The thought seemed to add weight to his exhaustion. He would probably regret not having turned back for Lima at once.
“Well.” Gerry was making a swift, critical inspection, his gaze raking Alex from head to toe. “I must say, this is a splendid surprise.”
As always, the inspection grated. As always, Alex produced a smile. “Will I live?” he asked. “Or does the deathbed draw nigh?”
His brother had the grace to redden. “You look whole enough. Do sit, then.”
Alex picked up an armchair on his way across the carpet.
“Careful,” Gerry said sharply. “That’s heavy.”
Sweet Christ. Alex dropped the chair in front of the desk and took his seat. “It weighs no more than a ten year old,” he said. “Really, Gerry, has it escaped your notice that I outstrip you by a head?” Since his fourteenth birthday, he’d been outrunning and outfighting his brother in any number of arenas. But if he picked up a toy poodle, Gerry would probably feel the need to call out a warning.
“Bulk, not height,” Gerry said critically. “Bulk is what matters.”
Alex eyed his brother’s ever-expanding gut. “Yes, I suppose that’s one view of it.”
“You look as if you could use a meal. And some sleep.”
He made a one-shouldered shrug. “Writing something, were you?”
“Ah . . . yes.” Gerard fingered the corner of the page. “Speech for tomorrow. This nonsense with the Boers . . .” He sighed. “Half the Lords wants a war.”
“How novel.”
Frowning, his brother peered at him. “Actually, Alex, we fought in the Transvaal in ’81.”
Gerry had never had an ear for irony. “Did we? Never a dull moment, then.”
The frown was slow to clear. “Mm, yes. When did you arrive, then? Have you seen the twins yet?”
Had Alex not been listening for it, he might have missed the note of anxiety flavoring this last question. Gerry did not know, then, that the twins had already informed him about the Cornwall estate. “Not yet, no.”
“They’ll be over the moon to see you, then. Worry about you terribly.”
“Still?” He’d hoped that having children would redirect their focus, but his siblings seemed to have a marvelous capacity for multidirectional anxiety.
He reached out and retrieved Gerry’s pen, flipping it through his fingers. The tortoiseshell was second rate, a poor imitation of Chinese loggerhead, probably from Mauritius. It was exactly the sort of product that Monsanto, until now, had specialized in trading.
From the periphery of his vision, he saw Gerry’s fingertips come together into a steeple. This was the sign of imminent moralizing. Alex set down the pen and smiled.
“You can’t blame them,” his brother said. “You would not believe the rumors we hear about you.”
“Oh, I might,” said Alex.
Gerry took no note of this comment. “Listen, hell,” he continued in disgust. “Read, more like. The bloody newspapers are full of it! Dreck masquerading as financial news. And what do you expect? That spectacle with the showgirl—I’m surprised you weren’t prosecuted.”
Showgirl? Dimly, Alex recalled an acquaintance in New York twitting him over something along these lines. Bizarre. Some of these stories he started himself; his notoriety usefully eliminated most of the tedious social obligations to which he otherwise would be bound. But the showgirl belonged to that sizeable group of rumors that other people were kind enough to fabricate for him. Had he paid these faceless benefactors, they could not have served him better.
“Disgraced her, did I?” He was curious despite himself.
“I don’t know how else to describe such behavior in public!”
In public, no less. That did not sound impressive so much as stupid. How typical of Gerard to believe it of him. “Yes, well, the lung power,” Alex said with a shrug. “Foolish of me to underestimate her. She said she was a contralto, but to be honest with you, I think her range goes higher. Perhaps she’d lacked the proper . . . tutelage.”
Gerard made a scornful noise. “Is that meant to shock me?”
“No. If my aim was to entertain people, I’d have gone into the theater.”
No doubt Gerard’s glare made his soft, wheezing opposition in the Lords cower and tremble. Once or twice, in their childhood, it had made Alex tremble, too. Then Alex had mastered it himself. In his experience, it also worked well on foreign trade boards and corporate men desperate for investment. Paired with a smile, women fell before it like dominos—although, alas, he’d never tried it on a showgirl. They generally preferred coins to smiles, whereas Alex used money to buy goods; he did not buy people.