Unveiled (Turner #1)(56)
In the brotherly lottery, Smite was both the biggest loser and the greatest winner. Winner, because if women admired Mark, they adored Smite: his shining black hair, in contrast with the snapping blue of his eyes. His features were sharp enough to be manly, but not so brutish as to rob him of an almost haunting beauty. And unlike Mark, Smite wasn’t averse to taking occasional advantage of all that feminine adoration.
On the other hand, there was the matter of his name. The Bible verse their mother had given him—too unwieldy to be used in regular speech—had been shortened to Smite years ago. Mark was a common name. Ash was a strange one. But Smite? That was downright awful.
Back on the credit side of Smite’s personal ledger, he had a prodigious memory. He could recite word for word any book he had read, no matter how long ago it had been. It was as if everything Ash lacked, Smite had received a thousandfold.
But then, there was the little matter of what had happened to him all those years back. When Ash had returned from India, he had found his brothers living on the streets of Bristol. Neither had ever explained why they’d left their mother. Squalid as it had become, her home should have been preferable to city streets in early spring. For any other man, those few months of horror would have faded into blissful forgetfulness, fogged over by the blanket of passing time. But there was that prodigious memory. And while Mark had stopped waking in the middle of the night after a few months, Smite never had. Not in the years he’d lived with Ash. Smite didn’t forget: not whatever it was that had happened, nor, apparently, that it was Ash’s fault it had transpired in the first place.
Perhaps that was why, when Ash had invited his brother to Parford Manor, the man had fobbed him off with excuses. But when Mark asked, he had dropped everything and come running.
His brothers had passed from discussion of art to some new philosophical text that had recently been released to great acclaim. Naturally, Ash hadn’t read it. In fact, he hadn’t even heard of it. Next to them, Ash felt profoundly empty and wistfully ignorant. He’d been trying to scrape together a fortune at fourteen, so that his younger brothers could study Latin declensions. He’d succeeded.
But he hadn’t known that in so doing, he was guaranteeing that he would never again have the privilege of engaging either of them in meaningful conversation. Mark and Smite were bound together with the threads of a thousand common experiences, everything from the hidden truth of those years when Ash had been gone, to their time at university. And Ash would never, ever be able to share any of that with them.
“Do you want some refreshment?” he asked. “The cook here serves the most amazing cream teas. I can ring for some.”
His brothers turned in unison, as if surprised that Ash was still present.
“I’ve been sitting in the coach for hours,” Smite said. “The last thing I want to do is sit again. Besides, I’m not hungry.”
Ash tried again. “Well, then. There’s a lovely promenade that follows the banks of the river. If you would care to join me…?”
Smite turned his head to look at Mark, his eyes widening.
“No,” Mark said gently. “I don’t think we’ll be walking along the river right now.”
It was that same rebuke he always got from his brother. Smite had never spoken his accusations aloud. He just rejected every gift Ash laid at his feet, every suggestion for camaraderie, one by one. Even the gentlest slap on the face came to sting, after it had been repeated often enough. And this particular slap was none too gentle.
They were trying to get rid of him. Ash felt that hollow lump in his chest, that distance between him and his brothers.
I’m sorry I ever left. I’m sorry for whatever happened to you out there. I’m sorry there’s nothing between us to stitch together into even a pretense of friendship. I’m sorry, Smite. But he couldn’t get the words out of his throat.
“Well,” he finally said. “I’ll leave you two alone, then. I have work to do.”
He turned his back on them. Right now, even the books waiting for him in the library seemed preferable to another rejection.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
UNSURPRISINGLY, THE mess of ink that faced him on the pages offered Ash scant comfort. The wide glass doors in the library looked out on the garden where his brothers stood. It was hot enough that the windows had been, by necessity, thrown open. The breeze that wafted in should have been cool and comforting. Instead, it carried to him the dim rumble of their laughter—an amusement he could not share, couched in words he could not make out.
He drifted to look out the window, with the sick sensation of a man scratching at a scab—knowing that the wound was best left alone, lest it fester, but unable to keep his hands away.
Mark was pointing out various features in the garden while Smite watched. Ash felt as if he were their geriatric father, stooped by age and bearded in white, rather than the sibling who was a mere handful of years their elder. His hands clenched on the frame of the window.
“Ash?”
At that quiet query, he turned around. Margaret was standing in the doorway, her brows knit in an expression of concern. He hadn’t seen her in days. He’d thought she was avoiding him.
She was dressed as she always was—in a loose frock of dark gray muslin, the only definition being the sash that pulled the dress about her waist. Her hair was pulled back into a tight knot at the nape of her neck and pinned into place. The picture would have made another woman seem severe. But the warm, interested light in her eyes softened the effect, and suddenly he no longer felt quite so isolated.