He staggered upright, only to have George rush him again. In desperation, Thomas swung a right hook, caught his brother ineffectually against the side of the head, and went down under him again. George shifted his weight forward this time and, when Thomas tried to shove him away, pinned him to the floor with one arm across his throat and one knee upon his upper arm. George pressed down hard, Thomas struggled hopelessly and choked for breath, his head full of lights and splinters, and then George’s friends were dragging him away.
Thomas drew in a mouthful of air, and it burned his throat like liquor. The commotion was louder now. It was all around him. He tried to stand, but the effort made him instantly dizzy. He dragged a heavy, swollen hand to his face, and it came away bloody. His jaw, his cheek, his brow, all throbbed sullenly. His knuckles and his mouth stung. His soul wept.
“Come on, old man, hup, there’s a good fellow.” One of George’s friends grasped his hand and yanked him upright, then caught him by the waist as he swayed.
The other one, as far as Thomas could tell through the blood and tears, seemed to be soothing the situation with money.
“Just a misunderstanding,” he was saying. “High spirits. We’re just leaving, aren’t we, chaps?”
Thomas opened his mouth to speak and spat blood onto the pristine marble at his feet. Someone stuffed a handkerchief into his hand, but his fingers refused to close, and he saw it fall, turning over and over like a white flag.
Time was acting strangely. He kept losing pieces of it. The next thing he knew, they were on the street. George looked ghastly in the oily gaslight, but he seemed otherwise unhurt.
“So that was jolly.” That was the man who supported him. “What next? Tenter Street for a whore?”
“Not tonight.” George. His voice still thick. “I need to see to my brother. And my nose.”
Laughter.
More words. Spinning around senselessly like May dancers. Thomas’s head fell back. He blinked at a sky without stars. Fogged like breath across a dirty glass.
Farewells.
A hackney cab, painfully jolting.
Time slipping away again and Thomas letting it.
“Here, drink this, you stupid fucker.”
George’s rooms smeared gradually into focus. Bachelor lodgings, well furnished and surprisingly well kept, given the way George had always been careless with his things when he was younger. Thomas gingerly took the glass from his brother’s outstretched hand and took a sip. The whisky seared his still-bleeding lip and made his eyes water.
“I can’t believe you broke my nose.” George flung himself into a wingback chair and held a cloth to his face. He had made some effort to clean the blood, but he still looked a little monstrous. “Was there a reason, or did you just feel like it?”
Thomas tried to pull himself out of the sprawl into which he had fallen. “I don’t know.” He touched his mouth again and winced. “I only wished to speak to you.”
“What is it then?” asked George. He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his long legs, looking surprisingly at ease for a man who had just fought with his own brother in the entrance hall of the Army & Navy Club. “You’ve clearly got a bee in your bonnet about something.”
Now the moment had come, Thomas felt entirely inadequate to the task. Wrong though it was to go around punching your brother, it wassometimes by far the easiest course of action. “It’s about Mrs. Clark,” he tried, carefully.
“Who?”
Typical that George could idly come close to destroying a woman’s life and not have noticed. “The housekeeper, George.”
“Oh her. Uppity quim’s done a runner actually. I had to charge the marquess’s steward to find another one.”
“Yes, because you threatened her. She’s staying with me.”
“Is she now?” George’s eyebrows twitched tauntingly upwards. “Didn’t think you had it in you, old boy.”
“Not improperly.” Thomas’s head ached, inside as well as out. “Must you be a ... an arse? Have you no sense of shame? No regrets? No morals at all?”
“Ever the prig, Thom.” There was a whisky decanter on the table at George’s elbow. He poured himself a liberal measure and knocked it back. His mouth twisted. “As it happens, no, I don’t. Why should I?”
“Because,” said Thomas patiently, “what you did was not only wrong but cruel.”
It seemed utter hypocrisy to speak to another man of moral ill, and Thomas heard the lack of conviction in his own words. That touch of self-righteousness his brother had always disparaged.
“You came all this way to read me a lecture?” drawled George. “Reminds me of the marquess when he had his health. I suppose I should be flattered.”
