The billiards room

Early evening

I don’t remember ever seeing you in silk, let alone pink silk,” Alaric said. He was leaning against the billiards table, watching his brother pocket the red ball over and over with careless mastery. “If you’re not careful, you’ll turn dukish. Remember Horatius?”

When he was alive, their older brother Horatius had relished the nonsense of being heir to a dukedom. He had already been pompous in short pants. Hell, probably even in nappies.

“ ‘Dukish’ isn’t a word, and this is what an English nobleman wears,” North said flatly. “Now you’re back in England, you’ll have to dress to your station.”

“I shaved,” Alaric observed.

North slammed his white cue ball into the red ball, which dropped into a pocket yet again. “It could be that the air around a future duke is poisoned. I’ll admit that I astonish myself sometimes.”

“Isn’t it my turn yet?” Alaric took a healthy slug of French brandy.

“No.”

“I’ve decided that your wig makes you look like an African parrot crossed with a fancy chicken.”

North flipped his cue, using the slender end to carom his cue ball off one rail, then another, and finally into the chosen red ball—which surprisingly failed to pocket. “Horatius died. I had to grow up.”

Alaric pushed away a familiar pang of sadness. “You have three curls over each ear,” he pointed out. “Add them to the pretty ruffles at your wrists and the coat tarted up with gold embroidery, and the result cannot be explained by maturity alone.”

“You can’t imagine how uninteresting I find your sartorial commentary,” North said. “Since you are preoccupied by my wardrobe, shall I take the next round?”

“Go ahead,” Alaric said, taking another swallow. “It isn’t just your wardrobe. When I left five years ago, you were wig-free, with a plump dancer in one pocket and a sulky Italian singer in the other. And now you’re getting married.”

North leaned to position his cue. “People change.”

“You’re wearing heels,” Alaric said, catching sight of his brother’s feet. “Damn it, they aren’t even black, are they?” He bent down and said, with some revulsion, “North, your stockings are striped, and your heels are yellow. Yellow.”

“This is the newest style. You left in 1773, and it’s 1778. Fashions change.” He sank the red ball.

“You’ve turned into a damn fop. I wouldn’t be surprised if you start wearing great silver buckles on your shoes.”

His brother straightened. “Alaric.” His voice was dangerously quiet, a tone that in their childhood days would be followed by an attempt to pound his brothers into the floor.

But Alaric had never been able to stop himself from poking the beast—in this case, the man who scarcely resembled the brother he remembered. “Should I steel myself to watch you mince down the aisle in scarlet heels? Wearing rouge, no doubt, and patches?”

North narrowed the dark blue eyes that were uncannily similar to Alaric’s own. “Should I assume that you will look like a blacksmith in the church? Because you do at the moment.”

“Quarles would be very wounded to hear that,” Alaric said. His valet did his best, inasmuch as his master refused to wear silk, heels, ruffles, or rouge.

Their family was large by any standard—their father’s third wife was on the verge of giving birth to yet another little Wilde—but Horatius, he, and North had been the first three in the nursery.

He would have said that they knew each other inside out: Horatius had been arrogant, but true; Alaric was adventuresome, verging on foolhardy; North was rakish and half-mad.

Rakish and mad were nowhere in evidence now. In their place: Prissy. Fashionable. Flowery. Soon to be married.

It was hard to believe.

Impossible.

“What is Miss Belgrave’s given name?” Alaric asked. He’d scarcely managed to speak to his future sister-in-law. For one thing, he’d been distracted by that fiery little termagant who hadn’t read his books.

Damn, she was lovely, though. Delicate features paired with plump lips that curved in a way that made a man instinctively think about bedding her—even though her mouth had been crooked in a sardonic little smile, because she had obviously decided that he was a storyteller at best, and a fribble at worst.

A deceitful fribble, at that: one who created the events in Lord Wilde’s books from thin air.

Never mind her smirk: when he was looking at her, he understood the whole wig business.

A wig kept a woman’s hair to herself—and her lover. Made it a private delight.

Then, just when he’d learned about that absurd play, he’d been mowed down by ladies who had seen Wilde in Love and seemed to believe that his life actually bore some resemblance to that rubbishing play.

“My fiancée’s name is Diana,” North replied, smiling. It was an involuntary smile that lit up his eyes.

“Diana? Hell, she’s practically already part of the family,” Alaric said, shaking off thoughts of Wilde in Love.

Their father had named all his children after warriors; Alaric and Roland used to stage battles between Alaric, king of the Visigoths, and Roland, chief paladin to King Charlemagne. Horatius had been too lofty for such childish games; as he liked to remind them, his namesake had fought an entire army on his own.

