Ramsay looked at the ceiling and crossed himself.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he prayed. “Save me from fools. I am surrounded by them. Mostly this one. May the saints guard him from himself.”
“You aren’t a Papist,” Hector reminded him. “Your ma will tan your hide if she sees you praying like one. And I’ll write to her myself if you do not tell me this instant if my wife is all right.”
“She isfine.” Theyou great bloody idiotwent unsaid, but Hector heard it nonetheless. “But tell me you see my point.”
Hector narrowed his eyes. He didn’t see it, but he wasn’t going to admit that.
“Nobody would believe that you have a point,” he said sourly instead.
“My point,” Ramsay said emphatically, “is that you should spend time with her. She isyour wife. Also, it makes you much less—” He waved a hand, encompassing Hector’s entire aspect. “—thiswhen you do.”
Hector felt the fight go out of him. It all sounded so simple when Ramsay said it, but it wasn’t simple. It was a wretched snarl of twine from which he feared he would never extract himself.
“It’s … temporary,” he said with a sigh.
“It is by definition not temporary,” Ramsay retorted, sounding frustrated. “I’m not married myself, but I’ve been to enough weddings to know about the ‘til death do you part’ bit of it all.”
Hector shook his head sharply.
“No, we’ll still be married,” he said. “I just …” He gestured at the paperwork before him. “I just came here to handle this business with my brother, to get the legalities about my inheritance sorted out. And then I always planned to go back home.”
Home. The word tasted strange in his mouth.
And maybe Ramsay heard it, too, because he leaned forward, putting his elbows on the desk.
“Hector,” he said, his voice low and imbued with meaning. “This is your home.”
The idea tried to gain purchase, but Hector shook his head again before it could settle on him.
“No,” he said. “It’s not. I don’t belong here, don’t you see? That’s why I’m always in this devil of a mood. I can’t find peace in a place where I’ll never be enough. I just—I just have to sort out my brother. And then I’ll go.”
“And what about Clio?”
Hector likely should have objected to his friend using Clio’s given name, instead of her title, but he couldn’t summon the energy to do it. Besides, he could all too easily picture her inviting Ramsay to call her by her Christian name. Didn’t her whole family share that warm familiarity with one another, after all?
He felt an aching pang at the idea that he would never truly be enveloped in that warmth.
“Clio will stay here,” he said, closing his eyes. “Her family is here. The people she loves are here.”
When he opened his eyes again, Ramsay was glaring at him.
“You’re the worst kind of idiot,” he accused. “You have the love—" Hector outright flinched. “—of a wonderful woman and yet you are determined to squander it? And for what? For people who never saw you as more than a set of strong shoulders?”
“It’s my home,” Hector protested weakly, but Ramsay slashed a hand through the air, cutting off his objection.
“I am glad that ye ended up in the North, Hector, for without that, I never would have found my true brother,” Ramsay said, eyes blazing with earnestness. “But the people who took you in? They weren’t your family. The people who cast you aside? They certainly weren’t your family.Iwas your family—and now you have a chance at more than that, and you plan to throw it away?”
Ramsay sounded outright furious.
Hector wanted to clutch at his innards, as though he’d been gutshot. It felt the same, or so he assumed.
Because Ramsay was right. The supposedfamilywho’d taken him in? They had never loved him. Maybe nobody had ever loved him, except for the friend who was now staring him down. And that meant that he had nothing to give. He had nothing to offer a woman who had everything—everything except, he thought with a bitter laugh, a husband who was worth anything at all.
“I can’t trap her with me,” he said, his voice as weak as it had ever been. “I just … I can’t do that to her.”
Ramsay looked at him with pity in his eyes. Hector burned beneath that look, but he didn’t dare break the connection of their gazes. Ramsay had known him for too long. He knew him too well. He knew Hector’s soft places; he knew what kind of thoughts would hurt him.
