He waited in the reception hall while his card was carried away, and followed the butler to the library after his reception had been given the nod. In the library he found Ives, the youngest of the legitimate brothers, and at thirty, two years older than Gareth. Officially named Ywain, which he hated, Ives was tall like all of the third duke’s progeny. He now stood by a window that showed off his classical features. Its light caught the golden streaks in his dark brown hair. Upon hearing the door open he turned. A black armband wrapped the sleeve of his dark coat.
They waited for the butler to leave. Ives fought a battle with a grin that wanted to break out on his face. Devilish delight showed in his green eyes. He bit back the expression, coughed, and assumed a somber demeanor appropriate to the reunion. “Good of you to come, Gareth. I know Percy would be touched.”
Gareth kept his expression blank with difficulty. “I read about it in Amsterdam and was on a packet by morning. So unexpected. So shocking.”
“Yes, yes. As you can imagine, we are beside ourselves.”
Oh, he could imagine. Around the time he turned fifteen, Gareth had realized Lance and Ives were his comrades in arms against Percy. They knew why he hated the duke’s heir, but he still did not know what had happened in this family to set full-blooded brother against full-blooded brother.
“Amsterdam, you say?” Ives asked.
“Yes.”
“I am glad to hear it. I assume your journey was both pleasurable and profitable.”
Someone else who had wondered whether Percy had been done in by his bastard half brother. Gareth could hardly mind. He must have threatened to kill Percy half a dozen times in Ives’s hearing.
“I am brokering a French count’s collection. I found an industrialist here who has the money, and who desires an instant gallery to grace his newly built grand house. The paintings should arrive in a fortnight.”
Ives gestured to a tray with a brandy decanter and raised his eyebrows quizzically. When Gareth nodded, Ives proceeded to pour. “Lance will want you to find such a buyer for some pictures from here. The ones Percy bought are not to his taste.”
Gareth took the glass and sipped. “Are they to anyone’s? I cannot sell what no one will buy.”
“Perhaps you can locate a rich industrialist with bad eyesight. Or you can lie and claim they are the finest paintings dabbed in the last two decades.”
“Only if we speak of works done by Spanish nuns. All those pastel fat cherubs and heaven-gazing saints with their palms of martyrdom— Do you think Percy was a secret dissenter?”
“That would require him to have had principles of some kind, would it not?”
Gareth almost choked. Ives sucked in his cheeks.
“Oh, hell,” Ives sighed. “It won’t do to be speaking ill of the dead. Not now. We would not want the servants to see us as anything but suitably mournful. Reports of raucous glee might be misunderstood. God forgive me, Gareth, he was my brother—but when I got the news in London, it was all I could do not to throw open the window and shoot a few pistol balls into the sky to celebrate.”
“I’ll wager you didn’t only because the sound would have frightened your actress friend. How is she?”
“Expensive.”
Gareth assumed that affair would end soon. “Why would reports of our mood be misunderstood? I assume no one believes he was well loved.”
Ives turned very sober indeed. “It was possibly murder, Gareth. You surely heard. Even the papers allude to it.”
“Were you hoping I was in England that day and eyes would turn to me?”
He got a sharp look for that. “Eyes had already turned. Inquiries are afoot in London to learn your whereabouts. So it is a damned good thing you were out of the country. I am truly relieved to have one fewer brother to protect with my lawyer’s eloquence.”
They stood there, glasses in hand, drinking the brandy.
“Where were you that day?” Gareth asked.
“In London. In court during the day and at a dinner party at night. I am of no interest to the magistrate.”
They each took another swallow.
“And Lance?”
Ives let out a deep, long breath. “He was here. He was right in this damned house.”
“Indeed I was,” a voice said.
