“It is good that you finally came up to town,” Langford said. “We will go and have some new coats made for you tomorrow. A trip to a hairdresser might be in order too. You can’t go around looking like one of those French counts who seduce widows to their eternal regret.”
“A few were not so regretful, as I recall.” Adam gazed down at his frock coat. Cut in the French manner, a bit longer and tighter than English fashions, it probably did make him look foreign.
“We will get drunk and you can tell me about them and make me envious,” Langford said.
“Unless something has indeed changed, there is little I can tell you about widows.”
“So, what are your plans?” Brentworth asked.
“I expect that my plans are much like yours now. Tend my estate. Vote in Parliament. As I said, the usual sort of things.”
“That is all?” Brentworth asked. “You leave England and stay away almost five years, and upon your return all you want is to be a country gentleman who comes to town for the sessions?”
“I intend to find a rich and lusty wife too. It is also time to marry.”
“Speak for yourself,” Langford said.
“Ignore him,” Brentworth said. “There are two mammas who have Langford squarely in their sights, and he is running out of places to hide. Unfortunately, it is doubtful either girl is lusty enough, or I am sure he would gladly hand one over to you.”
“If there are two, he should send one in your direction,” Adam said. Oddly enough, mothers almost never targeted Brentworth. Rumor had it that he terrified ingénues so much that their mothers looked elsewhere. “As for the lusty enough part, have you found out yet, Langford?”
Langford laughed. “Perhaps in France all kinds of explorations are made on the subject when it comes to girls, but lest you forget, here in England we just hope for the best and almost never get it.”
Being half French, Adam found the strangled sensuality that had plagued the English these last few decades both odd and curious. It was as if mothers and grandmothers had all convened a conference early in the war and decided that, in the name of rejecting all things French, their daughters should not have as much fun as they had enjoyed in their own youth.
A stillness fell in the chamber. He looked up to see Brentworth eyeing him, and not kindly.
“Say it,” Adam demanded.
“Hell, yes, I’ll say it—”
“Leave it alone, Brentworth,” Langford urged.
“No, I insist,” Adam said.
Brentworth stood and went to the whiskey decanter again. He took long enough there that Adam thought perhaps the rancor had passed, or been swallowed for now.
Brentworth abruptly turned on him. “I understand that you were grieving. I understand that there were things being said that were—scurrilous and damaging and—”
Adam bolted to his feet and hurled his glass into the fire. Flames jumped. “Scurrilous and damaging?He killed himselfbecause of it!”
“I know that. But you never spoke to us. You never allowed us to help. You just disappeared with your mother without a word, and there has been no word since, and you walk in here as if the last years never happened. Hell, Stratton, we have all been friends for years and you acted as if the two of us were lined up against your family.”
“I never thought that.”
“The hell you didn’t.”
Langford shook his head. “Sit down, both of you. I have told you before, Brentworth, that under the circumstances, whatever he did was a choice made in anger and grief. Who knows how you or I would have acted?” He offered Adam a smile of—what? Forgiveness? “You do not have to explain anything to us.”
Except he did. Brentworth was right. He had turned his back on everyone and everything in his anger. He could not leave England fast enough. Not because of the implied disgrace behind his father’s death, and not because he could not trust anyone.
“I left as I did because if I had not, I would have surely killed someone out of rage, without even knowing whether I blamed the right person.”
Brentworth sank back into his chair. Neither friend’s gaze met his for a long time.
“And do you know now? If you blamed the right person?” Brentworth asked.
“Not yet.”
