Ethan: Lord of Scandals ll-3

by Grace Burrowes

  Rather than comment on Nick’s observation, Ethan fished in the drawers and cupboards until he found everyday cutlery, linen napkins, and plates. Nick’s arrival on a Sunday was something of a mercy, allowing them privacy while they tried to find a rhythm with each other.

  “So how did you get Alice on a horse?” Nick asked, carrying bread, meat, and cheese to the table.

  “She knows how to ride.” Ethan put salt, pepper, mustard, and butter down next to Nick’s tray. “She just needed an incentive to deal with her understandable fears.”

  “Reese Belmont said she’d been hurt trying to report a crime of some sort.” Nick carried the pitcher of lemonade to the table, while Ethan opened a bottle of sweet white wine and found glasses.

  “I don’t know the details.” Ethan set the wine on the table to breathe. “And I don’t want to know them unless Alice wants me to. It must be bad, though. Hazlit was out here, strutting and pawing like a papa bear.”

  “Hazlit?” Nick’s eyebrows rose. “My Benjamin Hazlit?”

  “He’s Alice’s brother. I assumed you knew they were related.” And wasn’t it gratifying to know something Nick did not?

  “I had no idea,” Nick muttered. “How odd.”

  Ethan poured them each half a glass of lemonade, added a portion of wine, and took a seat across from Nick. “For what we are about to receive, we are damned grateful, amen.”

  “Amen.” Nick reached for the bread. “I cannot fathom Benjamin Hazlit confiding in you, Ethan. Meaning no offense, but the man’s lips are closed as tightly as a king’s coffin.”

  “His younger sister works for me,” Ethan said, waiting for Nick to finish with the butter. “He told me he’d call me out if I offended Alice, and I had to like him for it.”

  Nick set the butter knife down, his expression distracted. “You like him for threatening you?”

  “He’s protective. I would want our sisters to be able to count on us for the same. Mustard?”

  “Please.” Nick accepted the mustard and set it down beside his plate. “I feel as if… First, you find a lovely woman where Pris’s starchy little governess was standing when last I looked. Then you turn up living not in some gothic horror but on a gracious, perfectly pleasant and prosperous estate. And now you tell me Benjamin Hazlit is revealing family secrets to you, and you like him for threatening your life. Maybe the ale was bad at the last posting inn I stopped at.”

  “What did you expect, Nick?”

  “I don’t know. For Alice to be holed up in her room, reading over the boys’ school work, you to be scratching away at your infernal correspondence, Tydings to be somehow grimmer. I don’t know.”

  “Are you disappointed?”

  Nick smiled self-deprecatingly. “Maybe. You don’t need rescuing, do you? Mustard?”

  “Please.” Ethan accepted the mustard and tried not to flinch at the question. “Reserve judgment on whether I am in need of rescuing until after the picnic. Greymoor himself came by to issue his summons for this bacchanal. I found him likable enough, and might have to return his call.”

  “You don’t visit?” Nick scowled at his plate. “Not even Greymoor or Heathgate or Amery?”

  “I know Heathgate slightly.” Ethan sipped his drink, wishing it was something more fortifying than this bland concoction Nick favored. “I’m hardly his social equal, and why would I visit the others?”

  “Because that is what one does in the country, Ethan Grey.” Nick directed a pained stare at his drink. “You visit, and you talk about the hunting and the shooting and the crops, or the lack of hunting, shooting, and crops. You bump into each other riding out. You cadge a Sunday meal after church. You stay for a pint at the local inn. You stand up with the wallflowers at the assemblies.”

  Ethan remained silent, regarding his brother levelly because he honestly did not know what to say.

  “I’ll shut up,” Nick said. “Pass me that tray. Growing boys need sustenance.”

  Ethan passed him the tray and the butter and mustard.

  “I don’t go to church,” Ethan said. “I don’t ride to hounds, I don’t go to the assemblies, and I don’t frequent the local watering hole.”

  “Ethan?” Nick’s voice held consternation and concern.

  “I do ride out,” Ethan allowed, “and thus I bumped into Heathgate. I’ve met Greymoor and that other fellow.”

