Unclaimed (Turner #2)(63)

“I had thought,” the man said without any additional greeting, “the two of you would be civilized enough to stop in the public house before sallying forth.”

“That’s where you went wrong,” Smite said. “We didn’t intend to do anything so dramatic as sally. We had just planned to start.”

Mark stared at the newcomer in dumb confusion. “Ash,” he finally said stupidly. “What are you doing here?”

“Got Smite’s message about the trip late last night,” his eldest brother replied. “I can’t have the two of you haring off on your own, can I?”

“We don’t hare, either. We walk. With dignity.”

Beside them, Ghost gave the lie to that by jumping up on Ash, his paws leaving two dusty footprints on his trousers.

Ash was protective, sometimes to an overbearing degree. Mark should have realized how suspicious it was that he’d not responded to their letter with a lecture on walking safely. In his normal course of events, he would have offered them an armed guard…or…or whatever other ridiculous thing he might have dreamed up.

He must have spent the entirety of the morning riding here. All that, just to meet them for an hour?

His eldest brother showed no sign of fatigue, however. Instead, he simply shifted the satchel he carried.

“Well.” Smite spoke first. “I suppose we could set aside our haring and sallying long enough for a brief repast.”

“Not at all. There’s no need to make the slightest alteration in your plans on my account.” Ash grinned. “I can keep up with the lot of you.”

Smite glanced at Mark, his eyes widening. That slight entreaty was as good as a plea on bended knee for him.

“Keep up?”

“I’m coming with you,” Ash said. His jaw set as he spoke, and he looked away from them. “Unless—”

“Can you neglect your business affairs so long?” Mark asked.

“Can you neglect your wife so long?” Smite asked, perhaps a little more slyly.

Ash let out a sigh. “Margaret suggested, in very strong terms, that I should come along.”

Mark exchanged another glance with Smite. Ash and Margaret had been happily married for five years; Mark couldn’t imagine Margaret sending him away.

He was trying to work out a way to politely ask what might have happened, when Smite broke in, no politeness at all. “Good Lord, Ash, what did you do?”

“Nothing!” Ash said. “Or—at least—nothing I shouldn’t be doing.”

The track across the field, this close to town, was wide enough that they could all three walk abreast, and so they started down the path.

“Nothing?”

“If you must know,” Ash said in patronizing tones, “she is increasing.”

“Oh, congratulations!” Mark clapped his brother on the back.

Smite shook his hand, and Ash’s smile broadened, as if he’d done something very clever.

“But now I’m doubly astonished,” Mark continued. “I wouldn’t have thought you could be pried from her side under those circumstances, not with a full harness of oxen.”

His eldest brother stiffened. “She says,” Ash muttered, “that I hover.”

Mark stifled a laugh, just as Smite hid his face.

“I don’t hover,” Ash said. “Do I hover?”

“Surely not!” Mark said, overly polite.

Smite grinned. “Never.”

“I couldn’t imagine such a thing.”

“Never in a million years.”

“Hovering,” Mark said, “puts me in mind of a butterfly—a light creature, flitting about from flower to flower, delicate as you please, vanishing at the first sudden movement.”

“And that,” Smite said, completing Mark’s thought, “seems rather too circumspect for you. My guess is that you were circling overhead, like some kind of obscene vulture.”

“Waiting to pounce on any weakness.”

Ash put on hands on a hip. “You unholy pack of ruffians,” he said in amusement. “I do not—”

“Only to give aid, of course,” Mark said. “You are perhaps the most benevolent vulture I have ever met.”

Smite sniggered. “Albeit not the most polite.”

“You two are the most captious lot of ingrates ever to walk the face of Britain.” Even though Ash’s words were harsh, his tone was playful. And for the first time since Jessica had rejected his proposal, Mark realized that he was smiling. The future no longer seemed quite so bleak and barren. His brothers were together; and whatever waited could not be so impossible. “In all seriousness.” Ash took a deep breath. “Will I be in the way?”

It wasn’t Mark’s place to answer that question. He looked to Smite, who looked away.

He’d told Jessica that it was hard for Smite to make friends. That wasn’t even the half of it. Smite didn’t keep overnight servants. He wouldn’t stay at a hotel where they might be bothered in the evening. He wouldn’t even stay in Ash’s townhouse in London; he had a flat he kept there for precisely that purpose. There were maybe three people in the world who understood why. Ash wasn’t one of them.

Smite’s lips thinned. He took a deep breath. “Don’t worry, Ash,” he said. “We’re an unholy pack of ruffians here. You should fit right in.”