“Clearly.”
Bram paced in a slow circle, swinging his arms in frustration. This was brilliant. Just exactly what he needed to hear right now—that atop betraying Sir Lewis, deflowering Susanna, and contributing to the village’s destruction tonight, he was somehow failing Colin, too. This was why he needed to return to his regiment. In the army, he had a routine, a drill book, marching orders. There, he always knew what to do. If he never resumed his command, this would be his life, it seemed. A string of disappointments and failures.
The futility of it all incited him to unreasoned anger.
Colin scratched behind his ear. “Just think, and all those years growing up alone, I thought I was missing out on something.”
“Guess you learned your lesson there.”
“What does either of us know about family, anyhow?”
“I know something about it,” Bram returned. “I know we’re doing it wrong. I don’t respect you. You don’t respect me. We’ve only been at each other’s throats this whole time.”
“You’re such a principled, arrogant ass. If you respected me, I’d have your sanity challenged. And so far as filial affection is concerned . . .” Colin gestured angrily toward the spot where the Bright twins had grappled. “It seems clawing at one another’s throats is the standard practice.”
“Well, in that case.” With his left hand, Bram grabbed Colin by the shirtfront. His right fist made an impulsive swing at his cousin’s jaw. He checked the strength of the blow somewhat, but it still landed with enough force to send Colin’s head whipping left. “That’s for Miss Highwood.” He drove a halfhearted, joyless punch into his cousin’s gut. “And that’s for . . . for fun.”
He waited, breathing hard, holding his cousin by the collar and bracing himself for retaliation. Longing for it, truly. Bram knew he had blows coming to him—for Susanna, for Sir Lewis, for everything. The impact could only come as a relief.
But his cousin wouldn’t do him even that favor. He simply touched his tongue to his bruised lip and said, “I’ll be off in the morning, Bram. I’d let you be rid of me sooner, but I don’t travel at night.”
“Oh no, you don’t.” Bram gave him a shake.
Damn it, what was he going to do with this man? If he left here, nothing good could come of it. Of him. As a young, unattached, soon-to-be-wealthy peer, Colin had no checks on his behavior. Since a tragically young age, he’d been lacking both a father’s example and a mother’s understanding.
Susanna, he thought with a bittersweet twinge, would probably argue Colin needed a hug.
Well, Bram didn’t know how to offer his cousin any of those things—not with a straight face, at any rate. But he knew how to be an officer, and experience had taught him that duty and discipline could patch a good many holes in a man’s life.
He might be the only person in the world who could offer Colin this: the chance to rise to expectations, rather than sink to them.
“You’re not leaving,” he told him. “Not now, and not tomorrow, either.” He released his cousin, then gestured at the scene of destruction and chaos. “You broke this, and you’re damned well going to mend it.”
Spindle Cove was falling to pieces.
Once she’d seen that Diana was safely upstairs and resting in her bed, Susanna descended to the drawing room of the Queen’s Ruby. There she found her whole world breaking apart. Complaints and confessions detonated in every corner of the room.
“Oh Lord. Oh Lord,” a voice pitched above frantic flapping. A gull’s wing couldn’t have worked harder than that fan. “I feel an attack of nerves coming on.”
“I can’t believe I drank whiskey,” mourned another. “And danced with a fisherman. If my uncle hears of this, I’ll be called home in such disgrace.”
“Perhaps I ought to go upstairs. Start packing my things now.”
And then came the observation that froze Susanna’s blood.
“Miss Finch, what’s happened to your gown? The buttons are all askew. And look at your hair.”
“I . . .” Susanna strove to keep calm. “I suppose I dressed too hurriedly tonight.”
“But it wasn’t like that at Summerfield,” Violet Winterbottom said. “And I thought for certain you would have arrived in the village long before me—I was forced to rest for so long—but you didn’t. Did you meet with some accident on the way?”
“Something like that.” As she melted into a nearby chair, Susanna’s conscience stabbed at her. Then she knew the piercing quality of Kate Taylor’s curious gaze. Then Minerva’s.
They all turned to her, every lady in the room. Staring. Noticing. Then wondering.