Page 33

The ride to Kent by horseback would take a full day and part of the next morning at a leisurely pace.

He could have hired a conveyance or taken the train, but Alistair wanted to feel the muscle of a horse between his thighs.

He wanted the sun to beat down on his face and the wind to rip across his body.

He had been too long in town, growing stagnant, pickling himself in whisky and bad decisions.

He was a man who moved, or he had been before he met Violet Goodwin and McGann and Pembrooke and became enmeshed in all of their ridiculous plans.

He shook his head. These last weeks had been an utter waste, and he needed this ride to clear his head. He thought it would do him good.

He was right. He arrived at Rosehips feeling rested despite the physical endurance needed for the trip and the overnight spent at the coaching inn. He dismounted, breathing in the briny air of the countryside and took his time to admire the sea glistening in the distance.

He’d loved Rosehips once. Despite, or perhaps because of, its marshy land unsuitable for farming and the thick Kentish accents that made its inhabitants so hard to understand.

It was a place that was wholly itself, no matter what others wanted it to be.

He admired that about it. During his better moments, he thought he and Kent were alike in that.

He threw the reins to the stable boy and strode to the entrance of the manor.

His mother, father, and brother had been here for over a week, largely ignoring the London season, as they were want to do.

The peculiarity of the habit had never occurred to him until today, as he had always been away for the season himself.

But, he supposed, a lineage as old as the Marquess of Timsbury’s could do as it pleased.

“My lord,” Jacks, their venerable butler, greeted him at the door. “It has been an age. I’m glad to see you back.”

“And you.”

He nodded briskly and tried to ignore the feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach that arose as soon as he’d stepped foot over the threshold to the manor. He had not been in the house for a decade. His heart began to pound in his chest, and he felt slightly short of breath. He could not do this.

He turned to leave, but then his mother was rushing down the stairs toward him.

“Alistair, dear! You did not tell us you were coming.”

She kissed him on the cheek.

“Will you stay long? I understand that Pembrooke is having a house party in Surrey next week. It’s quite close—stay the week with us before you attend.”

Alistair forced a smile. Middle age had been kind to his mother, making her more graceful and surer of herself than ever before.

The ton still tripped over itself to be in her good graces.

As did his father. It was no surprise to him that she knew the latest goings-on, even tucked away in the country.

But Alistair had no interest in going to house parties in Surrey, especially not ones where Violet Goodwin might be in attendance. Not until he had his investments in hand. And then he would sit her down and ask her what she wanted from her future and give it to her.

“I won’t attend,” he said. “I have too much to do. Where are Father and Darius?”

“Darius is out with the tenants today. Your father is in his study.” His mother looked at him expectantly. “I wish you would stay, Alistair. You’re always on the run.”

“I’m not running,” he said. “I’m working. I’ll go see Darius now.”

“As your mother, it is a great sadness to me the way you and your father carry on. Go visit him, Alistair.”

Alistair leaned down to kiss her on her cheek. “I never wish to bring you sadness, Mother,” he said. “Truly.”

“Then you’ll spend some time with your father?”

“Later.” He was already backing out of the door. “I’ll just find Darius now.”

Alistair rode out to find Darius deep in conversation with one of the older tenant farmers still on the estate.

“Anderson,” Alistair greeted the older man as he approached.

He’d spent every summer until he was fifteen meandering through the vast estate and knew each of the tenant farmers and their families.

“Why, if it ain’t the Lord chavie. I thought you’d gone connaught on us. Haven’t seen you in an age.”

“Good to see you too, old pile.”

Alistair grinned and shook the old man’s hand and then turned to his brother and shook his as well.

“Brother,” he said in a much more formal and intelligible greeting. “What are we discussing today, gents?”

“The land is rottin’. Every year worse. More marsh, more salt, nuffin’ grows.” The old farmer kicked a sodden, marshy bit of soil with his boot.

“He’s right about that,” Darius agreed. “Every year the tidewater increases, and we lose arable land, along with the farmers who work it.”

Alistair nodded. “I’ve something to discuss with you, brother. It may help.”

“Do the rounds with me then,” Darius said. “And tell me your plan.”

The two men took leave of Anderson and picked their way across the soggy ground to the next tenant. The land had grown so marshy that neither risked mounting their animals, instead preferring to make their way on foot, leading the horses by the sea path.

“How bad is it?” Alistair asked as they went.

“Terrible. Most of the tenant families have left, as they rightly should, except those too old like Anderson. Or too set in their ways to try something new. I’ve run out of ideas to help them. The land just won’t support crops.”

“And what does Father say?”

