Andrew Lord of Despair(32)

Not across twelve countries or several substantial bodies of water.

“Andrew, that boat went down thirteen damned years ago,” Gareth said, clearly bewildered.

Andrew scuffed an infinity pattern in the dirt with his boot heel. “For you, perhaps, but I was on that boat, Gareth, and for me, the accident is only as far away as my last nightmare.”

Gareth nudged the brush box away with a toe, out of kicking range. “Still?”

“Not as frequently as when it first happened. The fellows at school got so tired of me waking up screaming, they petitioned the master for me to have a private room. I’m better, but I will never be free of it.”

Not free of the nightmares or the guilt, though his unease around expecting women seemed to have receded substantially—around one particular expecting woman, anyway.

Gareth hunched forward, his shirt and waistcoat pulling taut across broad shoulders. “I had no bloody idea. Is this why you’re so determined not to marry? You think the occasional nightmare unmans you? If that’s the case, then half the fellows serving on the Peninsula wouldn’t—”

Andrew interrupted him with a shake of his head, and took a deep, unsteady breath.

They were to graduate to three-quarter truths.

“I watched our father drown.” He’d never said those words aloud before. “I got the dinghy into the water and could throw the rope either to him or to Mother. Mother was hampered by her skirts, and Father was the worse for drink. The seas were rising all around us, and all I could hear over the wind was the screaming of the others.” The ladies’ distress had been particularly audible. “I saw that Papa understood the choice I was facing. He swam away from the boat, Gareth. He goddamned swam away from the fucking boat.”

Gareth swore viciously as he wrapped an arm around Andrew’s back. This reaction was so… unexpected, such a relief, Andrew dropped his forehead to his brother’s shoulder—for the rest of the truth would remain forever unspoken.

For a small, painful eternity, the only sounds were made by contented horses, safe and comfortable in their stalls.

Though Andrew heard not his mother’s screams, but those of Julia Ponsonby, shrill, desperate, and piercing even above the roar of the storm. Julia had cried out not only for her own life, but for that of an innocent who’d had no hand in the sins committed by its mother or father.

Andrew moved away from his brother to stand where he could watch Magic munching hay.

“I have not shared that unhappy vignette with Mother,” he said. “I don’t know how much she recalls. She lost consciousness the moment I got her into the boat, and she would not be comforted to know Father gave his life for hers.”

“I won’t be telling her,” Gareth said, keeping his seat on the trunk. “Is there more, Andrew?”

Oh, damn him. Before Felicity had gotten her mitts on Gareth, before he’d become a father, Gareth would never have known to ask such a thing.

“That’s bad enough, don’t you think?” Andrew said, but even to his own ears, he’d failed utterly to lighten the tone of the exchange.

Andrew heard his brother march across the barn aisle. “There is no memory you carry,” Gareth said, “there is no act you’ve committed or omitted, no decision you’ve made or failed to make, no thought you’ve had, no impulse you’ve indulged that would make me love you any less.” He stood beside Andrew and brought a hand to the back of his brother’s neck, as if he’d shake Andrew by the scruff. “I mean this, Andrew. I cannot—I cannot—lose you too.”

Andrew nodded once, willing the lump in his throat to subside, but keeping his gaze fixed on the big black horse.

Gareth could make such declarations, because he made them in ignorance. When Gareth withdrew, Andrew felt both relief and desolation. His brother had found a rare moment to invite honesty, and Andrew had declined the offer because no other option would serve either of them—not now, not ever.

***

Andrew and Gareth were both quiet through dinner, so Astrid made a bid to hold up her end of the conversation as the ladies worked out the menus for the weekend. When that topic ran thin, she engaged her sister in the entertaining pastime of listing the symptoms of advancing pregnancy before the menfolk.

“If I get much bigger, one of us is going to have to use another bed,” Felicity remarked, while down the table, her husband devoured a serving of roast fowl.

“There’s no possibility of twins, is there?” Andrew asked.

Felicity put down her fork. “Cousin Callista was a twin, but her sister died in infancy.” She looked down at her tummy, then at her husband’s face. “I had forgotten there are twins in the Worthington family.”