“Becca said you paid for his education.”
“Didn’t you hear me?Youpaid for it.Yourmoney. Mary didn’t know what to do with bank vouchers. She gave them to me to manage. I used it for tuition for Ewan. His younger brother washed out, more interested in blacksmithing.”
“Wait, my money has been going toyou!” The urge to rearrange his brother’s handsome features nearly overwhelmed his ability to hold back.
“Not me. I set up an account for her in Merthyr Tydfil. She never went near it after we arranged for drafts to go there directly, and I made sure Ralph Williamson—the oaf she married—couldn’t, either.”
Brynn paced like a wild animal. “I meant it to feed and clothe them.”
“After they moved, Pa found Mary a position in a millinery. They managed fine.”
“Becca said he bought them a cottage. When did our father become charitable? ‘Accidents are part of mining,’ he said. ‘The miners have to accept the risk,’ he said. Did he have a sudden conversion?”
Rhys leaned back in the chair behind the desk with a wicked grin. “When I took over the books, I found more ‘charity,’ if you want to call it that. He talked tough to his sons and his workers while quietly caring for widows and orphans like the scriptures tell us to.”
“Are you saying she didn’t need my money with her man and two sons gone?”
“Did you hear what I said? She managed fine and asked for little beyond the cottage and a leg up for her children. Just before Ewan finished school, she asked me to put a bit of your funds into a marriage portion for Marion. She said the cottage would stand as the other daughter’s portion. That was the end of it.”
Brynn leaned both hands on the desk and glared down at the man behind it. “What do you mean the end of it?”
“She wished you to know that she had married again and didn’t think it just to take any more of your money. And she hasn’t. I put the remainder and all that followed into your account. I wrote to tell you.” Rhys met Brynn’s ferocious glower with a frown of his own. He didn’t say,But you didn’t read it.He didn’t have to.
Brynn blinked first. He moved to the side chair, leaned forward, elbows on knees, and stared at the floor. “What account?” he sighed.
“The one I used for your share.”
“Share?” Brynn demanded, jerking upright again.
“Pa’s will, which you also didn’t bother to investigate, specified—”
“I told him I didn’t want any of his damned blood money!”
“When did he ever listen to you? You own an equal share of Morgan One. Two and Three are mine entirely. My investment. My risk.” Rhys’s chin rose, and he waited for Brynn to argue.
That last lay as some solace to the pride that threatened to explode. If he’d offered Brynn a portion from the expansion, Brynn would have unleashed on the smug bastard the violence that had been brewing in him since he’d stalked back from Becca Cornwall’s cottage. Brynn sank back into the chair, deflated. “I have an account?”
Rhys rummaged in a side drawer and pulled out a ledger, tossing it at Brynn, who caught it one-handed. “You have an account accumulating interest.” He muttered what he thought of careless relatives who left business to others under his breath.
Brynn didn’t open it. He just shook his head. “Did you take a fee for managing it?”
“Of course I did. Our father didn’t raise us to be careless about money.”
“I have an honest broker overseeing an account accumulating interest and depositing what the army sends while I live in a pokey room and survive on dinners with friends.” An exaggeration but just a small one. “Why didn’t you tell me when I got here?”
“With you prickly as a hedgehog and running from any conversation that didn’t involve the weather and Their Bloody Graces? When was I supposed to slip it in?”
Brynn opened his mouth, but no words would come. Rhys rose, pulled him from the chair with two hands, and gave him a shake. “Welcome home, older brother.” He walked to the door without waiting for an embrace, physical or verbal, leaving Brynn to stare at the ledger.
The following day, Brynn rode to Merthyr Tydfil, filled with regret. He had allowed years to pass. He had nursed anger that had kept him from his father’s funeral. He had created a life that had held his only brother at a distance. Even after Madelyn had brought him to Wales, he had refused to listen or even talk with his brother about anything that mattered.
When he explained it all to Madelyn after Rhys and Phillip wandered off to bed, she had the good grace to confirm what he knew by then. He’d been an idiot.
Now he stood in front of the tidy home he’d been told belonged to Mary Carew Williamson, still staggered by the realization he was a man of some substance. His visit to the bank on his way there had confirmed it.
He went up the walk, brushed the dust of the road from his sleeves, and knocked, hat in hand. When the door opened, he half expected to be greeted by a butler. Instead, a matron of a certain age in a plain but well-made dress stood there. His astonishment shifted swiftly to wariness.
“Hello, Mary,” he said.
