“What have you been doing with yourself? Why haven’t you said anything? By God, if you’d only known how I have suffered these last years. I’ve been telling myself that I sentenced you to death.”
Edward’s hands twitched. How James had suffered? His brother sat across from him, whole and hearty. His suffering had involved neither missing meals nor cowering under military bombardments. He’d not been kept in a basement, hadn’t had everything taken from him in one long, unending nightmare. He was sleek and handsome, a version of Edward who hadn’t walked through hell.
“I’m sorry,” Edward said dryly, “for any discomfort I caused you.”
“Yes.” James frowned. “And it’s not over yet, is it? This is damned inconvenient.”
Personally, Edward would have found it more inconvenient to be dead. But he could hardly begrudge his younger brother his point of view. “Do say why.”
“This will be the most immense scandal.” James looked at the desk, drew a deep breath. “You’ll want the title, then. That’s why you’ve come.” His hands clenched in his lap, as if he were preparing himself for a fight.
Ah, yes. Another thing James had that Edward lacked: the illusion that this family had some semblance of honor. Edward could remember believing that. Barely.
“If I had wanted to be Claridge,” Edward said, “I’d have returned the day I heard of Father’s death. No, James. Keep the title. It’s yours.”
James frowned, as if he could not believe his ears. No doubt he couldn’t conceive of a world in which a man walked away from a viscountcy. “Speaking of the city, how did you ever survive?”
There were a great many things his brother might have meant by that question. How did you get on after Father left you stranded? Or, perhaps: Did you by any chance go to the British Consul before the siege started?
How had he survived? He’d survived any way he could.
But he simply smiled at his brother. “I survived by luck,” Edward told him. “When I had it.”
James’s eyes widened. “Was it bad?”
“No,” Edward lied. “But only because I learned to be worse in response. Trust me, James. I’m no longer fit company. I know who Viscount Claridge is supposed to be. I had enough lectures on the meaning of our family honor to recall that. I can’t be him.”
He’d had enough of people making him into someone else, and the boy who had grown up in this house might as well stay dead, for all the use he’d been.
“You, on the other hand,” he finished smoothly, “can. You will.”
James blinked, taken aback, but seemed to take this as simple truth. He seemed, even, to think that Edward had given him a compliment. He nodded, looking faintly relieved to discover that his entire world was not going to be upended.
God, James was so simple to read. Relief was evident first in the slump of his shoulders. That was followed by an intake of breath and a narrowing of his eyes. He looked at Edward in sudden suspicion. He was no doubt wondering why his brother had returned from the dead after all these years if not to claim the title. Soon enough, James would realize this was a negotiation, not a reunion.
“You need an allowance, then.” James sounded resigned.
“God, no.” Ongoing blackmail was never his preference. There were too many opportunities to get caught. Edward thought of the file underneath his fingertips. “There’s only one thing I want from you.”
James leaned forward. “Well?”
Edward flattened his hand on the newspaper clippings. “You’re going to leave off whatever it is you’re plotting to do to Stephen Shaughnessy.”
James let out a long, slow breath. He reached up and rubbed his forehead. “I see.”
“Your word that you won’t hurt him, directly or indirectly. That’s all I want; give me that, and I’ll let you live out your life in peace.”
“I see,” James repeated more sharply. “It was his fault you were sent away in the first place, or have you forgotten? But that’s how it is. You’ve been alive these last seven years. In all that time, you’ve sent not one note to your own brother, not one word indicating that you were alive. But I can see you’ve spoken with Shaughnessy. Regularly enough to know that his little brother has landed himself in water too hot for his taste. That does rather clarify matters.”
“You left me to die,” Edward heard himself snap out. “You can hardly complain because I chose to gratify your desires.”
James paled. “I didn’t,” he said too swiftly. “You must know I didn’t. What I told the British Consul… It was true, in a sense.”