Unveiled (Turner #1)(55)

See? This is how I repay you.

IT WAS ANOTHER ONE of those dreadful mornings—cloudy without rain, Ash sitting in the library pretending to make sense of an agricultural text, while his brother scribbled away at his work.

It had been two days since Margaret had stormed out of this room. Last evening, she’d not come by—even though he’d waited for her until nearly midnight. He’d been left with nothing but a pile of written words, which presumably would tell him about agriculture, if he were to sort them out.

Ash snapped his book shut.

There were rows and rows of books here. Shelves upon shelves, and his younger brother was buried behind them, entombed in a sea of understanding that Ash could never comprehend. He’d substituted cold letters for human companionship. Ash just wanted him to live.

God. What Ash wouldn’t give for an interruption.

“Mr. Turner, sir. There’s someone here to see you.”

Ash almost gasped in relief at Smith’s words. The majordomo stood stiffly at attention, but he held no card in his hand. Ash had already had his man come through from London. He knew of no pending matters that would necessitate a visit.

“The gentleman says he’s expected,” Smith continued. “Where should he be put?”

Ash’s confusion only deepened. He’d certainly not invited anyone. Perhaps this was one of the duke’s hangers-on—a friend of the Dalrymple boys? His hands clenched.

But Mark was already standing, his face lighting with an almost painful joy. “I’ll go meet him immediately,” he said. He left the room at a run.

Ash followed more slowly, his thoughts whirling. Mark hadn’t shown this much enthusiasm for another person in…well, the entire summer. Had he invited a friend down?

Why hadn’t he mentioned such a thing? Not that Ash would begrudge his brother anything he wanted. And he wasn’t complaining—a little more friendly conversation would do Mark a great deal of good.

Ash pattered into the entry, trailing after his younger brother. He came out of the hall just in time to see Mark grab the fellow—dark, ebony-haired—about the arms.

“My God,” Mark said, “you’re here already? You must have left the instant you received my note. You must have traveled half the night. What were you thinking?”

“You knew I would come,” the man replied cheerfully.

Ash stood in the doorway. He’d heard once that diamond was nothing but coal that had been compressed for many years. He could feel his own heart withering to blackness, slowly turning into cold cinder. He wasn’t sure if he should venture forwards or stay behind.

Because he had seen in one glimpse who the visitor was. This wasn’t some friend, come down from London. That had been a brotherly embrace. Literally.

“Smite.” Ash tried to keep the accusation from his voice, tried to keep his tone even and devoid of the emotion he felt. “But I invited you to join us the day Chancery ruled in our favor.” He cut off the rest of the whine. And you told me you were too busy.

His brother looked over and saw Ash standing in the doorway. He didn’t quite stop smiling, but it was as if all the warmth, all the humor of his fraternal greeting had been sucked from him. As if the sight of Ash had invested him with an extra pound of starch. He looked about, half grimacing, and then walked forwards, holding out his hand. His hand. As if Ash were nothing more than a chance-met business partner.

“Ash,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”

And what was Ash to do? He shook his brother’s hand, because that was all that was offered. Because he’d take anything he could get from his brother, even this bare scrap of civility. He would take it, and he wouldn’t complain.

He’d left Smite behind years ago, when he’d gone to India. No matter how high he set the man’s quarterly allowance, he could not make up for those bleak years. Smite never spoke of that time. But then, he didn’t need to. He’d accepted the education and a few hundred pounds to further his studies afterwards. That great quarterly allowance Ash had signed over to him, though, lay untouched in the account the solicitors set up, funds piling up year after year, a silent, venomous rejection of Ash’s brotherly affection.

Instead, Smite lived in a tiny, narrow house in Bristol. He didn’t even employ full-time servants, and his living arrangements had always seemed to be a quiet rebuke, a disavowal of Ash and the largesse he wanted to shower upon him.

Smite pulled away from Ash before their clasped hands could communicate anything like affection. He turned quickly away, his gaze darting about the room as if to take in the new surroundings.

“Just look at this.” He let out a low whistle as he turned in place—as if he were truly interested in the painted plasterwork overhead. As if he weren’t avoiding Ash’s gaze.

“Yes,” Ash said, playing along. “It’s a thing of beauty.” He looked at his brothers as he spoke—one fair, the other dark, both palpably incandescent. His entire family had come together, and however this miracle had come about, he was not one to discard such a fine chance in a fit of pique.

Smite crossed the room to peer at a wall. “Is that a Caravaggio? My God.”

He and Mark drifted over to a picture of several cherubic-looking boys and began babbling about lighting and strokes and God knew what else—things they had learned at university, no doubt. Ash would have understood them better if they’d started chattering at him in Bengali. Just like that, Ash was left outside of the conversation, with nothing to do but notice that Smite had put on a few welcome pounds. He’d finally lost that thinnish cast he’d had about him all through Oxford.