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ARTHUR’S VOICE left me so inflamed, both in anger and in heart, that I was momentarily stricken dumb.

It was only Charles, leaning back in his chair to provide room for the maid who had appeared from some door and was pouring his wine, who roused me from my stupor.

“Did some boxes end up there by accident?” he asked, seemingly unperturbed by the tone his brother took.

“I put him in Mother’s old suite and told them to put the boxes in his parlor. Felix was well aware.”

“And yet someone decided my library was a better home for two of them,” Arthur said, shrugging one shoulder, and the animal part of my brain posed the question of how that shoulder would look unclothed.

“I thought I informed you when you had the idea to invite a guest that I wouldn’t appreciate my space being impinged on. ”

“He’s hardly a guest, Arthur. It’s Tom ,” Charles said, as though Arthur had any reason to believe that freed me from the usual bonds of guestdom. “We’ll move the boxes after dinner, and no harm will be done.”

“You’re the lawyer?” Arthur asked, and he was neither looking at me nor using a tone that seemed to be particularly friendly, so it took me a moment to realize he was speaking to me at all.

“Yes,” I said, watching as the maid poured me a glass of wine and wishing I could ask her to bring me something stronger. “You’re not a fan of that profession, I take it?”

Arthur looked at me then, his face impassive. “Why do you say that?”

“I have eyes, Lord Ashford, and ears,” I said, and normally I would have watched my tone but decided, somewhat impetuously, that if I was just Tom I could use the same tone that the lord was using with me.

“It’s fairly obvious you think little of lawyers, unless you perhaps just think little of me. ”

There was something almost like amusement in Arthur’s eyes, but I passed it off as a trick of the light; it seemed impossible to believe that a man with such a poor attitude could be getting any sort of entertainment from my clear attempts to prompt an argument with him.

“You’re correct,” he said. “I have little use for lawyers.”

“Most people have little use for us until they find themselves in need of our services,” I said, taking a sip of my wine as the maid returned and began to serve our plates.

I was not so low class as to be entirely unaccustomed to being served at the table, but I disliked the feeling of being waited upon and had to remind myself not to step in and assist. I had grown up with servants, but their presence was minimal, and my mother had been far more involved in our regular meals than I supposed Lady Ashford had ever been.

“And I’m sure a man like yourself has had few dealings with us.

But I’m not here as a lawyer. I’m here as Charles’s friend. ”

“You really have no inkling of why I might dislike you,” Arthur said, giving the maid a brief nod as she finished his plate and moved away from the table to wherever she was expected to wait. “That’s quite interesting.”

At this, I racked my mind. I had never met Arthur before and had only met the late Lord Ashford once when he had been gracious enough to take Charles and I out for dinner after we had graduated from Eton.

All I recalled of the man was that he had been stern yet warm in a way that I had respected, and I could think of nothing in our brief interaction at the time that might have led any of the Ashfords to dislike me.

Certainly, Charles had given me no reason to believe that his family had such strong feelings against me, and as I sat there, looking at the roasted chicken on my plate and trying to think of any situation which might have given Arthur misgivings, I landed once again on the first thing I had feared when I had met his eyes from my balcony.

He knew.

He knew who I was, beyond Thomas Whitmore, respected lawyer.

He had seen me, or had heard of me being seen, at one of those gentleman’s clubs known to be frequented by men like myself in London.

Perhaps he thought I had designs on his brother or that I was some force put into their home to lead them into future gossip among England’s noble families.

I was once again struck so forcefully by this imaginary persecution that I almost said as much, but Charles spoke before I had a chance to embarrass myself. “Is this about Louis Garretty?”

Louis Garretty. A name I was well acquainted with, and not for the reasons I was fearful of.

I raised my head and looked at Arthur, who was looking at his brother.

The expression on his face told me that Charles had hit the core of the problem.

“Louis Garretty?” I repeated, the anger replaced by bewilderment.

“You don’t like me because of the man I work for? ”

When I’d graduated from Cambridge, I had the option to apprentice under a few different London lawyers, and Louis Garretty had been the one I had eventually chosen.

