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I must have lagged behind, distracted by a desire to peer into every gap between the trees in the hopes of spotting some further beauty, because before I knew it, both Charles and Arthur had stopped their horses in the path and were looking at me, Charles grinning and Arthur with that slight glint in his eyes I had come to recognize as his most ardent expression of amusement.

“Has the city warped you so much that you’re in awe of the trees? ” Charles called, and I laughed.

“I think being immersed in this sort of beauty every day has warped you, my friend. This is truly spectacular.”

“We used to play Robin Hood in these woods,” Charles said. “I would cry terribly every time Arthur tried to have me play the sheriff, though, and to have me stop he would allow me to be Robin Hood. Every last time.”

“I feel for you, Lord Ashford,” I said, bowing my head in mock sorrow towards Arthur. “Having been subjected to all too many crying fits before, I understand your pain.”

“You poor man,” Arthur said, and I thought I saw the hint of a smile before he turned his horse and continued down the path.

The ride couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes, but it was exceedingly pleasant, and when we finally emerged from the wood onto the far edge of the Ashford pond, I welcomed the prospect of the sun on my face and a good meal on the banks of the water.

Charles dismounted first, tying his horse close enough to the water to allow it to drink if it pleased before removing the blanket and the food.

He soon had a picnic set up, and the three of us settled in for the meal, our conversation light and cheery.

Arthur proved himself a commendable conversationalist, his topics both varied and timely, and I was surprised to find that despite all the unpleasantness that had characterized my first day at Ashford Hall, I enjoyed his company.

After our meal, Charles convinced me to go for a swim, Arthur declining the invitation.

The water was cool and clear, and we swam for a good while until, tired and beginning to grow cold, we emerged into the fresh sunlight.

Charles promptly fell asleep in the grass with the instructions that we were to wake him if it looked as though he was beginning to burn, and Arthur and I were left alone.

I lay on my back against the cool fabric of the picnic blanket, eyes closed as I luxuriated in the sun on my body.

I knew that it was quite out of the ordinary for me to be lying here half-nude with a lord of all things, but my comfort level with Arthur by this point was enough that I could be quite relaxed despite the unusual circumstances.

My hair, curly when damp, was plastered against my forehead, my riding clothes discarded to the side and only my undergarments still in place and soaked through from our impromptu swimming session, and for a few moments I thought that Charles and my carefree swim had offended Arthur—a good reason to keep my eyes closed—when the other man spoke in a soft, contemplative voice.

“I can’t tell you how pleased I am that my brother has you,” he said, and I opened my eyes to look up at him.

He was sitting with his left leg extended, his right leg almost to his chest, and was resting his chin on his knee as he watched me.

There was a thoughtfulness in his green eyes that was not customary, a lovely softness about the corners that made me want to study him more.

I watched him in return, the sun highlighting the parts of his hair that had grown lighter during the summer, and thought he could have easily played some grand Shakespearean hero, his beauty unparalleled.

“I thought you were concerned I would be a poor influence,” I said in return, lacing my hands together over my stomach in an attempt to look less caught off guard by the confession.

That Arthur had thought it important to say this to me, that he thought I should know the thoughts that were inhabiting his mind at the moment…

. It spoke to how well I had penetrated his defenses despite my profession, despite the man who had brought me into the legal fold to begin with.

“I was,” he said. “I was concerned that my father had misjudged you, blinded by his love for Charles. He spoke highly of you, but I had always assumed that he was doing so because he knew how much Charles relied on you, and not because he was using his own common sense. But I see now that he was telling me the truth when he spoke of your unwavering loyalty. Since you’ve been here, it’s become abundantly clear that you care for him as much as I care for him. You are as much a brother as I can be.”

“Is that so surprising?” I asked. I could not mediate my own tone, could not make myself sound less sarcastic.

I was touched by Arthur’s candid confession, but I could not forget his clear concern about who I was and his disparaging comments against me upon my first arrival at Ashford Hall.

“I have always presented myself as Charles’s friend.

I’ve never asked him for anything except for that friendship. ”

Arthur tilted his head to one side, pressing his cheek against his knee, and I had to swallow to force down the lump in my throat, considering him in a new and lovely light.

He had always had the physical beauty to attract me, but there was a confluence of factors that were now contributing to my deepening affection.

His ability to say what he meant despite how it might make others feel was no longer an annoyance but an intriguing quirk of his nature; his apparent capability to mask his emotions no longer meant that I was unable to read him but instead meant I just had to look closer, just had to peer into his eyes to understand what he was feeling in the absence of outward emotion.

