“Probably a sound strategy with any lady.”

“Speaking of ladies.” Nick squinted at his brother. “What are you doing for companionship these days?”

“I hardly have time to worry about it,” Ethan replied, realizing he was—somewhat to his surprise—telling the truth. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “You’re an uncle, you know.”

Nick’s gaze whipped to Ethan, who sat on his hassock, examining his hands.

“You have a child?”

“A couple of little boys,” Ethan said, still studying the same hands he’d had for more than thirty years. “They live at Tydings, raising hell, climbing out their bedroom window, harassing the daylights out of their tutors.”

“And when,” Nick asked very quietly, “were you going to introduce me to my nephews?”

Ethan rose from the hassock and paced off to gather up the clothing Nick had cast to the compass points. “I hadn’t really planned on it.”

“I suppose you haven’t told Bellefonte he is a grandfather twice over?” Nick only sounded angry. Ethan could hear the bewilderment beneath the indignation all too easily.

“I did not tell him,” Ethan said, wishing Nick hadn’t been so quick to spot this very oversight. “I planned on telling Della.”

Nick ducked his head under the water, came up, and began lathering his hair.

“Did Della get an invitation to your wedding, Brother? Doubtless, I must have misplaced mine, for I do not recall attending.”

“Nick…” Ethan eyed his brother, wondering why they were having this conversation now, when Nick was at his bath. Perhaps it was because that should have put Nick at a tactical disadvantage.

“Explain this to me, Ethan.” Nick went on scrubbing his hair, his voice deceptively casual. “Even given our estrangement, you could not drop me a note? Not when you got married, not when you had your firstborn or your second?”

“How do you know I married?”

“You would not sire a bastard, much less two,” Nick said, dunking again and coming up, sloshing water all around the tub.

“I did not sire bastards, but neither am I married as we speak.”

“You lost a wife,” Nick concluded, staring straight ahead and frowning mightily. “You did not think to inform me of this either?”

Ethan crossed the room and picked up one of the two pitchers of warm water sitting beside the tub. “Close your eyes,” he ordered then poured both pitchers over Nick’s hair.

Nick rose out of the tub and took the towel Ethan passed to him. “Talk to me, or so help me God, Ethan, I will start pounding on you, and pounding hard.” For some reason, that Nick offered this threat while very casually naked, his every bulging muscle in plain sight, made the menace more believable.

“I had a mistress,” Ethan said, running a hand through his hair, “a perfectly mundane business arrangement with a woman suited to that purpose. She got pregnant, and because my dealings with her were exclusive, I married her to prevent my child from being illegitimate. Once married, a second child came along directly. When Joshua was two, and Jeremiah three, their mother succumbed to typhus.”

Nick scrubbed his face dry but stood for a long moment, naked and dripping all over the hearthstones while he clutched at the towel and stared at his brother’s face.

“How long ago did she die?”

“Several years. Several years this summer.”

“Did you love her?” Nick’s tone was puzzled.

“By the time she bore the second child,” Ethan said wearily, “I hated her, and she hated me.”

“I’m sorry,” Nick said, looking like he meant it quite sincerely. “I am not sorry you told me, though, and it goes without saying I would like to meet—no, I would like to know—my nephews, and I can promise you the rest of the family will feel the same way.”

Ethan nodded, wishing to hell he’d kept his mouth shut, for there was a damned uncomfortable spasm in his throat; an ache, really.

“Della doesn’t know?”

“I haven’t told her.” Ethan lowered himself back to his hassock, the scent of sandalwood wafting around the room. “I didn’t want to put her in a position of having to keep a secret from you, though she somehow got wind of my marriage.”

Nick stalked over to the bed and surveyed the outfit Ethan had assembled for him. It was tidy, conservative, and altogether appropriate for a social call on a lady. Ethan watched as Nick transformed himself from a gloriously naked male animal into a properly clad gentleman. He finished the ensemble with a sapphire pin for his cravat, then fished a comb off his vanity tray.

“My damned hair is too long,” he groused, combing the hair straight back from his face.

“You look dashing and fresh from your bath.”

“Leonie likes me clean and sweet smelling,” Nick muttered, regarding himself in his full-length mirror, then splashing on some scent. “I’m forgetting something.”

“Your jacket.” Ethan picked it up from the bed and tossed it to him.

Nick shrugged into it. “I still don’t feel quite dressed.”

“So stop in the garden and pick a bunch of posies. They are the perfect accessory for a gentleman with awkward explanations to concoct.”

“Pick some yourself, then,” Nick suggested, spearing Ethan with a look. “I can appreciate now is not the time to interrogate you regarding your sons, Ethan, but when you’re ready for the telling, I want to know why you’d keep them from us for years. Bellefonte did not do right by you when you were a boy, but those children are our family, and I would not have them think otherwise. I want to know who they are, what makes them laugh, what gives them nightmares, and what they do that reminds you of us when we were their ages.”

Ethan nodded, not knowing how to reply. If anybody had told him today was the day he’d tell his brother about his family, he would not have found the accusation amusing. But then, Nick was a tolerant man whose own sins were legion, at least by the lights of some people, so perhaps Nick was the right person to tell.

“Ethan?” Nick’s tone gentled when he paused by the door.

“Nicholas?”

“Whatever your reasons for guarding your… privacy,” Nick said, “I trust they were important to you at the time, and you were thinking of your sons’ best interests. As their father, that is your prerogative, and your duty. I do think, though, Bellefonte would want to know, if he doesn’t already.”

Ethan nodded, but the ache was back in his throat, so he let Nick leave without another word, then crossed the room to sit down on Nick’s great bed.

The proverbial cat was out of the bag, and the world hadn’t come to an end. Nick had offered condolences, in fact. An upset female clamoring for his attention, another female trying to deny herself his attentions, and Nick himself probably both hurt and bewildered, and yet Nick’s first impulse had been simply to acknowledge his brother’s losses.

Ethan sat on the bed for a long time, waiting for the ache in his throat to ease and recalling the sympathy in Nick’s blue eyes.

“What can he be doing?” Leah asked Lady Della, who had joined her in the informal parlor.

“Nicholas Haddonfield is a law unto himself,” Della said, pursing her lips as she joined Leah at the parlor window. “It appears he’s selecting flowers for a bouquet, but why he’d include something with thorns is beyond me.”

“What’s the hyacinth for?” Leah asked, dreading the answer.

“Sorrow,” Della replied, her tone puzzled. “He’s also conveying remorse, which is what the raspberry is about; affection, declarations of love, consolation, and I didn’t see that last little green sprig—the one from the shrubbery tree.”

“Arbutus,” Leah said, thinking back to her blue salvia—I think of you. At least he hadn’t put that in this bouquet. “What does arbutus mean?”

Della continued to visually follow Nick’s progress around the gardens. “I love only thee.”