A man with a solid reputation and a large firm, he had been the best choice I could have made, the cases that I handled running the gamut from property disputes to wills to minor criminal trials.

It had been a well-rounded education, if not the most exciting one, and I could think of nothing that Louis had done to warrant such a strong reaction from Arthur Ashford.

“Charles,” Arthur said, almost an admonition in just one word. “There’s no need for you to get involved. I was more than happy for you to bring a friend for the summer. I just don’t see why I need to be his friend as well.”

“You don’t need to be his friend, but I was expecting you to be polite,” Charles said, chastising in return. “I don’t see how Louis Garretty has any bearing on what kind of man Tom is.”

“If you apprentice for a swindler, then I think it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that you may be a swindler too,” Arthur said, as simple as could be, and while I knew that Charles was doing his best to head my infamous temper off before I could say anything, his attempt unfortunately failed.

“A swindler?” I asked, looking up from my chicken, which I had begun to cut into smaller and smaller pieces in an attempt to keep myself from speaking. “Please, elaborate. What gives you the right to say that?”

“This isn’t very good dinner conversation,” Charles said, but he seemed to have given up on trying to get Arthur and I to stop the inevitable fight we were careening towards.

Instead, he picked up his glass of wine, swirling it around and taking a sip and watching me turn towards Arthur in the way I had a million times before with a million other people who had crossed that invisible line.

When he spoke, it was with the resignation of a man who knew the situation was too far gone. “No, don’t.”

Arthur was looking at me now, and there was absolutely amusement in his eyes along with something else, an iciness that told me he was unbothered by whatever he thought I was about to say. “I have every right to say it, considering the man swindled me.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “I simply don’t believe it. Louis Garretty is a trustworthy man, and you’re a lord. I don’t see how he could have swindled you, how you could have even come into contact. What could you have possibly needed a lawyer for?”

“Yes, Arthur,” Charles said, clearly giving up on whatever notion he had to stay out of the fight and instead adding fuel to the fire. “What could you possibly have needed a lawyer for?”

Arthur nearly tossed his head, turning his gaze on his brother before letting his eyes flit back to me.

“That part isn’t important in the slightest,” he said, which told me that it was in fact very important.

“What is important is that I hired Mr. Garretty to carry out a sensitive legal matter for me, and instead of conducting himself as a respectable businessman, he took my money and demanded even more as blackmail payments.”

Despite how badly I didn’t want to believe what Arthur was saying, one look at Charles told me that his brother was telling the truth.

Charles was looking straight at me, and I’d known him long enough to read his face better than I could read most books.

“He blackmailed you,” I repeated, looking back at Arthur, whose smugness was beginning to grate on me.

It was as though everything about him had been manufactured to destroy my holiday.

The pride that he clearly clung to, the holier than thou attitude, the dislike of me simply because he felt wounded by the man who had trained me. “Do you have proof of this?”

Arthur’s face darkened. “Do I need proof? Is this a court of law, Tom ?” He used my nickname as though it was a derogatory term, and not the affectionate moniker Charles had given me, and it only made me dislike him more.

“The man has accrued his considerable wealth, not through the legitimate means one would expect of a lawyer, but instead by blackmailing people like myself who are in precarious positions. I’m certain that a social climber such as yourself can appreciate why I’m suspicious of one of his pupils. ”

Social climber stung, I had to admit, but I was less concerned about the insult than I was about the insinuation.

“I live in a one-bedroom flat at the top of a house,” I said.

“I’m hardly raking in money. And I’m certainly not doing so through the means you’re implying, Lord Ashford.

Do you really think your brother would be friends with me if I was? ”

“Your predecessor proved that blackmailing Ashford men is a lucrative prospect,” Arthur said. “Who knows what you think is appropriate?”

“Arthur,” Charles said, visibly disturbed. “Are you actually insinuating that Tom is blackmailing me? I’d hardly have invited him here if that was the case.”