“I told the duchess that she couldn’t have the name for the new baby,” North said.

“They’ll run out of appropriate names soon.” Alaric counted off the names. “There’s you and I and Horatius from Mother. Leonidas, Boadicea, Alexander, and Joan from the second duchess. The third has given us Spartacus, Erik, and whoever the next one will be.”

“Don’t forget Viola,” North said. Viola was the current duchess’s daughter from her first marriage. Their father had met his third wife a few years after she was widowed.

“Viola doesn’t have a warrior’s name because our father wasn’t around to name her. My point is that Diana will fit right in. Tell me about her.”

“You saw how beautiful she is,” North said, his face softening. “She’s one of the most fashionable ladies in London. She’s bringing a substantial dowry to the estate.”

“We don’t need it,” Alaric said. “Unless things have changed?”

“They haven’t, but money is always useful.”

“True. What are her interests?”

His brother looked blank.

“Besides fashion,” Alaric prompted. “Is she interesting?”

“I don’t need, or want, an interesting wife,” North said, plucking the red ball out of the pocket. “In fact, I think an interesting wife is anathema to a man like me.”

“ ‘A man like you,’ ” Alaric repeated. “Exactly what kind of man have you become, North?”

His brother’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “You may be able to racket around the world, calling yourself Lord Wilde, chasing pygmy tribes and wild elephants, but I cannot. The estate takes a great deal of work: our father has just acquired a sixth property, in Wales.”

“I didn’t know you needed me,” Alaric said, feeling as if he’d taken a blow to the stomach.

“I don’t,” North said immediately. “I don’t give a damn whether you’ve been roasting in Africa or freezing in Saint Petersburg.”

But clearly he had. He did.

Damn it.

Alaric put down his glass. “I apologize for staying away so long, and for leaving you with the care of my estate on top of the rest.”

“On that front, I meant to tell you that I hired a few men to guard your house, but people keep sneaking up and prying out bricks.”

“What the hell for?”

“Keepsakes,” North said with a shrug. “Mementos of their love. Damned if I know.”

Alaric swallowed back a curse. A tall hedge would keep them out. Maybe a hedge and a few wolfhounds for good measure.

“There’s quite a trade in Wilde memorabilia,” his brother continued, “so I suppose some of the bricks make their way to London.”

“That bloody play,” Alaric said with disgust. “I have to get it shut down.” Yet he couldn’t leave for London immediately, given his long absence. His father had asked him to remain at Lindow Castle for a few weeks, at least until the birth of his new sibling.

“I don’t think it’s against the law to write a play about someone’s life. Wilde in Love is everything you’d expect: melodramatic, ridiculous, a lot of fun. Tickets have been sold ahead for months.”

“It’s one thing if a play’s about Julius Caesar,” Alaric pointed out. “I’m alive. How would you like a bunch of nonsense up on the stage about you?”

“You’re the one who wrote books about yourself,” North retorted.

“I wrote books. I didn’t write a play. The books are accurate, whereas I have had nothing to do with cannibals.” Alaric threw the last of his brandy down his throat, welcoming the burn.

The missionary’s daughter had to be a lucky guess. He could imagine a playwright deciding to make a penny by dramatizing spurious adventures under the insipid title Wilde in Love. But how in the hell did that hack know to include a missionary’s daughter?

It was actually thanks to the only missionary’s daughter he’d ever met, Miss Prudence Larkin—who had loved him, though the feeling was not returned—that he stayed far away from virtuous young ladies. In fact, he vaguely put ladies and cannibals in the same category: ravenous beings with a taste for Englishmen.

But neither the play nor his thieving readers were as important as North’s earlier revelation. “I am sorry that I left you with the care of my estate.” His jaw tightened. “It was easier to board another ship than to come home and imagine Horatius losing his life in the bog.” He dipped his head in the direction of Lindow Moss, the huge stretch of wetlands east of the castle.

“Did you think that you were alone in that feeling? We all miss Horatius. But we missed you as well.” North’s cue ball thumped into the table’s cushion, spun, and narrowly missed a pocket. “I actually read your last book, not because I’m one of your throngs of admirers, but so that I had some idea what my brother was doing and where he’d been.”

“I apologize,” Alaric said. He raked his hand through his hair again. “Hell and damnation. I’m truly sorry.”

“Horatius would have loved your latest book. He would have been bloody proud of you. Probably dragged us to that play every night of the week.” North slammed his ball so hard that it skipped the rail and rolled across the floor.

“Your turn,” he said, looking up.

In more ways than one, it seemed.