Page 24 of For a Scandalous Wager (Breaking the Rules of the Beau Monde #3)

CHAPTER 23

T wo days after his visit with Evelyn’s father, Rochester questioned whether he’d made any progress at all. He missed the hell out of Evelyn and learned she was still at Winn and Adeline’s. That alone was a piece of good news. At least she hadn’t been called home. Not yet.

That last question Markham had asked about Rochester’s father ate away the years he’d spent putting emotional distance between him and his family. With the exception of Hudson and Lovie, Rochester had little contact with any relatives. He’d worked a lifetime to bury his painful childhood under smiles and wit and games of billiards. He believed busyness and hard work would eliminate the memories of that day. The smell of blood, of distilled spirits on his father’s breath, and his mother’s own scent of gardenia mingling with it. To this day, he could not abide gardenias in any form.

If Evelyn’s father had questions about his title, his family, and his inheritance, Rochester decided it might be a good time to pay his father a visit. He hadn’t been there in over a year. Most of his contact was through correspondence with the family barrister.

“The prodigal son returns,” his father said when Rochester arrived at Heavenly House, which was anything but heavenly.

“Not quite. I believe the prodigal son was gravely missed and had a father who pined over him. Not one who preferred his inheritance go to hell.”

His father blew out a grunting, aggravated sound with his lips. Clutching the chair where he sat, he looked like an angry king. Perhaps the mad king. Which made Rochester sympathize a bit with Prinny. His father didn’t look like a lunatic, but he did look tired. More so than Dalton remembered. His face was a little sallow, and his cheeks receded into sharp angles, which would have made him appear a little sinister but for the look of alcohol consumption about his hazel eyes. The whole of it was set off by his graying hair that had lost its healthy luster.

“Come to check on your riches?”

“Something like that.” Rochester looked about, wondering what painting was missing from the wall above the hearth. “Where’s my brother?”

“Noah’s collecting rents. I let the steward go. A waste, you know.”

Of course, he did. And what rents? The three cottagers who struggled to stay and struggled to make their properties productive as their landlord made a practice of destroying his? “How long ago did Noah leave?”

His father shrugged. “Quarter hour. Don’t wish to sit with your ailing father?”

It was true. His father was ailing from a gut rotting bout of alcohol and anger.

“When was the last time a physician called on you?”

“Ack, I’m beyond that.”

“I’ll have someone sent round. You should be seen regularly by the physician.”

His austere father, so full of venom it was hard to tell how he felt most of the time, relaxed his grip on the arms of his chair. He looked tired, sallow, older than he should, and Rochester was not without compassion for the man who raised him and gave him a home, such as it was. He certainly didn’t wish him ill. Rochester would see to another steward. His father’s determination to destroy Rochester’s inheritance had only hurt himself.

Rochester took very little income from the property, and after this trip, he decided he’d cut it all. He made his own money now, but he hated seeing his family home gutted.

“I think I’ll catch up with Noah. Do you need anything before I leave?”

His father waved him on. His countenance dismissed him before he’d asked the question.

After Rochester relinquished his jacket and waistcoat to the cleanest peg he could find in the stable, he saddled a horse and rode off in the direction of the last remaining cottagers.

Acres upon acres of lush green land stretched before him. He passed three empty houses where productive farmers once thrived growing wheat and barley, according to the stories of his grandfather’s time. The grounds were in surprisingly good shape despite the condition of Heavenly House, where Rochester was sure a leak had destroyed a beautiful fortepiano rumored to have been built by Johann Stein himself. It was a story his father liked to tell, but one that could not be credited since the piano belonged to his grandfather, the sixth Viscount Rochester, another life cut short. His grandfather had purportedly died from a failing heart at the age of forty-one.

Why hadn’t he considered that parallel before? His father became the seventh Viscount Rochester as a boy of ten years. Rochester’s Uncle Oliver, whom he rarely saw, had to be no more than eight when it had happened. Two brothers at odds because the grief of losing a parent had eaten away at their childhood and destroyed the normal expectations that children tend to count on for survival.

His father and uncle’s relationship had never recovered. Rochester didn’t really know his uncle except that the man did not have children. And here, Rochester and Noah were reliving that same curse, which was a word his father liked to use. Their father spoke of the title as being cursed because it bore their surname, and because of that, they’d never escape it. The title was not uncommon but also not so prevalent that people weren’t drawn to remark upon it at times.

Dalton, however, did not believe in the Rochester curse, even if it would have been a fine excuse for his fractured judgment.

“Noah!” Rochester called when he caught sight of his brother, grinding up the ground between them until they were close enough to hear each other and then reined in.

“The prodigal son comes home,” Noah said.

“You’ve been living with our father too long. You’re beginning to sound just like him.” Very telling that they should both greet him with the same words. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in that house.

“Well, Brother, someone must look after your home.”

Except it had never been Rochester’s home. Hudson and Lovie had made it bearable when they were all children, but he’d never considered Heavenly House his home. Nor had he ever considered it heavenly. Such a name , he thought. “Then I should thank you for the missing portrait over the hearth, I suppose?”

