They stared at each other in wary silence.
“Your sister is... in many ways one of the most difficult humans I’ve ever met. And I’m sure you can imagine the kinds of people I’ve met. But what she has is... valor.”
Hogarth’s eyes might be like Ginny’s, but such a different spirit shone out of them. Less fierce, but still soulful. More innocent and mild and somehow infinitely, objectionably... kind. Marchand understood fully why Ginny wanted to protect him, because now he found himself wanting to protect him, too.
But he also knew that protecting Hogarth meant making sure Hogarth could protect himself.
“True valor is a rare quality in this world, Lord Highgrove. And because she cares about you, you might just crush what remains of it if you disappoint her again. But if you make her proud, it will be one of the finest moments of her life, and she deserves fine moments. I daresay it might even be one of the finest moments ofyourlife. And you deserve those, too. Do you comprehend me? I don’t know how to teach you to care if you don’t. Because you bloody well ought to care.”
Hogarth was still frowning at him thoughtfully.
Finally he said, hesitantly, “Idocare, Marchand. My family is theonlything I care about. I made a mistake. A terrible mistake. Perhaps the first in my entire life.” His voice cracked. “I have scarcely been able to bear it.”
Marchand quietly took this in.
“Then why did you do it?” But he asked it more gently than accusingly. He genuinely wanted to know.
Hogarth didn’t speak for a time. Then he drew in and exhaled a long breath. “There is something you don’t understand about Sydenham.”
The back of Marchand’s neck tingled with portent. Because this was the other thing he’d come to speak with Hogarth about today. Something Ginny had said in the garden at the Grand Palace on the Thames had sparked in him a suspicion that had at first seemed almost absurd.
But the more he entertained it, the less outlandish it seemed.
He needed to be careful. The web of connections between the aristocrats and wealthy men who sustained his business all but guaranteed that anything Marchand said would be repeated.
“Did the earl do something you consider untoward on that notable evening?” he asked evenly.
“He insulted my father.” Hogarth said this somewhat thickly.
“And so you retaliated by giving him all your money?”
He said this deliberately to make Hogarth bristle, because he knew too well that being challenged was really the best way to find one’s spine. Provided he truly possessed one.
“They were friends and ‘cheerful rivals.’?” Hogarth gave these words an ironic, somewhat bitter lilt. “Sydenham and my father. At least that’s how my father put it. But there was always an edge to their exchanges and it made me uncomfortable when I was a boy. Mainly because I heard Sydenham claim more than once that my father stole my mother from him. I heard him say it quite a few times. They both played it off as a joke. How can a person bestolen? It seems to me my mother made her choice when she married my father, even though he was a viscount and Sydenham was an earl and considerably wealthier. And at Lucifer’s Fall that night, Sydenham said to me...” Hogarth paused. And dragged in a steadyingbreath. “?‘Such a pity your father killed your mother. She’d be alive today if she’d married me.’?” Hogarth’s voice had gone thick. “Andagain, he played it off as ajoke. I think he might have been drunk. I simply could not let it stand.”
Marchand was not easily horrified. But that was an egregious thing to say to another man, drunk or not.
“Unforgivable,” he told Hogarth quietly.
“It just struck me asunconscionableto assert that to my face,” Hogarth continued, “whether or not there is some truth in it. And I’m not naive, Marchand. I know there’s some painful truth to it. My fathercouldbe reckless. But I wanted to win. I wanted to humble Sydenham thoroughly and wipe that smug expression from his face. Justonce. I wanted to do it for my father and for my mother.” His voice thickened. “And Iwaswinning... well, and also losing, quite a bit”—his eyebrows dove in confusion—“and then suddenly I lost and lost and lost some more. And I couldn’t seem to even see clearly or concentrate at all. I’d never been drunk before that night. I swear to you I didn’t know being drunk waslikethat. I was, in fact, so drunk that I could have sworn the satyrs on his waistcoat buttons were jeering and winking at me.” He flushed red.
That was exactly what Ginny had told him.
The suspicion that had been coalescing on the periphery of his awareness for days finally settled into a cold spot in Marchand’s gut. He could trace its origins back to a certain conversation in the smoking room of the Grand Palace on the Thames.
“Lord Highgrove... do you remember if Sydenham gave you anything to drink? That is, did you accept a drink specifically from him, rather than from one of the waiters on staff?”
“He was the only one who did bring drinks to me. I thought it would be rude to decline his offer.”
“Hebrought them to you? Not the waiter?”
Hogarth nodded. “Brandy. He wanted to toast to my father’s memory.”
Damn.
Inwardly Marchand cursed quite a bit more colorfully.
He knew what he needed to learn next.
