The man in the photograph seemed to have scarcely aged in ten years, perhaps because his was an old soul, that he'd always been mature beyond his years. He was handsome, dramatically handsome— the face of a Shakespearean actor in his prime, all sharp peak and deep angles. And in his eyes was everything she could possibly want in a man: kindness, warmth, honesty, audacity, and love—love that would tear down this world and build it anew.
From afar she'd watched his meteoric rise—one of London's most sought-after barristers, and now, with the Liberals back in power, Mr. Gladstone's Chief Whip in the House of Commons—quite something for a man who'd spent his first nine years in a Manchester slum.
He'd accomplished it all on his own merits, of course, but she'd played her small part. She'd walked away from him, from hopes and dreams enough to spawn a generation of poets, so that he could be the man he was meant to be, the man whose face on her newspaper clipping she could not touch.
Stuart Somerset lived, not in his constituency of South Hackney, but in the elegant enclaves of Belgravia. From his visit to the house of his fiancée, he returned directly home, and went for the decanter of whiskey that he kept in his study.
He took a large swallow of the liquor. He was a little more affected by the news of Bertie's death now than he had been an hour ago. There was a faint numbness in his head. It was the shock of it, he supposed. He hadn't expected Mortality, ever present though it was, to strike Bertie, of all people.
Two shelves up from the whiskey decanter was a framed photograph of Bertie and himself, taken when Bertie had been eighteen and he seventeen, shortly after he'd been legitimized.
What had Bertie said to him that day?
You may be legitimized, but you will never be one of us. You don't know how Father panicked when it looked as if your mother might live. Your people are laborers and drunks and petty criminals. Don't flatter yourself otherwise.
For years afterward, whenever he remembered Bertie, it was Bertie as he had been that precise moment in time, impeccably turned out, a cold smile on his face, satisfied to have at last ruined something wonderful for his bastard-born brother.
But the slim youth in the picture, his fine summer coat faded to rust, resembled no one's idea of a nemesis. His fair hair, ruthlessly parted and slicked back, would have looked gauche in more fashionable circles. His posture was not so much erect as rigid. The square placement of his feet and the hand thrust nonchalantly into the coat pocket meant to indicate great assurance. As it was, he looked like any other eighteen-year-old, trying to radiate a manly confidence he didn't possess.
Stuart frowned. How long had it been since he'd last looked at the photograph?
The answer came far more easily than he'd expected. Not since That Night. He'd last looked at it with her, who'd studied the image with a disturbing concentration.
Do you hate him? she'd asked, giving the photograph back to him.
Sometimes, he'd answered absently, distracted by the nearness of her blush-pink lips. She'd been all eyes and lips, eyes the color of a tropical ocean, lips as full and soft as feather pillows.
Then I don't like him either, she'd said, smiling oddly.
Do you know him? he'd asked, suddenly, and for absolutely no reason.
No, she'd shaken her head with a grave finality, her beautiful eyes once again sad. I don't know him at all.