“You can blame our father for that.”

Rochester eyed his brother and found no lie in him. “Our father is sick. Why hasn’t he seen a doctor?”

“Believe me, I’ve tried,” Noah said. “He won’t allow it. And he sacked the steward.”

“I’ve heard. I’ll hire another. You can’t be expected to keep up with all this.” While holding the rein and resting his hands on the tucked pommel, he twisted, gesturing with his head to the general lay of property.

“And why should I? It’s all yours.”

Rochester sighed. “Would that I could, I would change it, Noah.”

“We’ve hardly spoken in four years, and it has been over a year since you’ve been home, so why the visit now?”

“Show me the rounds, and we’ll talk over a brandy when we’re finished.”

Noah seemed to mull that over, minus his usual sharp retort. With his mouth pressed in a taut line, he nodded, then pulled his horse around, leaving Rochester to follow, calling behind him, “Stay through dinner, and we’ll talk without father. He retires early these days.”

That worried Rochester for two reasons: One, his father was perhaps weaker than he first anticipated, and two, this somewhat agreeable side of his brother was the calm before the storm.

After spending the better part of the day scouting the countryside, Rochester cleaned up and stayed through dinner, waiting in the library for his brother and happy to see one room in the house had not been touched. The books were all there, the paintings, the knick-knacks, the cigar box at the upper left corner of the writing desk, familiar and a small comfort to him.

“Thanks for staying,” Noah said, walking into the wood-paneled room. He slid the pocket doors closed. His brother’s hair was a shade lighter than his, but his stride was as long, and his physique rivaled Darrington’s in the ring. Rochester attested that to the hard work required to keep Heavenly House going without a proper staff.

“I poured myself a glass. I didn’t think you’d mind,” Rochester saluted his brother.

“Good, good,” his brother repeated, passing Rochester on his way to pour himself a brandy. He then threw himself into the nearest high-backed chair, his legs spread comfortably wide, and took a sip of brandy. As he swallowed, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back.

This was not the man Rochester saw a year ago. He appeared changed, grown-up perhaps, or something else.

Noah sighed heavily with his face turned up toward the tiled ceiling. “He’s not himself, you know. Brash. Angry most of the time, not lucid at others. I realize this was the father you always saw. For some reason, I couldn’t see it.”

Rochester stared at him, dumbfounded, confused even. “What are you saying?”

His brother lowered his chin and looked straight into Rochester’s eyes, compassion buried in his creased brow. “I’m saying that I think he’s been ill for a long time. Not physically, perhaps, like he is now, but his mental state hasn’t been stable. I know he blames you for so much. I don’t have the luxury of memory. He’s been my only parent.”

“You were a child, Noah.”

“So were you.”

“I lost that innocence when our mother died.”

“There’s more to it than that. When he’s not thinking clearly, he says things, and I’m coming to understand them for truth.”

“I thought it was his heart?”

“More than you know. He’s fainted several times. The last doctor wanted to bleed him.”

Rochester scowled. “Damn quacks.”

“I wouldn’t allow it, but the last physician did say that his fainting is from a weak heart, and we can’t be sure how long he has.”

“Do you suppose the physician is speculating because our grandfather died of a failing heart? Or could it be something else?” The man smelled pickled, in Rochester’s opinion, and you don’t get that way without drinking heavily on a daily basis.

“You believe it’s drink,” his brother stated.

“Do you disagree?”

A thoughtful sigh filled the space between them, and Noah shook his head. “No. I think we aren’t getting the whole of it because Father won’t allow the doctor to speak the truth. It doesn’t, however, dismiss the fact that he’s not completely right in the mind. He says things sometimes.”

Right mind, indeed. Rochester looked up from examining the contents of his glass. “What kind of things?”

“Nonsensical, mostly. He’s angry and bitter. He speaks sometimes of our uncle and more often lately of our mother.”

“Why do you think that is?” Rochester had his suspicions.

Noah studied the contents of his own glass. “Perhaps he has some unresolved guilt.”

Rochester thought Noah said that of himself more than their father.

“Dalt?”

The painful memory of the nickname fell heavy on Rochester’s lids, and his eyes shut against it as his cheeks spread in a reluctant smile. “You used to call me Dolt when you were little.”

“Dolt. Dalt. It’s all the same,” Noah said, the last part muffled by his glass, a clear grin on his face. “This calls for something better, I think.” His brother stood and made his way to the Tantalus bar, where his father kept his best scotch locked away. He drew a key from a secret compartment in the secretary, held it between two fingers, and smiled devilishly. It reminded Rochester of their younger days.

Noah poured two glasses, then proceeded to take Rochester’s brandy and replace it with the scotch. He set the brandy on the table and toasted the cut crystal with a resonating ring. Both drank, smiles on their faces, and when Noah took his seat again, a laugh rolled from Rochester’s chest. The kind that is contagious.

