In his first show of temper all evening, Griff slammed his tumbler onto the desk. “Dominic, I’m more than loath to hear another blessed apology, if that’s where you’re headed. You’ve been in this business with me almost from the start, studying the numbers, spotting opportunities I’d have missed, controlling expenses. That’s not charity, it’spartnership. We’re a team, a family, no matter the past.”
Dom’s fingers clenched around his glass, the gulp he took to drown the remorse he could never quite shake making him choke.To hell with it.To please Griff—his desire always—he left unsaid what they both knew: that his reckless gambling had nearly tossed the Kent viscountcy into the rubbish bin and driven his brother into dealings with Shoreditch knaves.
What viscount even knew a man named Jimmie Beans, much lessmetwith him regularly? Yet Griffin Alastair Beckett, fifth Viscount Kent, now seemed to relish his brush with the underworld. Even just a little.
Griff spun his tumbler in a slow circle on his thigh, his expression thoughtful. “Dom, I wouldn’t change a thing, not a second, because it might alter my trajectory. Where would my life be without Willie and my boy, can you tell me?”
Even to satisfy his brother, he wasn’t going down that path. OnceGriff started talking about his wife, Wilhelmina, and infant, Henry, it wasn’t long before he’d get teary-eyed—emotions Dom had no capability to understand or govern.
“That reminds me,” Griff said, his voice betraying no small amount of amusement. With his pinky, he nudged a sealed envelope resting on the desk. “Are you going to open it?”
Dom grunted and slumped lower in the armchair.No.
Laughing, Griff flipped the letter until Dom was forced to catch it or watch it tumble to the Aubusson rug. Holding it between two fingers as though it burned, a fast breath shot through his teeth. He recognized the Lyon’s Den crimson seal, the bold script scratched into vellum, which is why he hadn’t wanted to touch it earlier.
Bessie Dove-Lyon, the Black Widow of Whitehall, was trying to track him down.
Griff stretched his legs with a groan of what sounded like pure pleasure. He was enjoying this, the cur. “She’s forgiven you, or close to it, which was hard for her because you look so much like the Colonel. She’s very fond of you, Dom, no matter her difficulty admitting it. Even unruly behavior won’t break the bond. She got over my duel, though it took about as long as it did for the injury to heal. Months, that.” He hummed beneath his breath. “I can’t even remember her name now, the chit I fought over. And my shoulder still aches when it rains, a fact Willie is none too pleased to recognize.”
“It’s the gray,” Dom murmured, running his hand through his overlong strands, his gaze fixed on the missive he had to acknowledge at some point. “Makes me look old.”
“Distinguished,” his brother clarified.
“Knightsbridge thought I was you when I stepped from the carriage on Curzon last week.” Dom wiggled his finger beneath the flap and popped the Den’s elaborate seal. “Said I looked exhausted, as if I’d fought a battle with that headstrong wife of mine.”
Griff dropped his head to his hand, bending fully into his delight. “I’ve got to tell Willie. Headstrong is right!”
“There’s seven years between us, Griff. A bit of an insult to be thought the older one.”
“Knightsbridge was father’s solicitor until he toppled down the staircase at White’s. He’s seventy if he’s a day. He can’t see beyond the end of his nose.”
Dom wasn’t convinced. He felt older, but not a minute wiser. Regret clung like a weight he couldn’t shed, perhaps the very thing that had produced the silver threads streaking his hair, growing in number by the day.
Sitting up, Griff poured another dram into their tumblers. “Put me out of my misery and open the thing.”
Unable to deny his brother, Dom slipped the sheet loose.
The note was concise, yet commanding—Bessie’s style. It took him longer to read it than it should, a disgrace he’d never get over. His mother and father had made sure he wouldn’t. Resolute, he folded the foolscap lengthwise, then shoved it back into the darkened interior of its packaging. Reclaiming the glass balanced on his knee, he took a drink. “About that shipment of stone from the Portland quarries, your steward says the barge was delayed on the tide, and the masons are threatening to idle the men until it arrives. I’ll schedule a meeting to handle the negotiations.”
“Oh, for the love of—” Rising from his chair, Griff leaned over the desk, and ripped the envelope from Dom’s slackened grasp.
“I’m not doing it,” Dom growled before Griff could state his opinion.
Because older brothers always had one.
Griff made quick work of Bessie’s request to meet with one of her clients, his lips parting in startled glee. “Lady Louisa Radcliffe. That’s Branscombe’s daughter, isn’t it? The wallflower who paints those dreadful watercolors?”
“No, she’s the hellion who almost burned down Baron Van-Meager’s manse last year. The artist is her sister.” Why Dom knew this, he couldn’t rightly say, he simply did.
Griff rolled the tumbler across his lips, a humming assessment escaping. “Ah, yes, the beautiful one. The so-calledchemist.”
Dom polished off his rum, thinking it was fortunate liquor had never been his problem, though games of chancehad. He didn’t yearn to roll the dice of life ever again and that included matrimony. Though he often got an itch between his shoulder blades when his world got too calm, a predicament he hoped to someday conquer. “She’s calamity in silk. And if you don’t recall, I’ve had enough chaos.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to meet her.” Griff held back a yawn Dom wasn’t certain was genuine. “Bessie is only asking for tea, not blood.”
Dom eyed the envelope Griff tossed on the desk, a shiver of foreboding skating down his spine. The Radcliffe daughters were heiresses, each and every one of them—four, if he had it right. Or was it five?
Funds they could use.