  “Amery,” Nick supplied. “Have you met Westhaven?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  Nick put down his glass with a soft thump. “You can’t live here in legendarily pleasant surrounds, cut off from all around you. It isn’t… It isn’t right.”

  “Not right for you,” Ethan said, his tone mild. “But I accomplish a great deal, Nicholas, when I’m not dancing, visiting, gossiping, and watching a pack of dogs tear an arthritic fox to pieces.”

  “Miller told me you’ve promised to take the boys cubbing this fall,” Nick said, apparently willing to reserve further sermons for later.

  “They need to know the protocol if they’re to be gentlemen, and they ride well enough.”

  Nick set his second sandwich down only half-eaten. “I feel like you’ve gone away, like you grew up and became somebody my brother could not have turned into. You were not like this as a boy.”

  “Like what?” Ethan was truly curious, but concerned too, because he could see Nick was getting genuinely upset with him.

  No, not with him, for him.

  “You enjoyed people,” Nick said. “You joked with the stable boys, flirted with the dairymaids. The little girls wanted you to read them their stories and braid their hair and check under their beds at night. You beat Papa at cribbage and led me into one silly prank after another. And now…”

  “Now?”

  “You accomplish a great deal,” Nick said in exasperation. “You may not write to your brother but once in seven years, but you accomplish a lot. You’ll take your boys cubbing so they learn their manners, but you don’t call on your neighbors, nor they on you. You’re a good-looking, wealthy widower, but you won’t stand up at the assemblies. You probably make more money year by year, but you couldn’t be bothered to tell me you were married, much less widowed, much less a father twice over. What happened, Ethan? What on earth happened to you?”

  Nick’s tone was so bewildered, Ethan couldn’t have been offended if he’d wanted to be, and he did not want to be.

  Nor would he tell Nick what had happened. Not ever. For his own sake, but equally for Nicholas’s sake.

  “I grew up, Nick. It wasn’t my choice, entirely, but I’m doing the best I can with it.”

  “Is this how you felt about me, when all the wild talk circulated about my womanizing?”

  Ethan pursed his lips. “Felt how?”

  “Like some strange man was using your brother’s name,” Nick said. “Doing things your brother wouldn’t, and saying things he’d never dream of uttering?”

  “No.” Was that how Nick felt? “I worried, Nick. That much carrying on isn’t about having the occasional recreational tumble.”

  “It wasn’t.” Nick scrubbed a hand over his face. “How did we ever get onto such gloomy topics?”

  “You are disappointed in me,” Ethan suggested gently. “I am socially backward, reclusive, and much preoccupied with my commerce.”

  “And all of that”—Nick waved his big hand again—“would be of no moment, Ethan, but are you happy?”

  Ethan had stopped asking himself this question at the age of fourteen. It had no bearing on anything.

  “Happiness is a luxury,” Ethan said, staring at his empty glass. “If it comes to pass, it should be appreciated, but life doesn’t owe us happiness. I am content, Nick, and much less unhappy than I was when Barbara was alive. If that makes me evil, then so be it. Before she died, we learned what it meant to hate each other, though fortunately that was not the last page of our dealings. I did not marry well, and you did. Can we leave it at that?”

  “For now.” Nick l
ooked mightily disgruntled at the idea. “It isn’t that simple.”

  “No,” Ethan agreed, rising, “it isn’t, but you are my first houseguest in the seven years I’ve been here, and I am not inclined to spend your afternoon rehashing ancient history. How long can you stay?”

  “Miller mentioned that George might be out this way,” Nick said, getting to his feet.

  “I’ve invited him and Adolphus both. We’ll see if he accepts.”

  “Let’s say I’ll head back to Kent on Thursday morning. My business in London is done, and if I can spend time with George, I’ll consider my travels a success.”

  “You may already consider your travels a success,” Ethan said, pausing with the pitcher in one hand and the wine bottle in the other. “I am glad you’re here, Nick.”

  “I’m glad to be here.” His tone and his expression suggested this was not an entirely genuine sentiment.

  Ethan set his burdens on the counter. As younger men, they might have settled this—whatever this was—with a round of fisticuffs. “I know you mean well, Nicholas, but please bear in mind, I am not you, and I am not the affable, innocent boy with whom you shared your childhood.”

