“What does how you look have to say to anything? What’s important is what you’re made of inside. Well, yes, sometimes I look at her and I ache. I want to touch her hair, maybe wallow in it, there’s so much of it and it’s this marvelous mixture of shades, from the lightest blond to a rich wheat color.”
James marveled at his brother. He didn’t appear to realize what was coming out of his mouth. He sipped at his brandy, leaned his hip against the mahogany desk.
“She makes me laugh, James. She makes me feel important—no, it’s more than that. She makes me feel that what I do is important.” Jason paused, took a sip of brandy. “She makes me feel like I have value.”
“You do. You always have.”
Jason shook his head, began to pace the estate room. “A man who’s a blind idiot can’t have much value,” he said over his shoulder.
“She makes you feel important to her.”
“Yes. Then that fool Lord Renfrew comes back and I truly wanted to kill him for her, but then, James, it was all so funny, particularly the way she looks at him now, that it was all I could do not to laugh. Do you know the idiot lied to her about his age?”
“No, I didn’t know that. Hallie laughs at him too now?”
“For the most part. I’ve determined to keep her from all weapons when he’s anywhere near, though. Then Charles Grandison came over to plead Renfrew’s case. Kept asking her to call him Charles, and she kept saying no.”
“Ah, Jason, it sounds to me like you’re a happy man.”
“No, certainly not, at least not in the way you’re thinking. It’s just that I’m where I’m supposed to be and doing what I want to do. I don’t wish to wed, James, and neither does Hallie. Renfrew stomped her into the dirt.”
“Well, Judith burned you to your soul. It seems to me the two of you will do well together.”
“No, I’d be no good for a woman, no good at all. There’s nothing deep inside me. I’m empty there. Lust is something a man must bear. But the sort of sharing you and Corrie have, it’s impossible for me, James.”
“Well then, perhaps it’s impossible for Hallie as well.”
Jason paused in his pacing. He gave his twin a sharp look. “No, it’s not impossible for her. Lord Renfrew was a dolt, a greedy man, but there’s no evil in him, not like there was in Judith.”
“Judith’s been dead for five years, Jason. You can’t continue to let her control your life. Don’t give her that sort of power.”
“If she’d murdered Father, if her damned brother had murdered you, then what would you expect me to think?”
“It was you who saved Father’s life, you who nearly died, and I survived. It’s long in the past. It’s over.”
“I don’t want to marry her. She deserves a man who c
an give her more than I can. Damn, but she does say the funniest things, words just pop out of her mouth and you want to hold your belly you’re laughing so hard. You should have seen how she was arranging our furniture—the sofa facing the window. What the hell am I to do?”
Jason slammed out of the estate room through the French doors that gave onto the garden, leaving his brother to stare after him, tapping his fingertips thoughtfully on the desktop.
His father said quietly from the doorway, “We will see, James. You did well.”
“He is so very hurt, like there’s this deep wound that won’t heal.”
“He won’t let it heal,” Douglas said. “I think he’s so used to the pain, to the infernal guilt, that he would feel bereft without it.”
James handed his father a snifter of brandy.
The earl said thoughtfully as he swirled the brandy about, “I think the day you and Jason met Hallie Carrick at Lyon’s Gate was the day that might bring your brother back to you, and my son back to me.”
Late the following morning, Hallie paused outside the drawing room door when she heard a familiar female voice say, “I had it from my own maid, Angela, and a maid always knows exactly what’s true and what isn’t. She had it from her cousin who’s a stable lad here. It’s true, and I can tell from the look on your face that you know it’s true. Oh dear me, dear me.”
“Nonsense. Would you care for some tea?”
Lady Grimsby said, “No, I want to know what you’re going to do about this, Angela. You’re her chaperone. This has got to stop.”
Angela said, “Have a nice cup of oolong.”