yes, well, I'd like to have you there. At the ceremony. I'd like you to know my wife, and for us all to be family."
"I'd like that too," James admitted. "It might take some work on my part."
"I'm willing to be patient. I'm just so happy that we can be back in one another's lives, James, truly. And I can't wait for you to meet Katherine. She's lovely, and she makes me happier than I ever would have believed I could be. I wake up every morning excited for the day ahead knowing that she will be a part of it." He smiled. "And I know that will only be more true once we marry."
The words were like a dagger to James' heart.
What his brother was describing was exactly the way he felt about Victoria. She was the sunshine in his days, and she made each one worth getting out of bed for.
And he was losing her.
"I have to be somewhere," he told his brother. "I'm sorry to cut this short. If you'd like to return tomorrow, we can discuss further."
Benjamin rose at once. "I know I came without announcing myself today," he said. "Thank you for seeing me, James. Thank you for talking to me. This has meant the world. I will return tomorrow, and I fervently hope that this is just the start of something."
He saw himself out.
James was about to leave too, to hurry over to the church in hopes of catching Victoria and stopping the wedding. He knew he couldn't afford to delay if he wanted to have even the barest chance of getting her back.
But for a moment, he did delay.
He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out the papers William had brought him.
He couldn't have said why he did it, what instinct let him know that this was something he needed to do at once. Maybe it was the urgency with which William had put them in front of him. He meant to give it the briefest of glances, to give himself an idea of what he would be dealing with when he returned—but then he froze.
A familiar name was written on one of the documents.
How had he failed to notice this before? How had he missed it?
And there was only one thing it could possibly mean, only way this could possibly unfold.
Suddenly, he understood everything—Lord Harbury's urgent desire to marry Victoria, William's insistence that he look at these documents at once. It all made sense. And he knew, too, that he had to get to the church even more quickly than he had thought.
It was no longer simply a matter of losing the lady he had come to love to a marriage. Things had just become far more serious than that, and if James didn't intervene at once, he might miss his chance altogether.
He sprinted down the hall, took the steps two at a time, and ran out the door. There was no time to wait for a carriage to be prepared for him—he needed to move more quickly than that. He brought out a horse and mounted without taking the time even to saddle it.
And then he was off, galloping toward the church as fast as he could compel the horse to run, and as they ran, he found himself praying to whoever might be listening that he wouldn't be too late.
CHAPTER 37