  This was an understatement the proportions of which defied description. Ethan wasn’t going to tell Nick that, either.

  Nick sidled along the counter and hooked a beefy arm around his brother’s shoulders. “You are my brother, and if you are not happy, it’s hard for me to be happy.”

  “We aren’t boys anymore.” Ethan wanted to pull away, but that would hurt Nick’s feelings. “You can’t create happiness out of a long summer afternoon, two boys, bare feet, and a cold stream.”

  Nick didn’t say anything. He just put his other arm around Ethan and hugged him until Ethan stepped back and resumed tidying up their lunch.

  * * *

  “It’s Sunday,” Ethan said as he crossed the threshold to Alice’s room. “You cannot be working, Alice.”

  “Says who?” Alice put down her pen and capped her inkwell. Why was it that Ethan Grey in riding breeches, boots, and waistcoat looked handsomer than any man she’d laid eyes on? His sleeves were rolled back to the elbow, exposing tan muscle dusted with golden hair. She wanted to lay her cheek against that forearm, taste the strength in his wrists.

  “Almighty God gave us the example of resting on the Sabbath.” Ethan ambled over to her escritoire and peered over her shoulder. “Because I am the almighty lord of this property, I condone the notion. What are you about?”

  “Making a list of Latin aphorisms,” Alice said as Ethan leaned over and scanned her work. Her imagination suggested he inhaled through his nose, but then, so had she.

  “Why do you laugh?” Ethan quoted. “Change the name and the same can be said of you.”

  “That one’s too long, though your boys do a great deal of laughing.”

  “More lately.” He remained half-bent over her while Alice tried to lecture herself into ignoring him. “This is an interesting collection, Alice Portman. Is Hazlit’s Latin as facile?”

  Ethan straightened and crossed to sit on her bed. The door was open, and nobody was about, but still, sitting on her bed was intimate, and Alice liked the look of him there—heaven help her.

  “It is not, and neither is Vim’s.”

  “What of your sister, the one you haven’t seen for five years?”

  “Avis.” Alice’s smile dimmed. “She was neither a bluestocking nor given to competing with our brothers.” She did, however, run the entire estate of Blessings so their brothers could lark about all over the realm.

  Ethan ran a hand over her pillow, and Alice’s insides became muddled. Just like that, drat him. “Have you made up your mind about going to visit her?”

  “You were serious when you said I might?”

  He did it again—ran his palm over the linen and wreaked havoc with Alice’s composure. “We can agree, I think, I am generally serious.”

  Not as serious as he wanted people to think. “I’ve written to Avis, suggesting she might come south, and I could come north, and we’d meet in the Midlands, but there hasn’t been time for a reply.”

  Another stroke over her pillow, over the very spot where she laid her head. “Can’t your brother send one of his famous pigeons? He must have some flying between Blessings and his southern residence.”

  “I hadn’t considered Benjamin’s pigeons. Even if he has such, they can carry only very brief messages.”

  He rose and turned to smooth over the covers where he’d sat, and the back of him was no less unsettling to look upon than the front. “You should send such an invitation. I am here, in fact, to issue a summons to you.”

  “To me?” Alice tidied her papers and set her pen in its stand. “It’s Sunday. One may not be summoned.”

  “Nicholas has taken it into his head to make muffins and has asked you to attend him and the boys in the kitchen.”

  Alice rose, relieved—truly and honestly relieved—to be getting Ethan out of her bedroom. “If I have to go, then you have to as well.”

  “Nick didn’t include me on the writ,” Ethan said as they made their way down the back stairs. “You are female, so he assumes you will know where things go in the kitchen.”

  “I avoid the kitchen. Your cook is a cantankerous and territorial old dame. Mrs. Buxton made it clear Cook is not to be trifled with.”

  “Valid point, but Cook also consumes a fair amount of the cooking sherry and takes her Sundays off to heart.” Ethan lowered his voice and bent near as they walked along. “I think she has a follower.”

  “Or a drinking companion.”

