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Will walked forward, putting space between him and his friend. He wasn’t surprised when Jamie’s silhouette appeared in the doorway.

“I knew I’d find you in the barn.” Scowling, Jamie used his toe to scrape a chunk of mud from his boot heel. “Still haven’t grown up, have you, Willie?”

“Jamie.” The name echoed cold in the deserted stable.

The last time they’d seen each other, he’d freed Ormonde from under Jamie’s nose. Will imagined his brother had come seeking revenge, though it was audacious of him to appear in broad daylight. Jamie generally preferred skulking about in the shadows.

“I’m surprised you show your face here,” Will said evenly.

“Are you now?” Jamie sauntered down the stable corridor, mindlessly running his fingers along the wall as he approached. “I could say the same of you. ’Tis I who find a parent here, after all. Not you. Mother never could stomach your legs, now, could she?”

Standing erect, Will adjusted his grip on the handle of his cane, poised to fight if necessary. “Is that what you’ve come to say to me? My body’s destroyed and there’s no beast for you to maim, so instead you bait me with taunts of our mother?”

“Oh no, Brother dear. I know you better than that. I know you’re happy torturing your own damn self.” Laughing, he glanced over Will’s shoulder to the end of the barn. “I’ve actually come to make peace,” Jamie continued. “For Mother. Have the Rollo boys be as one once more.”

Will bristled. He edged down the corridor, closer to Jamie and away from Ormonde, hoping his friend had already fled through the tack room door. “Never have we been as one . What is it you really want?”

“You don’t believe me? I even brought your little cane with me. As a peace offering.”

Rollo noticed his cane for the first time—the one he’d abandoned at the Tower—dangling beside Jamie’s sword in the scabbard at his side. He’d had it specially fashioned, secreting a lethally sharp blade within a walking stick, creating a masterpiece among weapons.

His eyes narrowed. Jamie would know what it meant to him. The gesture would not be made without some hidden price.

“Take it then.” Jamie pulled the cane from his side, handed it to Will. “And we can be as brothers again.”

“Brothers who keep finding themselves on opposite sides of the battlefield.”

Jamie shrugged. “You wound me, Willie.” He glanced around, scowling, and muttered, “Christ, I don’t know how you can abide this stink. You always did love the fetid confines of the stable yard.”

He brushed the dust from his dun-colored britches as if all were settled. “Come now, Mother awaits.” Pinning Rollo with a searching look, he added, “As does that woman of yours. I saw her, you know.”

Anger erupted, molten steel in his chest. Felicity was off-limits. He’d not have her near his brother. Not have her be even in sight of him.

Will had to protect her, but carefully. If Jamie got even a whiff of jealousy, that would be it. His brother destroyed everything Will had ever cared about. Jamie had maimed his animal: what would he do to Felicity if he got the idea she were his woman?

Will kept his face a careful blank, and so Jamie continued, pressing, “Nicely done, that. She’s a luscious trifle of a thing, with a sweet pair of tits.”

Jamie began to walk back down the corridor, musing aloud. “Though generally I prefer a little more ass on a woman. Something to hold onto.”

Will’s body grew rigid, rage flexing his every muscle. Still. Be still and betray nothing.

“But what I’d like to know is why she’s with you,” Jamie went on. “I can’t help but feel she’s too . . . pretty for you. Where on earth did you find her, and pray tell, why is she with you?”

Will stood, frozen in place. His brother walked ahead, oblivious.

“It must be asked, is the girl a wee bit daft? She’s up there attempting conversation with our half-wit father.”

Will was seething now, imagining all the various ways in which he could murder his brother. He bore both canes now: his favorite, the one which hid his sword, and the one he’d bought as a replacement when he’d thought the other lost to the Tower of London.

He lifted them both from the ground. He’d had years in which to perfect the use of all manner of staves, rods, and walking sticks as weapons. Mapped into his brain were dozens of ways to maim, or to kill. A few swift motions and he could have Jamie cold on the ground.

Lash across the knee. The handle hooks the neck, reaps him down. A strike across the temple finishes it.

Jamie grew still. Enemies they may be, but first they’d been brothers, and brothers knew . He’d have sensed the change in Will, would be poised for his attack.

Will contemplated his brother’s stiffened back, gathering himself. He’d not sink to Jamie’s level. The man was naught more than a swine, and Will refused to roll about in the muck.

Taking a deep breath, he set the tips of his canes back in the dirt. Affecting a cavalier posture he didn’t feel, Will strolled ahead.

But he didn’t see the malice hidden from him, a reptilian smile that curved slowly at Jamie’s mouth.

The stroll back to the house had been a misery. Will hated his slow pace. Hated even more to be the object of his brother’s scrutiny. Jamie walked alongside him, making idle chatter, but Will knew that his brother would’ve been taking great pleasure in the plodding gait.

By the time they reached their mother’s drawing room, Will’s simmering anger sought release. And it took aim at the most vulnerable of targets.

Felicity.

