“Because you swived my mother.”

Truly, a son to be proud of. “You always were the quickest of my children.” The earl’s smile widened, but he held his verbal fire until the tea tray had been set on the desk. “You’ll have to pour, lad. My hands shake too badly, and I can barely hold up the teapot. Mine should be only half full, and cool it down with some cream, for I’m likely to spill it.”

Ethan flicked a glance at his old papa spouting off so cheerfully about his egregious infirmities, and then his eyes shifted to his father’s hands, which the earl could not have rendered steady had he wanted to.

“You’ve learned a little restraint,” the earl decided as his son poured for them both. “Can’t say as I ever got the knack, myself. The ladies despaired of me.”

“Was it lack of restraint that caused you to send me off in such disgrace?” The desk was so large Ethan had to get up, walk around it, and hand the earl his half-full, heavily creamed cup of tea. The earl knew a moment of something—shame, relief, glee… gratitude?—when Ethan wrapped his father’s cold fingers around the warm cup.

The earl carefully—and shakily—brought the teacup to his mouth.

“Used to like it hot,” the earl mused on a sigh, “but a lapful of hot tea modifies one’s priorities. Now…” He turned his gaze on his firstborn and saw a handsome man in his prime, completely composed, shrewd and patient enough to wait him out. But approaching death had only heightened the functioning of the earl’s bladder, so waiting all afternoon wasn’t an option.

“The disgrace was mine,” the earl said, looking his son straight in the eye. “I know full well you did not attempt to burn your brother with that iron.”

Ethan took a delicate sip of his tea. “Were you merely being petty and tyrannical then, when you turned the little thugs and perverts of Stoneham loose on me?”

“Perverts.” The earl tasted the word, found it foul. “Interesting choice. I’d discovered you asleep in Nicholas’s bed just the night before, and not for the first time.”

“Of course I was in his bed,” Ethan scoffed, “or he was in mine. How else were we to stay up half the night whispering without waking the younger boys?”

Ethan’s anger swam much, much closer to the surface, so close the earl perceived that the frigid cool in Ethan’s eyes was not impatience, annoyance, nor anything else half so tame.

A betrayed boy yet lurked in the man who’d come to call. A devastated, betrayed boy.

“I comprehend now, Ethan, that you and Nick remained innocent of the most lamentable adolescent behaviors. It took some time, Della’s incessant carping, and raising several more boys before I understood my mistake. By then, you were no longer speaking to any of us, save Della, and things turned out for the best.”

Ethan took another measured sip of his tea, then another, clearly trying to absorb the explanation the earl offered, but no doubt stumbling over the emotional enormity of the wrong done him, and not for the first time.

“In what manner,” Ethan spoke very softly, “do you consider things turned out for the best?”

“The two of you were entangled. You protected Nick. He protected you.”

“Is that not what brothers do?” Ethan asked with chilly civility.

“Not when one will take a seat in the Lords and the other is merely an earl’s by-blow. Sooner or later, you and Nicholas were going to have to face facts. I did neither of you any service by letting you get so close in the first place.”

The earl reassured himself of this version of the facts regularly. Things had worked out for the best—or they would soon.

“So having made that mistake,” Ethan said, but not quite dispassionately, “your only recourse was to compound it by separating us the way you did, bellowing accusations, and setting us against each other?”

The earl let his teacup clatter unsteadily onto its saucer. “I’ve said I was wrong, both in what I did and how I did it. I am not a perfect man, as you well know. But admit to me, please, that both you and Nicholas thrive, and despite my errors, you are both people to be reckoned with, capable of standing on your own two feet.”

Ethan rose to those two feet with an ease the earl tried not to envy. “You think old age alone has impaired your hearing and vision, sir. I can assure you, your faculties have long been wanting, else you would have realized Nick and I have always been capable of standing on our own two feet, regardless of our relationship as brothers or friends. Good day.”

He departed in a few brisk strides, closing the door with enviable decorum.

Round one to the pup, your bloody uncrapping lordship. The earl sat back with a sigh, sipping his cooling tea disconsolately. God willing, there would be a round two.

Valentine took a seat at Nick’s Broadwood and folded down the music rack, then petted the instrument as if it were an obedient mistress. “So tell me what you seek in a wife, Nicholas. The hunt doesn’t seem to be progressing, and the Season doesn’t last forever.”

Satan’s hairy testicles. “This line of questioning—upon which you seem fixated—does not bode well for our friendship, Valentine.”

There was no heat in Nick’s reply. He’d never go a round of fisticuffs with a friend whose hands were so very talented. Instead he went to the sideboard and poured them each a brandy. “Any woman who marries me has to understand it will be a marriage for the sake of appearances only, and leave me in peace for the rest of my days.”

Val’s opening flourishes at the keyboard came to an abrupt pause. “In God’s name, why?”

“Why what?” Nick set Val’s drink on the piano’s lamp stand.

“Shame on you.” Val moved the drink to a little music table. “Why wouldn’t you, of all the randy creatures on God’s earth, marry a woman to take to your bed?”

Nick lowered himself to the sofa and regarded the drink he really did not want. “Firstly, I don’t need to marry to find women by the pairs and trios in my bed. Secondly, I do not intend to have children with my wife, because my size makes me poor breeding stock. Thirdly, I will not take advantage of some sweet young thing by taking her to my bed, then tossing her over while I go look for livelier game elsewhere, thus precipitating endless painful and avoidable scenes involving many damp handkerchiefs, broken vases, and hurt feelings.”

“You are full of tripe,” Val said calmly. When he resumed playing, the clever bastard chose a lullaby. Sweet, lyrical, and perfectly suited to cadging confidences from unsuspecting friends. “First, you adore women and invariably make them happy, at least bed-wise. There are witnesses to this, Nick. Eyewitnesses. Second, you are superb breeding stock, being handsome, intelligent, prodigiously healthy, and, for want of a better word, lusty. Find a great strapping country girl and space your children, but do not tell somebody who is only a bit shorter than you that size makes you dangerous to your wife. Third, even you have lost your appetite lately for the easy conquests, if you can call them that. You are posturing to take a real wife, my friend.”

The little song lilted along, while Nick considered firing a pillow at Valentine’s head.

“I am posturing to court the semblance of a real wife.” Nick stretched out on the long sofa, his drink resting on his chest. “The fiction must be credible, at least until one of my brothers can go about the business in earnest.”

“You are serious about this,” Val said, frowning at Nick over the lid of the piano.

Nick waved a hand. “I killed my mother, you know.”

Val didn’t dignify that with a rejoinder, and the music grew even softer. “If you were going to marry in earnest, what sort of wife would you seek?”

Nick didn’t answer. He kept his eyes closed, let his breathing slow and deepen, let the music wash through the melancholy Val’s choice of topic left in his chest. What sort of wife would Nick choose, if he had any sort of meaningful choice?