Page 38 of Vanquished by a Viscount (Tales from the Brotherhood #3)
“Believe me, I am,” Gray said gravely, arms crossed even tighter.
“Barbara believes Charlie’s deepest pain is his lack of family,” Robert went on.
“Yes, I believe that to be true as well,” Gray agreed, glancing back at the house as if he might see Charlie’s lonely figure standing wistfully in one of the windows, wrapped in a white shroud or some other maudlin nonsense.
Robert drew his attention back by resting a hand on his arm. “We are their family now, you realize,” he said. “Barbara is a Hawthorne now, but Charlie is, too, in a great many ways. It is our responsibility to make him feel that.”
Gray’s initial reaction to his brother’s words was prickly indignation, as though he was being told what to do. But that emotion quickly faded into something warmer and more sentimental. Charlie truly did need him, and not just as a bedmate.
The conversation was unable to continue as one of the footmen arrived, escorting a man from the nearby village who Gray recognized as a carpenter. He left Robert with the man and headed back to the house to search for Charlie.
Charlie was not the one he found, however.
“Grayson. There you are,” Howard greeted him with a wide smile as their paths crossed in the large front hall. “I was wondering where you’d gone off to. Australia, perhaps?” He chuckled as if Gray would share the joke.
“I went to look at the cottage’s remains with my brother,” Gray answered without any trace of humor. Odd though it felt, he was not in the mood for Howard’s teasing sort of humor.
Howard sensed Gray’s mood right away and switched to a more sympathetic sort of smile. “It is a fortunate thing that the lovely Lady Felcourt was not injured in the blaze. She was not injured, was she?”
“No, as I understand it, she is well enough this morning,” Gray answered.
“Good, good. I am glad to hear it.”
It felt even more awkward conversing with Howard as if the two of them were complete strangers than it did interacting with the man with too much familiarity. The approach left Gray feeling as though his emotions were too close to the edge.
“Do you think that I am a false and fickle lover?” he burst out before he could stop himself.
Howard looked back at him with surprise. “Why would you think that?” he asked.
Gray nervously rubbed the back of his neck and glanced up the grand staircase beside them and on toward the family wing of the house. “I abandoned Charlie once, and I believe he fears I will do the same again.”
Howard’s expression pinched with confusion. “Did you not tell me once before that Lord Broxbourne threw you over and not the other way around?”
“Yes, he did,” Gray said, squirming on his spot as an avalanche of emotions swirled in him. “But I did not need to sell myself around the way I did after. I did not need to overindulge or enjoy myself quite so much on the Continent.”
Howard surprised him by laughing loudly. He clapped a hand on Gray’s shoulder that made him feel as young as he’d been when he first flung himself into another man’s arms to spite Charlie. “Young men are never wrong to enjoy themselves and gain experience of the world,” Howard said.
“I am uncertain whether I agree with that,” Gray answered him with a suspicious look.
“You were young,” Howard tried again. “Green. Inexperienced in both the ways of the heart and the ways of the body. If any mistakes were made, they are easily forgiven. Youth is folly, but that is how we gain wisdom.”
Gray tilted his head slightly to the side in consideration. “I suppose that is true.”
“I see your true concern, though,” Howard went on, much of the man’s wisdom showing in the genuine caring in his eyes. “You have been given a rare chance to reclaim a love you lost, and you fear that too much folly lies between where you left off with Broxbourne and where you are now.”
“I do not know whether he distrusts me or doubts himself more,” Gray said as more of the tangle became clear. “Either way, I would hate for any of it to stand between us.”
Howard shifted his hand from Gray’s shoulder to the side of his face in an almost fatherly gesture.
“You know what you want in your heart, Grayson,” he said.
“After what I have seen in the last few days, I believe that Broxbourne wants the same things. That does not mean it will be an easy path from one to the other, but I am certain that if the two of you talk things through, you will find the place you are meant to be.”
“I hope so,” Grayson said, sighing. He rested a grateful hand atop Howard’s on his cheek.
“And you would be an utter fool to travel to Australia now,” Howard added, teasing back in his voice. “Unless you took Broxbourne with you.”
Gray shook his head. “He would never go. He would not leave his sister so far behind him. Charlie is nothing if not painfully responsible.”
He meant what he said without any sort of malice, but it happened that a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye drew his attention, and when he turned his head, he saw Charlie watching him and Howard from the top of the grand staircase.
Charlie wore a stricken look, as though he’d heard what Gray said and took it as an insult.
No, it wasn’t what Gray said that had put the expression on Charlie’s face or that made him turn sharply and stride quickly back down the corridor toward his bedroom. It was the way Gray stood close to Howard and the way Howard still had his hand on the side of Gray’s face.
“Oh, no,” Gray groaned, taking a large step back from Howard. “You see?” he asked, taking a step toward the stairs. “Everything I do, Charlie is going to interpret as the beginning of the end of things.”
“Then he is an even bigger fool than you are,” Howard called after Gray as he reached the stairs. “Give it time,” Howard added as Gray started up. “He will only trust you again if you build up that trust bit by bit over time.”
Gray was certain his friend was right, but it did not ease the discomfort gnawing at Gray’s gut.
That discomfort was only made worse when Gray reached Charlie’s door and knocked, only to receive no answer. “Charlie?” he asked before turning the handle and stepping into the room.
The room was empty, though. Wherever Charlie had gone when he’d fled something he saw but did not understand, it was not to his room.
Gray sighed heavily and leaned against the doorframe, wondering what he could possibly do to reassure the only man he would ever love and win him back for good.