disillusionment, but what if he hadn’t run to Harry that day? What if he’d had the courage to stay at home and chip away at the wrong he’d done Luke and, in his hurt pride, the lesser wrong Luke did him by banishing him from his home?
All of it was useless speculation now, but he still felt less trusting and grateful towards his old friend than he probably ought to. Another area of darkness in his cynical mind he didn’t want to explore, so did that make him a coward? Time couldn’t rub out his last terrible argument with his brother, but it did make his betrayal seem worse. Did you bed my wife? That harsh-voiced and unanswerable question was as clear as if Luke had asked it seconds ago even after seventeen years. It shook James to realise half his lifetime had gone by since that day. All he had to offer in reply was a dumb silence that stretched into a coward’s admission and Luke turned away from him as if the sight of his half-brother made him ill. I have no brother, then, he said and it was as true today as it was then, despite Luke’s new wife’s efforts to bridge the gulf between the half-brothers that her predecessor made.
* * *
‘Devil take it, Chloe, why can’t I stay?’ Luke asked his wife a few days later once she’d tracked James to his host’s library where he had permission to spread out the architect’s ideas for restoring Brackley to its former glory and adding a few fanciful touches of his own James wasn’t sure he approved of.
‘Because it’s my duty to see each of Virginia’s legatees alone before he embarks on his task for the season. I’d like to have seen your face if I let your brother sit in when I gave you yours, Luke Winterley.’
‘You weren’t my wife then.’
‘No, and I never would have agreed to marry you if I thought you didn’t trust me.’
‘It’s not you I don’t trust, it’s him,’ Luke said sulkily and James had to bite back a smile at the sight of his elder brother’s thunderous frown even though he hadn’t felt much like smiling after seeing the weighty letter in Chloe’s slim hand.
‘Stay if you must, Luke,’ he invited with a shrug it took a bit too much effort to make careless and indifferent. ‘It can’t come as a surprise to any of us what Lady Chloe has to say to me. I am the only person left on the list Virginia laid down in her will of us fools required to dance to her tune a season at a time. At least there won’t be any need to endure another wedding for my sake, after such a surfeit of them so far this year.’
‘Why not?’ Lady Chloe said so innocently he eyed her sharply and turned his attention to Luke for reassurance he didn’t expect the impossible, as well.
‘Because I haven’t the least desire to be wed and can you imagine me embracing fatherhood as you three did in your own unlikely way?’ he asked him directly.
‘Hmm, at the beginning of this year I would have said nothing was less likely, since then I’ve learnt even the impossible can happen if you want it badly enough,’ Luke said with a hot glance at his wife that made James feel he ought to blush, if only he still knew how.
‘At least you can end it on a certainty, then—I shall not marry. Not even Virginia could bring about that wonder and whatever she wants me to do will not result in marriage. As I have settled in a part of the country where you can see as little of me as you choose, Brother, we can continue as we are and I’m delighted to leave you two to carry on the Winterley line.’
It was a challenge too far, James realised as Chloe blushed rosily and Luke looked like a thundercloud, then stamped out of the room after curtly requesting his wife to get her business with his confounded brother over as swiftly as possible, then instruct her maid to pack for their departure on the morrow, now her last task for Virginia was done.
‘Why do you always have to stir his temper like that, James?’ Chloe asked with a sad shake of the head that killed the glib reply on his tongue stone dead.
‘It’s easier than trying to drag up feelings as dead as a doornail between us, Chloe. Don’t start a campaign to restore brotherly love between us, for that’s a marvel even Virginia couldn’t achieve.’
‘I don’t think any sort of love dies as easily as you think, but Luke is too good at hiding his feelings and you’re not a lot better.’
‘Maybe not, but some things are best hidden, or ignored until they go away.’
‘We shall see,’ Chloe told him with a very direct stare to challenge his refusal to take her hope fraternal love might yet blossom between him and her husband seriously. ‘Lady Virginia worked three unexpected wonders this year, perhaps there’s one to come,’ she said, extending her hand so he had to take the letter he’d been avoiding like a coward, or let it drop to the floor.
‘And perhaps not,’ he replied and accepted it. ‘Don’t expect too much,’ he warned.
‘Your great-aunt Virginia taught me too well for me not to, James,’ she replied softly, then left him to read his last letter from a woman he had loved as much as he had it in him to love anyone.
Feeling closed in now, James rolled up the architect’s plans and shut his notebook. He was too distracted to risk riding his favourite stallion into the hills in search of the peace and quiet he craved, so he strode out of the house by the long windows of Lord Laughraine’s library and into the gardens and the wide parkland beyond. Confound it, now his hand was trembling as he checked Virginia’s letter was safely in his pocket. He stood still to let nature cure his uneven breathing with clear autumn air. There; he was almost himself again.
The sounds of busy nature preparing for winter only seemed to emphasise the fact he shouldn’t have come to Raigne, nor found a place in his heart for this rolling and generous countryside and his poor old wreck in the hills. No point bewailing what was done and out here nobody could see him grieve for a woman who simply loved him nearly nine months after her death. He sensed Virginia was weary with the world even before that last brief illness took her from it, but losing her put cracks in the shell he’d grown round his heart half a lifetime ago and they seemed to have been widening ever since.
A whole season had gone by since he came here, sickened by Hebe’s death and looking for who knew what? Now he’d fallen for poor tumbledown old Brackley and become fond of Virginia’s latest victim, as well. He could imagine her impatient frown at that description. Lady Farenze’s Rogues didn’t work—Luke, Tom and Gideon were good men. Three good men and a rogue didn’t exactly trip off the tongue. Now, where was he? Ah, yes, that last season: summer. When Frederick Peters, lawyer, turned back into Sir Gideon Laughraine, heir to a peerage and a magnificent old house and estates. Except Gideon was really Virgil Winterley’s grandson and, come to think of it, James had loved Great-Uncle Virgil as well, so that was two more on the list he couldn’t help loving if he tried. Gideon’s lovely, resolute wife Calliope put another crack in the walls James had built against the world at seventeen and it felt dangerous to care about anyone, but there seemed little point going on pretending he didn’t for much longer.
He should leave Raigne before any one of these people who got under his skin while he wasn’t paying attention got hurt like poor Hebe. As soon as he’d read Virginia’s letter he’d go. He was a landowner in his own right now, even if his house and estate weren’t much to boast about right now. On the unkempt Brackley Estate, James Winterley, rake, adventurer and care-for-nobody would be safe from his family and they would be safe from him. Striding freely now, he reached the arboretum Raigne was famous for among plant collectors in the know. It didn’t matter if their leaves were native wonders or more at home in China or the Americas, the tired and dusty dark green of late summer was shading into the glorious last gasp of gold and amber and fire of autumn that James secretly loved. He planned a modest version of this splendour at Brackley, then decided a well-stocked orchard would be better.
With a sigh he sat on a neat bench for those who had time to rest after the gentle climb. He couldn’t take out Virginia’s final letter and face her loss all over again yet, so he gave himself five minutes to enjoy the view like a tourist. The lingering warmth and richness of an English autumn must have soaked into his thoughts, because he felt much calmer