The Suffragette Scandal (Brothers Sinister #4)(95)

She began to laugh. Not just a little giggle, but a helpless, unladylike belly laugh. She should have been able to stop, but after the last few days, somehow she couldn’t. It almost hurt to laugh like that. Edward watched her in confusion.

“Well,” she said, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes, “if your brother ever comes to visit, I know just what to slip under his mattress.”

Edward let out a crack of laughter. “The needles are in the drawer just over.”

Somehow, after that, the tour got better. Not that it became any less overwhelming; it was still utterly ridiculous that any human beings would spend their lives surrounded by this kind of wealth. But the visit started to be something that they were doing together.

There were a handful of servants in the gardens and stables that he hadn’t sent away—those whose duties could not bear a few days’ neglect—but they slipped away when Free and Edward approached. Edward showed Free around the farrier’s station. He explained how to shoe a horse, demonstrated how to work the bellows. That, she could accept. After that, he took her up to the ruins on the hill.

He pointed out the boundaries of the estate—hazy and indistinct, thousands of acres, hundreds of tenants. She could scarcely believe it.

“One of the early skirmishes in the battle for Maidstone took place just down there,” he told her. “Back when my forefather was a mere Baron Delacey. People come constantly to see this place for historical reasons. My father hated it.”

“Let’s put up a monument,” Free suggested. “Open it to the public.”

He sat on one of the broken battlements and smiled. “Better. We could charge admission. That would be so crass that my father would turn in his grave.” His smile widened, and he turned his finger in a lazy circle. “Which would also be useful. We could attach his coffin to some kind of an engine and use the power of his outrage to…I don’t know, grind corn.”

Free found herself smiling. She came to sit beside him. “Is that how we’ll sully the family name then?”

“Oh, we’ve already made an excellent start on that. But why limit ourselves to just the one option? I might expand the farrier’s station so I can do some metalwork here. If we decide to stay here.” He glanced over at her. “That would employ some of the men, too. And the way I see it, the more people we employ in an actual productive scheme, instead of supporting our degenerate ways…” He swept his hand, indicating the house below. “Well, the better it will be.”

She took his hand. “The massive palace and the ridiculous estates are a significant problem. But I want to run my newspaper.” She hugged her knees. “That’s the one thing I insist upon. Everything else, I suppose we can work with, but my newspaper is not negotiable.”

“Very well, then. We will make that happen. I promise.”

They stared off into the distance. It was really an excellent hillside for a ruined castle. She had a vantage point on the slow, lazy river making its way through the trees. On the far horizon, she could see the sea—sparkling blue waters fading into indistinct sky.

“Someone,” Free said, “is going to have to do the things the lady of the manor is supposed to do.”

She didn’t go on. She was really considering this. She was considering him, considering what she would have to be, have to do, to become his viscountess.

She wasn’t sure who took whose hand, whose fingers twined with whose.

“On the benefit side,” Free said, “that house leaves a lot of room for me to hide the bodies of my enemies.”

His thumb caressed her palm. “We’ll put them in the zebra-striped parlor,” he told her.

“Can’t we just do this instead for the rest of our lives?” Free asked. “Just the two of us. Together. The rest of the world can disappear. I like it like this.”

“No,” he said. “We can’t. You’d be bored in half a day. And how will we fill the zebra-striped parlor with the bodies of your enemies if we never sally forth and slay them?”

She was laughing at that, when she saw a wisp of dust rising from the road. It was still more than a mile distant. “Someone’s coming.”

Edward glanced upward—and then slowly stiffened. His hand pressed into hers. “Yes,” he said slowly. “And…I rather think I recognize the carriage. It would be lovely if it were just the two of us, Free. But it isn’t. That’s my brother.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

EDWARD WAS WAITING WITH FREE in the blue parlor when James Delacey arrived. Free didn’t move as the carriage pulled up on the gravel ring outside the house. But still, it felt as if she drew farther and farther away—as if she were drifting from him on every breath.

Through the gauzy curtains of the parlor, they could see the horses coming up to the house. A footman jumped off the back of his conveyance, setting out a step. Another appeared and opened the door. The first one held out a hand, steadying his brother as he stepped out.

Beside him, Free shook her head. “Are we supposed to have all those footmen?” she whispered in shocked tones.

“Yes,” he whispered back. “But we can flout propriety as much as we like, remember. Supposed to is not a necessity, just a consideration.”

She frowned and folded her arms.

James strode forward confidently, marching up to the house at an even pace.