“Father says to let them go. We can place them on other estates. But I hate to see Rosehips bled dry of its people. The Kentish belong in Kent. Besides,” he laughed, “no one else would be able to understand them. I can hardly make out a word. Not as you do.”

Alistair smiled. He was still the only member of his family able to understand the heavy Kentish accent and peculiar colloquialisms.

“I do believe I have a solution to the agriculture problem, if not to the accent.”

“Tell me.”

As they walked their horses forward, Alistair laid out his plan to base his company out of the docks at Kent.

There was no reason not to utilize the natural strengths of the place, he argued—plenty of shoreline, most of it owned by his family already; a railroad that tracked inland; and loyal men in need of employment.

“You aim to turn farmers into sailors?” Darius asked incredulously.

“If they choose. It is a skill like any other, and I can teach them. But we’ll need more than sailors.

For this venture to be successful, we’ll need carpenters, dock workers, warehouse staff, delivery men, accountants.

We could put every able-bodied man in Kent to work if we build our company well. ”

He turned to Darius expectantly. “What do you think? Can I count on your support?”

“It’s a fine idea,” Darius said. “But do you know how to run a business, brother?”

“I’ve spent my time with the Company,” Alistair said. “I know the trade.”

“And where will you get the ships?”

“I’ve a partner with a ship in need of repairs. Seed funding will get the first in the water, and we’ll build from there.”

“And you’ll be based here in Kent?”

“Not a chance.”

Darius sighed and turned to his brother. The golden sun glinted off his hair and carved shadows into the planes of his face, so that he resembled a marble more than a person.

“Your plan is sound,” he finally said.

“But?”

“Father will not allow it.”

Alistair stopped walking abruptly, making his horse nudge into his back. “Because it is a trade?” he asked. “Or because the plan is mine?”

“The latter. But not in the way you imagine. You can’t be on a ship your whole life, brother.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m the spare. I can be anywhere at all and it would have no bearing.”

Darius shook his golden head. “You misunderstand. You always have. You’re my heir. And you likely always will be.”

He turned away then, refusing to say more.

“You’re not making sense, Darius. Can you not have children? Is that it?”

Darius remained frozen, his back to his brother. “I—” he said so quietly that Alistair nearly missed the word.

But then shook his head, changing his mind and whatever it was he had been about to say was lost. “You can’t be away at sea forever. Father wants you here and settled. I won’t go against him.”

“No,” Alistair said. “That’s not good enough. This is my life, and I’ll have answers.”

“The Marquessate demands this of you, Alistair. As it has demands of all of us. You will oblige, like we all do. That is the only answer you need.”

Darius pulled himself onto his horse and turned it back to Rosehips along their drier, inland path.

“Will you stay for dinner?” he asked, making it clear the conversation about Alistair’s company was over.

Alistair reached out and grabbed the reins. “No. And no more hiding, brother. Why does the weight of the coronet fall to me? You are the heir, not me. It shouldn’t ever be me.”

Darius looked at his brother for a long while, still as stone atop his horse.

Finally, he said, “I don’t know what happened to you that summer. I can imagine, of course. Father was beside himself. It couldn’t have been easy. It’s why Mother took me away.

“No one realized he’d take it out on you. How could we have known? In any case, you should know it wasn’t because of you, Alistair. It was because of me, and I should have told you that a long time ago.”

Alistair let go of the reins. “What does that mean?”

“The summer you turned fifteen was the summer that Father found out I was having a love affair.” Darius paused, looking at Alistair expectantly.

“With George,” he added when Alistair hadn’t replied. “The stablemaster’s son.”

Alistair tried to hold his face still as his brother’s words settled into his mind. He’d seen homosexuality before, both in the Navy where it was more common than anyone who wasn’t in the Navy realized, and on his travels too.

He was initially shocked by Darius’s admission, but given a few moments to absorb it, he was more shocked that everything he’d always known about his brother was wrong than he was that his brother preferred the sexual company of men.

He knew he should say something to Darius, but he didn’t know what. And without the right words, he opted to remain quiet.

“It’s good to see you going after something, Alistair,” Darius finally said. “I am proud of you.”

And with that, he wheeled his horse around and rode away, leaving Alistair to his dumbfounded silence. It took a few minutes more for him to bring himself back to reality, mount his own horse, and follow.

The conversation couldn’t be left there, with him staring agape like a dunderheaded lummox at his elder brother. But he had no more than stepped foot into Rosehips when Jacks approached with a message.

“My lord,” Jacks said, holding out a silver tray. “The messenger said it was urgent.”

Alistair took the message and read. It was from Williams, who had stayed on in London.

Jess is missing, was all the note said.