He’d spent a lifetime taking great pains to fortify himself against his brother’s attacks. That she’d made him vulnerable to Jamie’s scorn infuriated him.

They walked in and there she knelt, by his father at the window. They’d been at Duncrub for a few days now, and he kept finding her just there. He wondered what she could possibly be thinking of, trying to engage his father.

Sunlight canted in at an angle, pricking bright white strands in her blonde hair. Her prettiness mocked him, fueling his anger.

“Felicity.” He bit her name out, hating the feel of his brother at his back. Hating the sight of his once strapping father, now drooling and decrepit, staring dumbly out the window.

But then she turned, greeting him with such a look of open pleasure, he had to grip his canes to fight his knees from buckling.

“Will,” she said, smiling. Then he saw her eyes go cold as she looked to his brother.

And Will swelled with pride, in that moment feeling Felicity’s beautiful smile to be the greatest victory of all.

“I’ll leave you then,” Jamie said with a chill in his voice, “for the family reunion. Be sure not to tip Father dear over, Mistress Felicity. He’s best approached as more a decorative element than actual additional company.”

“Jerk,” Felicity said as Jamie left the room. She curled her upper lip in a little sneer.

Will fought not to beam at the darling sight of it. How often he’d made his own sneers at Jamie’s back. “If by that you mean my brother’s a scurrilous jackass of a human being, then, aye, he’s a jerk indeed.”

“Jackass?” She giggled. “Shouldn’t you say something like, I don’t know, knave , or blackguard instead?”

“What, and all seventeenth-century men must speak as though we’re John Donne?”

“I don’t know who he is, but William Rollo, I think you just made a joke.” Her face stilled in amazement, and the light in her eyes cracked his heart as a chisel would stone.

Felicity stood, and she felt a pang letting go of the moment they’d just shared. She didn’t know what it was that had just happened, but she did know she wanted to discuss Will’s dad before his jerky brother came back in the room.

She beckoned him closer, but Will had gone back to looking at her as if she had the plague.

“Come on, I won’t bite.” She felt a little flicker in her chest, wondering what it meant that he had such a response to her. “Come here. I want to show you something. With your dad,” she added, getting impatient.

As he approached, Felicity tried to see Will’s father as he would see him.

He’d clearly been an attractive man in his day.

And he wasn’t an old man by any means, by modern standards at least. She estimated he was in his sixties, with Will’s thick, waving hair turned silver, and the same bright, hazel eyes.

And though his face was a frozen mask, it was those eyes that gave him away. They danced with light, and she was shocked that no one could see it.

“Will, your father’s not senile.”

“I’d rather not speak of—”

“Now look,” Felicity said, ignoring him. She leaned in and pointed to the right side of his father’s face. “See how this side of his face looks different? Your father’s . . . spell . . . or whatever it was that your mom called it, wasn’t a spell at all.”

She stood and, speaking directly to the older man, said, “You, sir, had a stroke.”

Will only watched her. His skepticism was so frustrating. He should be jumping for joy, but all she saw was his grief, simmering just below the surface.

“A stroke,” she repeated. “It’s like a little explosion that happens in the brain. Well, I don’t know how it works, but Will, your father’s still in there. He’s just having trouble moving.”

She put her hands on her knees to lean closer. “Have you ever tried asking him to blink? Like, having him blink if he understands? Seriously,” she said, looking up at Rollo, her frustration growing.

Will’s silence had been annoying her, but now it seemed like he was ignoring her outright. “Am I the only one who can see that the lights are on in there?” she asked, raising her voice.

“There’s no cause to—”

“To yell? I’ll yell if I want to. I don’t know why you’re not listening to me. The poor man has been left to just sit here. Will, your father—”

“Our father can’t help you now, Willie.”

Jamie stood at the door, chuckling. “Lovers’ quarrel?”

Felicity opened her mouth to give the creep what for, but Will shot her a glare so sharp and so abrupt as to silence her at once.

“I heard the commotion and simply had to bear witness. A woman who can get a rise out of my brother?” Jamie made a lewd sneer. “Well, I doubt you could get a rise out of him. He is a cripple, after all.”

Jamie wasn’t half the man his younger brother was, and she wished Will would just walk across the room and clock him one with his cane. But Will merely stood, straight as an arrow, so still he seemed to have stopped breathing.

“Easy now!” Jamie laughed. “I jest, I jest. But I see I must guard my words.” He walked to Felicity. “I’d have you believe the best of your future brother-in-law, dear girl.”

“She is not—”

“Not”—he interrupted Will at once, his eyes narrowed—“your intended?”

Felicity’s heart fell. Weren’t they supposed to be pretending a betrothal? Didn’t they kind of almost have a betrothal?

Jamie turned his attention to her, his eyes roving her body in a slow and overly familiar sweep.

She crossed her arms, feeling suddenly overly exposed in the low-cut gown. Dream on, punk.

“How could it be?” Jamie mused. He waited until his brother’s back was turned to add in a voice pitched suggestively low, “Then perhaps I’ll be the one to curry your favor.”