He was, in short, a mystery that was slowly unraveling before me, and I knew that he was allowing me to pull the string that was revealing more of his inner self each and every day.

“When our father died, he told me that Charles would need two things: my strength and your compassion. I have never been very good at showing empathy, and therefore I knew he would need it from someone else. I just… I think I hated the thought that he would find it from a man who was of a lower class than us, as terrible as that may sound. I know you never did anything to deserve that sort of condemnation from me, but it didn’t matter at the time.

I was certain that you would show your true colors, and yet… .”

“I never betrayed him the way you thought I would,” I finished, looking up at him as he gazed down at me in return.

Half naked, I knew that I was, in theory, the more vulnerable of us two at the moment, but his words had served to crack the ice that seemed to form a shell around him and had rendered him momentarily defenseless.

“The first night I was here, the first night we met… you were frightened, weren’t you?

That I would show you a face that Charles couldn’t see. ”

“Yes,” Arthur agreed. “I was afraid that I would meet you and I would see the sort of man you were and my fears would be confirmed. But you stood up to me and, honestly, proved yourself the opposite of everything I’d dreaded.

I would be lying if I said that you haven’t grown on me during your tenure here, as unwilling as I might have been to allow you to do so. ”

I looked at him, trying to solve the riddle that made up the man before me.

His glances at times seemed nearly coquettish, a soft and tentative look that he seemed loath for me to catch as he almost always looked away upon realizing I had seen him.

I had assumed that he was looking at me in this way to try and catch some terrible look in my own eyes, but now I wondered whether he was doing the same as I had been and sizing me up.

The expression on his handsome face wasn’t unlike the look I sometimes saw from men in pubs, and I was brought once again to wonder if my conclusion regarding him and Rudolph had been correct.

“Lord Ashford,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows and looking at him.

His face was remarkably close; in my half-prone position and with his bowed head, we were within a few inches of one another.

I took a moment to study his face at this distance, making a mental note of the brown that speckled his green eyes and the length of his dark eyelashes before I continued to speak.

“I think I may know what the blackmail consisted of. Did James—”

But I had waited too long, had reveled in the meaningful silences and soaked in the sweetness of his eyes on me to my own detriment, because just as the question was about to leave my lips, Charles gave an exaggerated yawn to my left and stretched to his full length, pressing his toes into my back to gain my attention.

“I’m done with the sun,” he said, sitting up rather gracelessly and looking around for his clothes. “I’ll freckle if I’m not careful.”

As though burned, Arthur had righted himself once his brother had stirred, sitting up straight and putting several inches more between us. I inwardly cursed my lost opportunity to find out more about the lord but outwardly offered Charles a fond smile. “You’ve already freckled.”

“It’s terribly unfashionable to be freckled,” Charles said, clambering to his feet and lifting his clothes from the grass where he’d left them.

He pulled them on, shielding his eyes from the sun and peering across the pond to the vast gardens beyond and the estate even further than that.

I could see the very top of Ashford Hall from where we were sat, the roof a beautiful shade of red, and wondered at the circumstances that had brought me here to begin with.

I had never anticipated spending any time on an estate, much less one as grand as Ashford Hall had proven to be. “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it, Tom?”

“Quite,” I agreed, turning to lift my own clothes from where I’d folded them and set them aside.

I dressed quickly and got to my feet, dusting off the knees of my trousers and looking at the two Ashford brothers.

“Thank you for taking the time to invite me. I really was concerned I was intruding on your time together.”

“We’ve had our entire lives together,” Arthur said, already folding the picnic blanket up to leave. “It’s quite nice to have an excuse to not see so much of one another for the time being.”

“Rude,” Charles said, but his tone was light as he helped his brother tie the blanket and the saddlebags back onto his horse. “Are we ready to return?”

“I believe so,” Arthur said, looking at me. “Are you, Mr. Whitmore?”

“I hope you know that Tom is just fine,” I said, and Arthur’s gaze flicked over me briefly before he nodded and turned to his own horse.

The ride back towards the estate was just as pleasant as the one we had taken to reach the pond, only Arthur’s mood seemed much less guarded than it had been before.

His tone was the same, that slight flatness that made him seem disinterested in conversation, but there were actual jokes now, a softness underneath each word that I recognized as a genuine inroad.

The thought of having won over both the Ashford brothers was a buoy, and I was occupying myself with fantasies of future such days when we emerged from the wood and espied a carriage sitting at the front steps of the estate.

For a moment, I considered the possibility that James had returned, but then Charles exclaimed in sheer delight, “It’s Ida and Rudy!”

The Nelson siblings had arrived, and with their appearance a pit opened in my stomach and threatened to drag me down into it.