  “Who has a drinking companion?” Nick asked. He stood at the kitchen counter, a towel around his waist as an improvised apron. “If there’s any drinking going on, I’d like to be informed. Joshua, stop kicking the drawer and find us three clean spoons. Jeremiah, we’ll need some mugs of cold milk to sustain us.”

  Ethan quirked an eyebrow at his brother. “Perhaps we, who have been mucking around the stables, ought to wash our hands, hmm?”

  Nick’s expression was arrested. “Good idea. Boys, wash up, and then step lively. Uncle Nick is hungry for muffins.”

  Ethan scanned the counter, where ingredients were lined up in recipe order. “You’re not going to drown the apples in cinnamon, are you?”

  To the ears of any governess, the question was laden with challenge from one boy to another.

  Nick propped his fists on his hips. “You blaspheme on the Lord’s day, Ethan Grey. I do not drown my apples in spices, but I am not stingy with cinnamon or cloves.”

  “So you completely overpower the equally worthy, less pungent flavors,” Ethan scoffed. “As usual.”

  “You could do better?” Nick glowered at him, the boys watching the exchange with round eyes.

  “I always have.” Ethan’s smile appeared exactly designed to goad a younger brother.

  “You’re on.” Nick slapped his towel against the counter. “Alice and the boys will judge, and may the best muffin win.”

  “Muffin him silly, Papa,” Joshua said.

  “Make yours double enormous, Uncle Nick,” Jeremiah joined in.

  “Joshua Grey!” Nick turned to his smallest nephew in mock offense. “How can I name you one of my seconds if you’re rooting for the other team?”

  “I can root for Papa and be your second. Miss Alice can be Papa’s second.”

  “Alice?” Ethan crossed his arms over his chest. “This is a matter of honor, and my sons are turncoats. That leaves me you or the pantry mouser.”

  Alice plucked the towel from Nick’s hands. “I’m your man, Mr. Grey.” She gently whapped the towel across Nick’s chest, while the boys hooted and shrieked with glee.

  When she was left alone in the kitchen an hour later, and the boys had dragged the men out to the garden, Alice did not immediately start to clean up. Instead, she sat down with a cup of hot tea and enjoyed the silence. If anyone had told her two weeks ago she’d be participa
ting in a duel-by-muffin between two grown men, she would have laughed.

  And this afternoon, with Ethan, his brother, and his sons, she had laughed. That set her to thinking about the recipe that was her life—too much caution and observation, not enough participation or spice.

  She was thinking so hard she didn’t hear the door open or the footsteps behind her. A pair of lips settled on her cheek, and her first instinct was to melt into the kiss, except…

  “Nicholas, behave yourself for once.”

  “I was thanking you.” Nick smiled at her and slid onto the bench across the table from her. “You looked so serious and pretty sitting there, staring at your teacup as if it held the answer to all life’s mysteries.”

  “I’m English. A good cup of tea does hold the answer to many of life’s mysteries. That doesn’t excuse your kissing me, Nicholas, and I’ll thank you to keep your lips to yourself in future.”

  “Or what? You’ll paddle my backside?”

  “As if you’d mind.”

  “Did I truly offend?” Nick asked, his smile fading. “If I did, I do apologize.”

  “You nearly did, except I know you are harmless. You left Ethan outside with the boys?”

  “I did.” Nick rose. “I am off to fetch some paper and pencils from the library. Ethan suggested we sketch designs for a tree house. When will the muffins be ready?”

  Alice rose, because dishes had never once in the history of kitchens washed themselves. “The muffins won’t be ready until Wednesday next. Shoo, or I’ll issue another edict.”

  Nick scampered out of the kitchen, his hands playfully covering his behind, so Alice had to snap a towel at him for good measure. She turned around, intent on piling dishes in the sink, only to find Ethan lounging against the hallway door, observing her with a slight smile.

  “Forgive my brother his airs. The title weighs on him heavily.”

  Alice took down an apron from a peg. “I think it does, too. Bring me some hot water, please, and I’ll get these soaking.” He brought her the kettle from the hob, and leaned in to kiss her jaw as he did.

  Alice smiled, closed her eyes, and forgot entirely about the dishes. “You’re as bad as your brother.”