“The what?”
“The white horse.”
“I’ve already got a horse.”
“Not like this one. Ask Thomas.” And with that, she urged Gulliver into a trot and struck out across the fields. Soon, she was galloping. He heard her curse as her hat went flying. And her hair unfurled behind her like the rays of the sun.
Micha went home at a more measured pace. Of course he had no intention of asking Thomas about the white horse, whatever that was. But when he came through the door, he found him sitting on the bottom of the stairs, his arms folded across the top of his knees. The position made him seem more than usually rangy, like some scrawny, black-feathered bird.
“Something the matter?” Micha lounged against the doorframe.
Thomas looked up, tried to smile, and shook his head. “No ... I ... Forgive me, this must look quite peculiar.”
“Well, yes, a bit.”
“Mrs. Greenlie passed away this afternoon.”
After a moment, Micha pushed himself away from the wall and went to sit beside Thomas. His upper arm, from elbow to shoulder, fit against Micha’s. “Oh, sorry.”
“It was very peaceful. The family are sad, of course, but it was a shock to no one.”
Micha realised he had heedlessly mirrored Thomas’s pose, so he turned his head so he could watch the other man’s profile. There was something a little forbidding about Thomas from this angle. Although he was not handsome, there was a degree of hauteur to his features, a gift of his lineage rather than his character. “If it was all angels and hallelujahs, why are you sitting on the stairs?”
Thomas visibly crumpled. “Because I lied to you.”
“Everybody lies.”
“I know.” Thomas closed his eyes. “But I hate this lie. I hate it more than anything. And I have to tell it, over and over and over again.”
Micha shifted uncomfortably, accidentally banging his arm into Thomas. He had, after all, already plundered Thomas’s secrets and only yesterday used what little he knew of them to torment him. It had been the pettiest of impulses, but Micha had indulged it anyway, all because Thomas had tried to give him something that had the power to make him happy.
“You don’t owe me anything.” He shrugged. “Truth or lie, it makes no difference to me.”
Thomas leaned a little, just a little, into his shoulder. “I don’t want to burden you with this.”
Micha wondered if he would still have touched the journal if he had understood the context of those four carefully written words. Probably. But now he knew the extent of his trespass. “I’ll manage. Tell me, if you want to tell me, or don’t.”
“My brother Edward,” said Thomas, his voice cutting strangely through the silence, precise as a razor blade, “did not die by accident. He shot himself.”
Micha suddenly realised his acting skills were largely sex-based and he had no idea how to plausibly sound surprised. “He must have been very unhappy.”
“Yes.” Thomas’s voice wavered. “He must have been. But Micha, I had no idea.”
Micha tried desperately to think of something comforting. “Well, how much can we know about each other? I mean, really.”
Thomas sat up, his fingers twisting together. “He was my brother. How long and how deeply he must have suffered. And I am still no closer to understanding than I was the day the marquess summoned me to help him cover up the scandal.”
There was a long silence. Micha saw himself, two years ago on the docks at Dover, those monstrous cliffs standing at his back like sentries, while Isidore left him. Stopped Micha’s life like a finger upon a compass and disappeared into his own. It should not have been unexpected. Had Micha been Isidore, he would not have chosen differently. “Sometimes knowing something doesn’t make it any easier to understand.”
Thomas turned his lips up into something like a smile. “I suppose you must be right,” he murmured. “But I feel so very far from any understanding.”
“What was he like?”
“Edward? Oh, he was the best of us, and I do not say that simply because it’s convention that the deceased must be sanctified in memory. He had George’s looks and spirit, but he was kind, so very kind. It was as though nothing was ever beneath his notice. And when he spoke to you, or looked at you, he could make you the centre of the world. I always felt less dull when I was with him.”
Micha lowered his head onto his hands. “I don’t think you’re dull,” he muttered, resenting the admission even as he offered it.
But Thomas went on as though he had not heard. “The marquess is, well, he is who he is. We Mandevilles can trace our line back to 1066, you know. This seems to mean something to him. But I think he truly loved Edward. George was simply insurance. And I, of course, was unforeseen, inadvertent, and unnecessary. At least to His Lordship.” He paused and then added, in a rather brittle tone, “Let us hope this wayward course is part of some greater plan, its intricacies both unseen and unknown.”
