At any rate, the glare was useful. It also strained the eyes. “You’re going to give yourself an aneurysm,” he said mildly.
Gerard reached up to rub his brow. “Tell me this. Do you really think I waste my breath out of priggishness?”
The silence wanted an answer. Christ. Did they have to do this every time he came home? “No,” Alex said. “I think you waste it out of stubbornness.” Had it fallen to his family, Alex would have joined the church. The world was changing; grain from the Americas, meats and wools from the Continent, had sliced into the profitability of English agriculture. But the Ramseys still fared very well, and no son of Lord Weston, his father had often informed him, would dirty his hands in trade. In other words: the Ramseys would cling to the past and ignore the present so long as they could afford it.
Even as a boy, Alex had found this philosophy absurd. He’d spent his entire childhood buried in the country—for his own good, they’d said; for the sake of his health. He’d had no intention of hiding from the world as a man.
“You may call it whatever you like,” Gerard said. “Stubbornness or stupid optimism, I don’t even know. But I am certain of one thing: you keep leading this bohemian lifestyle, you’re bound to pay for it one day. Cross the wrong man and you’ll have a bullet in your brain. And in the meantime, it’s damned embarrassing for us.”
Alex rubbed his eyes. Dry as sand. Perhaps, in the first years out of Oxford, he’d derived an idle amusement in scandalizing stuffed shirts—but even then, he’d done it only by happy accident, never as a deliberate goal. “The bit about the showgirl is rubbish,” he said. “I don’t misbehave in public, Gerry. It’s bad for business.”
Gerard snorted. “Oh, indeed, God save the profit margin. And even if it’s rubbish, what of it? Do you think it matters, now, whether these stories are true or not? The way you live, who can tell? Who’s even bothered to wonder? Either way, it’s we who pay the price!”
Alex nodded and reached inside his jacket.
“Yes? A nod? Is that all you have to say for yourself?”
Alex laid the bank draft atop the desk.
Gerard leaned forward to examine the draft, then looked up, scowling. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“You need money, don’t you?”
“According to whom?”
Alex sat back and kicked out his legs, crossing them comfortably at the ankle. “The trade winds.” He glanced around the room. He’d been gone for seven months, first in the United States and then in Peru and Argentina. In that time, his sister-in-law had redecorated. The bust of some dead Roman now glared blankly from one corner. An entire wall had been consumed by an oil of some eighteenth-century massacre, replete with gleaming swords, anguished grimaces, and riderless horses, wild-eyed. “New painting,” he remarked.
A pause. “Yes,” Gerry said gruffly. “Picked it up from auction. I expect you don’t like it.”
“No, it’s quite impressive.”
“I know what you prefer.”
“So you do. Children’s scribbles, I believe you’ve called it.”
Gerry tried out a smile. “Well, you have to admit it, Alex. Very little talent required.”
Alex shrugged. What modern art required was an imagination drawn to possibilities, rather than braced by smug presumptions. Certainly the work of Gaugin did nothing to flatter a British imperialist’s vision of his role in the world. “But I meant it,” he said. “The painting is striking. I particularly admire the discreet pools of blood. Came cheaply, I assume?”
Gerard’s jaw firmed. “I can well afford the purchase, but clearly you think otherwise. I’ll thank you to tell me who’s maligning my name.”
“Your sisters. You mustn’t blame them. It was a natural assumption, upon learning that you’d sold the Cornwall estate to Rollo Barrington.”
Gerry slowly lowered his hand. “Oh.”
Alex waited, but that seemed to be the extent of Gerry’s reaction, which in itself seemed significant. His brother so rarely declined an opportunity to hear his own voice. Requirement of a nobleman, that healthy self-regard. “Interesting man, Barrington,” he said casually. “Never met, but I’ve seen him in passing. Heard a good deal as well. He’s making quite the reputation with these purchases of English land. Curious thing, though: nobody can say where he gets the money for it.”
Silence.
“What puzzles me,” Alex said, “is why you didn’t come to me first.”
His brother flushed. “Because I don’t require your help.”