has Sunday off, and we make do.”
“Alice? Will you be joining us, or will you tarry here with your charges?”
“I do not supervise them in the stables,” Alice replied, but her eyes shifted to Ethan, clearly seeking guidance.
“Come.” Ethan tucked her hand over his arm and did not look at Nick. “You must celebrate your success with Waltzer and supervise Nick and me as we raid the larder.” Alice slipped her arm from Ethan’s as they reached the back entrance.
“If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ll change out of this habit.”
“If I must.” Nick said. “But not until I tell you again how fetching you look, Alice. Turn yourself out like that on the Ladies’ Mile, and you’ll leave a trail of love-struck, callow swains.”
“Callow swains of any description are of little appeal.”
Ethan let her go, noting that Nick, for all he was happily married, watched the twitch of her skirts with unabashed admiration.
“It’s the glasses,” Ethan said because he’d been guilty of the same oversight, and without Alice’s presence, some of his possess—
“Yes. Governess airs are excellent camouflage. Are we really to fend for ourselves in the kitchen?”
“We are. Fear not, though. I’ve figured out where the bread and butter hide, and which key opens the larder.”
“You have a very pretty property, Ethan.” Nick followed his brother to the kitchen. “I’ve ridden by from time to time, but the walls and hedges make it hard to see much from the lanes.”
“Why didn’t you stop by?” Ethan washed his hands, then extracted a loaf of fresh, white bread from the bread box rather than watch Nick’s reaction to the question. “Did you really think I’d not be home to you?” Because until Barbara’s death, he might not have been.
“I didn’t know.”
Ethan starting cutting the loaf into exactly even slices. “You’ve always had my direction.”
“And you’ve had mine. I see now your property is in excellent repair, your stables full of handsome horseflesh, and your house larger than any of ours, except for Belle Maison itself. I’ve worried about you when I didn’t need to.”
Was that resentment in Nick’s tone, or hurt? “Because I’m well off?” Ethan fetched a half wheel of cheese from the larder and again put the knife to use. “You can slice some of the ham hanging in the hallway, if you don’t mind.”
“You’re well off enough to remarry,” Nick observed, using a basin in the sink to wash his hands before he went to work on the ham.
Ethan wrapped the cheese and took it back to the pantry, then fetched a bowl of ripe peaches, which reminded him of Alice.
Rather than comment on Nick’s observation, Ethan fished in the drawers and cupboards until he found everyday cutlery, linen napkins, and plates. Nick’s arrival on a Sunday was something of a mercy, allowing them privacy while they tried to find a rhythm with each other.
“So how did you get Alice on a horse?” Nick asked, carrying bread, meat, and cheese to the table.
“She knows how to ride.” Ethan put salt, pepper, mustard, and butter down next to Nick’s tray. “She just needed an incentive to deal with her understandable fears.”
“Reese Belmont said she’d been hurt trying to report a crime of some sort.” Nick carried the pitcher of lemonade to the table, while Ethan opened a bottle of sweet white wine and found glasses.
“I don’t know the details.” Ethan set the wine on the table to breathe. “And I don’t want to know them unless Alice wants me to. It must be bad, though. Hazlit was out here, strutting and pawing like a papa bear.”
“Hazlit?” Nick’s eyebrows rose. “My Benjamin Hazlit?”
“He’s Alice’s brother. I assumed you knew they were related.” And wasn’t it gratifying to know something Nick did not?
“I had no idea,” Nick muttered. “How odd.”
Ethan poured them each half a glass of lemonade, added a portion of wine, and took a seat across from Nick. “For what we are about to receive, we are damned grateful, amen.”
“Amen.” Nick reached for the bread. “I cannot fathom Benjamin Hazlit confiding in you, Ethan. Meaning no offense, but the man’s lips are closed as tightly as a king’s coffin.”
“His younger sister works for me,” Ethan said, waiting for Nick to finish with the butter. “He told me he’d call me out if I offended Alice, and I had to like him for it.”
Nick set the butter knife down, his expression distracted. “You like him for threatening you?”
“He’s protective. I would want our sisters to be able to count on us for the same. Mustard?”
“Please.” Nick accepted the mustard and set it down beside his plate. “I feel as if… First, you find a lovely woman where Pris’s starchy little governess was standing when last I looked. Then you turn up living not in some gothic horror but on a gracious, perfectly pleasant and prosperous estate. And now you tell me Benjamin Hazlit is revealing family secrets to you, and you like him for threatening your life. Maybe the ale was bad at the last posting inn I stopped at.”
“What did you expect, Nick?”
“I don’t know. For Alice to be holed up in her room, reading over the boys’ school work, you to be scratching away at your infernal correspondence, Tydings to be somehow grimmer. I don’t know.”
“Are you disappointed?”
Nick smiled self-deprecatingly. “Maybe. You don’t need rescuing, do you? Mustard?”
“Please.” Ethan accepted the mustard and tried not to flinch at the question. “Reserve judgment on whether I am in need of rescuing until after the picnic. Greymoor himself came by to issue his summons for this bacchanal. I found him likable enough, and might have to return his call.”
“You don’t visit?” Nick scowled at his plate. “Not even Greymoor or Heathgate or Amery?”
“I know Heathgate slightly.” Ethan sipped his drink, wishing it was something more fortifying than this bland concoction Nick favored. “I’m hardly his social equal, and why would I visit the others?”
“Because that is what one does in the country, Ethan Grey.” Nick directed a pained stare at his drink. “You visit, and you talk about the hunting and the shooting and the crops, or the lack of hunting, shooting, and crops. You bump into each other riding out. You cadge a Sunday meal after church. You stay for a pint at the local inn. You stand up with the wallflowers at the assemblies.”
Ethan remained silent, regarding his brother levelly because he honestly did not know what to say.
“I’ll shut up,” Nick said. “Pass me that tray. Growing boys need sustenance.”
Ethan passed him the tray and the butter and mustard.
“I don’t go to church,” Ethan said. “I don’t ride to hounds, I don’t go to the assemblies, and I don’t frequent the local watering hole.”
“Ethan?” Nick’s voice held consternation and concern.
“I do ride out,” Ethan allowed, “and thus I bumped into Heathgate. I’ve met Greymoor and that other fellow.”
“Amery,” Nick supplied. “Have you met Westhaven?”
“Not that I recall.”
Nick put down his glass with a soft thump. “You can’t live here in legendarily pleasant surrounds, cut off from all around you. It isn’t… It isn’t right.”
“Not right for you,” Ethan said, his tone mild. “But I accomplish a great deal, Nicholas, when I’m not dancing, visiting, gossiping, and watching a pack of dogs tear an arthritic fox to pieces.”
“Miller told me you’ve promised to take the boys cubbing this fall,” Nick said, apparently willing to reserve further sermons for later.
“They need to know the protocol if they’re to be gentlemen, and they ride well enough.”
Nick set his second sandwich down only half-eaten. “I feel like you’ve gone away, like you grew up and became somebody my brother could not have turned into. You were not like this as a boy.”
“Like what?” Ethan was truly curious, but concerned too, because he could see Nick was getting genuinely upset with him.
