Jacob surveyed the breakfast table and eventually selected a slice of dry toast. “Well?” he asked caustically. “What has compelled you to come and disturb me?”
“It’s about your brother.”
“Cecil sent you, did he?” He held out his wrists in mock surrender. “Throw me in gaol if you wish, but I assure you I was here all last night.”
The constable took a breath. “It’s not that, sir. I regret to inform you that . . . your brother is dead, sir.”
Jacob stopped what he was doing and looked at the man. The light seemed to dim and he blinked several times. This was impossible. As impossible as the world being flat—scientifically absurd.
“What do you mean he’s dead?” he demanded.
The constable shifted uncomfortably at Jacob’s glower. “I mean to say he’s dead, sir.”
“But he can’t be. I saw him yesterday.” Jacob scowled. “And I assure you he was quite alive then.”
“I regret to inform you he has perished in the time since.”
Jacob blinked. Drew in a breath. Blinked again. “Impossible,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “How?”
“The physician said he had a weak heart,” the constable said, wiping his forehead with a spotted handkerchief. “I understand it’s not usual for a heart to give out so young, but this is not the first time he has suffered.”
Jacob’s head shot up sharply. “What do you mean?”
“The physician mentioned he had tended to your brother in the past, my lord.”
Tended to Cecil in the past? For a moment, Jacob didn’t move. Cecil had been suffering from a weak heart? Of course, that was hardly something he would confide to him about, but it put a selection of things into perspective. Cecil’s paleness, the way he had never been particularly good at the physical activity Jacob excelled in.
He had been pale last night. When they’d argued, he’d looked almost sickly, and Jacob had assumed—of course he had assumed—that it was out of guilt. Regret. Perhaps even fear, because everyone knew Jacob was volatile, and hell, everyone knew Jacob and Cecil hated each other.
Although at their last meeting, Cecil had sounded as though he wanted to make amends.
“When?” he forced out, his voice hoarse. “Precisely when?”
“It’s not entirely certain, sir,” the constable began. “It’s believed he passed shortly after reaching home last night, according to his butler. The physician thought it was a shock that strained his heart. Bad news, perhaps.” The constable squinted. “Or a confrontation.”
The words came from very far away. There had certainly been a confrontation, and about a subject they had never discussed before: Madeline. Jacob had said he would never forgive Cecil for his cruelty.
But never was such a long time when it was fulfilled in actuality. Cecil was supposed to be a permanent fixture in his life. A person against whom he could fight with their parents gone. Exacting revenge, especially over the past five years, had been his purpose.
Now Cecil was dead. And Jacob, directly or no, had killed him.
Just as he was the reason, indirectly, Madeline had died. If he had not seduced her, she would never have found herself roaming the streets at night.
Cecil was dead.
In the garishly bright light of the room, he saw his mother’s dimly lit bedchamber. She’d fallen ill and died when he was seventeen, a matter of months before his father also passed from heart failure.
“You should never have been born,” she said tenderly, cupping his face. It was the most softness she had ever shown him, there in her incense-heavy room, curtains drawn, light straining through the material. The hollows in her cheeks were almost skeletal. Jacob looked down at her and tried to remember what grief felt like.
To grieve her, he should have once loved her.
“All you will know is misery,” she continued, her hand falling away. “That is your curse, Jacob. Bear it well.”
Now, staring at his hands and the white tablecloth, he could hear her words as though they had been spoken directly into his ear. All he would ever know was misery. And those around him would soon know nothing at all. First his mother, then his father, then Madeline. That had been love, and that had been loss. Sorrow the likes of which he had never known before or since.Wouldnever know.
Sorrow and guilt.
And now Cecil.