The sound echoed as warm and gasping in the room as the scotch burned a satisfying trail down Rochester’s throat, erasing twenty years of nauseating anxiety. They hadn’t laughed like that since they were children, sneaking much the same spirits as they did today.

“Well, Dalt,” his brother continued. “As I was saying, when one’s father isn’t quite lucid, he speaks nonsense. However, there are subjects honed by alcohol consumption that come up too often not to have an edge of truth.”

With his glass hanging from his fingertips, Rochester set his drink on the table next to him, then he rested his cheek against his fist and waited.

“He’s spoken of our mother and Uncle Marcus. I think Hudson and Lovie’s father had an affair with our mother.”

Rochester bit the pad of his thumb—an affectation that belonged to Evelyn and proof that she was never far from his mind. “I’ve often suspected they’d had a relationship.”

“Did you also suspect that I might be a product of it?”

Slowly, Rochester looked up while his thoughtful, brooding words were trapped behind his parted mouth. He couldn’t help his gaze from examining the length of his brother, boot to nose, searching for signs of familiarity.

His brother spread his hands wide. “Look all you like. I’ve studied every nuance, and I can’t be certain. You, me, Lovie, Hudson, we all look like family.”

So much made sense now. If his father knew about the affair, the knowledge might have soured his father’s relationship with his uncle. It would have been a thorn in the side of his marriage and been responsible for the distance between his parents, and perhaps the loud arguments he vaguely remembered.

His father might have been a horrible parent, a bitter human being, but he wasn’t violent to the point of bodily harm. He generally saved that kind of thing for objects like the house, a mirror, a glass against the hearth. But if Noah was the love child of his mother and his Uncle Marcus, it could be enough to drive a man like his father to lead his own brother-in-law on a hunting expedition, where a convenient accident might become his father’s truth. And if that were so, then his father’s guilt could have been eating him like maggots from the inside out.

“You have no proof,” Rochester said the obvious, although his mind was percolating.

“None. Other than the drunk ramblings of an ailing man.” Noah bit his lip. “That’s not the worst, however. Where our uncle’s death is concerned, I suspect foul play.”

Rochester swallowed hard. “Perhaps. But perhaps not. What do we gain by speculating and digging up a past that would hurt too many.”

“You think that’s what I want?” his brother asked, a hard accusation behind his voice.

Rochester shrugged, feeling helpless, desperately trying to process the news. “I’m not suggesting you don’t deserve to know the truth. Honestly, Noah, I’m shocked, is all.” He stood, grabbed his empty glass, and headed for the bar.

“We have too many secrets. What I want is to share them so we might figure out how to proceed.”

“With what?” Rochester missed his glass and spilled a dash of scotch on his hand. He shook it and busied himself, drying off the rest from the back of his knuckles.

“I don’t even know where you’ve been. I’ve been living in anger with an angry man for so long that I’ve invented my own trouble. Now, I want to clear the air. I want the truth because I wish to know my brother, and my guess is that our father never wanted that.”

“If what you say is true, then why would he treat me so poorly and care for you so completely.”

“Convenience? Perhaps he passed his guilt onto you.”

Rochester shut his eyes. “Because he blamed me for our mother’s death.” He looked at his brother. “And so did you.” Rochester leaned a hip against the windowsill and gazed out at the setting sun.

“I was a child who believed everything his father told him because he was the only parent I ever knew. My memory of our mother is almost nonexistent. And before you say anything, I have no ill feelings about her. I simply don’t remember her.”

“That alone must be painful, I’m sure.” Rochester shot him a look of understanding.

“We’ve wasted a lot of time on a childhood neither of us can change, but I don’t want the rest of my life plagued by a child’s grief or by memories I now know were created by anger. Dalton, I’m not angry. Not anymore.”

Damn, if that didn’t crush him. Rochester had spent most of his life trying to forget he had a family. “How do we move forward?” he asked, his emotions weary from so much truth.

“We’re already doing it. If you can help me with the property’s upkeep and our father’s care, I would appreciate it.”

“It’s my responsibility to begin with. Just let me know what I can do.” Rochester didn’t have near the funds to care for two households, but he’d deal with that difficulty later.

“None of this is your fault. It’s mine. I could have stopped him from destroying this place, but I didn’t. And you, by all rights, should be pulling more of an income from here, but you’re not. The steward will help and maybe a companion to assist with Father’s care.”

Rochester nodded, then pulled back a dram.

“And if you need anything from me. I’m here for you, Brother.”

This trip to his family home did so much good for Rochester’s soul that not even his father’s surly goodbye could ruin the time he’d shared with his brother.

Noah had his hands full taking care of the house, the property, and their father, but Rochester didn’t have time for the guilt he felt. He had less than a week before the last of the banns were read. He had hoped to see Evelyn and to speak with her father again to avoid another trip to the parish, but the problem of finances had to be addressed sooner than later. If he could not prove himself up to the task of caring for Mr. Markham’s daughter, he could forget the blessing to wed her.