Jane was in her best parlour, plucking the petals from the roses her sister-in-law had cut and arranged that morning, when the butler brought the card in. She glanced at it, toyed with the idea of making Richard wait an hour or two, and then, because she was violently, tortuously bored, decided against it.

"Bring him in." She tossed the card on the table and gathered up the fallen petals in a pile next to them. Elise would make pot-pourri from them later, when she had recovered the offence of seeing them plucked.

Richard came in, thumping his stick dully against the carpet. He nodded at her, and sunk down in a chair without waiting to be invited.

"Well," said Jane. "I gather you're not here for the joy of my company." She didn't like the look on his face. He looked tired and faintly sad. She sat down on the chaise opposite him.

"I could be."

"You've not visited me in years, Rich. I've chased after you every now and then, but you've never once called upon me. I don't suppose my absence in recent months has made your heart grow fonder. You don't have one."

She was trying to goad him into some kind of energy, even if anger, but it wasn't working. He merely shrugged.

"He's not dead, is he?" she said hesitantly. She had heard that Neil had returned, miraculously, from France, but had not dared visit the Armiger estate and seek him. She had burned his letter of dismissal, balled it up and tossed it in the fire, without a backwards glance, but she could not forget it. She could have recited it, word for word, like a bible verse – old testament, and full of fire and brimstone and righteous wrath.

"No." Richard played idly with the pile of petals on the table beside him. "I'd like you to come with me to Albroke today. Stay for lunch. Talk with Neil."

"I cannot."

"Break your engagements. You have heard he is ill, no doubt, well, today he is not so bad that it will hurt him to have you visit. It might be the last time, Jane."

"Then I shall come to his funeral."

"Damn you!"

The explosion of anger surprised Jane. She had never before suspected Richard of loving his brother, even in that small amount normally taxed as due to blood relatives. But she had been crude.

She pursed her lips. "I'm sorry. I have told no one, and Neil, I am sure, has not, but when I last spoke with him we had an argument. I cannot come, for he has forbade me from his life."

"You?" Richard frowned. "I am sure he would not."

"He did." She offered no elaboration, though Richard looked questioningly at her. "Did you believe I would bring him joy, in his dying days? I won't. I shall only make him furious."

"Even that might be good for him. Fury is some kind of spirit, at the very least. But either way – you must come, no matter what he has said."

"But it does matter. I can assure you."

"It does not." Richard tapped his cane twice against his boot: an old habit that perpetually irritated her. "You know he is sick. Perhaps you do not know that he has lost his mind, and most of his memories with it. Some days he wakes and believes he is a twenty year old boy who must run away from home to Italy, where a woman waits for him. The other days, he knows well that he is not that boy, and that the woman is dead, but little else outside the first twenty years of his life, and these past few weeks. Your argument is of no consequence. He has forgotten it, along with most else of the past nine years."

She had not known. A faint shiver ran over her body, every muscle tensing and releasing in turn.

"He spoke of you fondly once or twice," Richard added. "I shouldn't have come if he hadn't asked about you."

Then he had forgotten, entirely. She did not believe he could ever have forgiven her. Even if it hadn't been for the letter, the look of utter despair he had given her as she left had convinced her that she had hurt him beyond any hope of redemption. Anger and loathing might have faded. Sorrow was indelible.

"Then I will come."

In the carriage on the way, Jane pressed Richard further of Neil's condition. The gossip had not escaped the county, but the Armiger household, including the well-paid if poorly respected servants, had kept a tight lid on the details. Rumours had abounded that Neil was stark, raving mad; that he was afflicted by the final stages of syphilis; that he had lost both his arms and legs in war; that he was quite dead, and it was all a plot of Lord Albroke's. Jane, who was less romantically minded than most, had suspected stomach cancer, the disease that had killed her husband, and was relieved it was not that, while horrified by the prospect that it might be incurable.

"We do not know if he will ever be truly sane again," Richard said, as they crunched up the gravel drive. "We do not know if he will live or die. One month ago it seemed certain that he would die a madman. He is stronger than that time, but sometimes he takes so badly that death seems imminent. And in the end, if he does not recover his mind, he might as well be dead."

On that pronouncement, they alighted from the carriage, and the butler, who was expecting them, opened the door.

"You must wait in the drawing room a moment," Richard said.

"You know I have no desire to meet your father," Jane said drily.

"I was not conspiring such a thing. I need only to make sure he is ready for you."

Jane was deposited in the drawing room, where she walked slowly back and forth, wondering at how little change twelve years had worked upon it. The chairs did not appear to have been moved, except to sweep the carpets. The little red-velvet chair that she had dug her quill-pen into as a child, and been forced to clumsily mend, was still in its place as always to the right of the fireplace. Maliciously, Jane picked at the threads. By the time she heard Richard's off-beat footstep in the corridor, she had the old hole uncovered, and horsehair was poking out from the gap. She stood, brushed her hands on her dress, and was serenely contemplating a garden landscape on the wall when he opened the door. The chair was expensive, and she had a feeling that what had made Richard laugh as a boy would exasperate him as an adult.

"Your mother did that one, didn't she?" Jane said airily. "Rather talented."

Richard glanced at it. "I suppose it's not bad. Come. He is ready."

She followed him up the stairs, and down the familiar hallways. Just being here, after so many years, with so little changed, was doing strange things to her heart. She surreptitiously dug a sharp nail into the flesh of another finger to control herself, but when she entered Neil's old room, and saw him, half-skeleton, wrapped up in his chair, even that could not keep her from gasping in shock.

"It is not very pleasing, I know," Neil said, with a wry smile. "Sit down."

"I'll leave you with him." Richard paused at the door. "Do be nice, Jane."

When Richard was gone, Jane found she did not know what to say. She was overcome by an overwhelming urge to cry: she, a woman who had not cried, but for crocodile tears, since she was seven years old.

"You can, if you must," Neil said gently, reading her thoughts, and the sparkle in her eyes. But it had been too many years. She felt the pressure build up hot and damp behind her eyes, in her throat, but had forgotten how to release it. She shook her head, and smiled instead.

"It's just that you look so... thin," she explained, reaching out a hand and taking his tentatively, half to reassure herself that it was not bone. "I'm sorry."

"I quite understand." His tone was pleasant, if tired. His eyes were crinkled slightly in fondness. He remembered nothing. He truly, miraculously, remembered nothing of their argument. "Apparently, we have been friends a little these past years. My last memory of you..." He frowned. For a moment, panic rose in her heart. But it was only a frown of confusion. "That summer was the best summer of my childhood. I never had so much fun. I've never been so happy – not that I can remember at least. And then you just – left. No one ever told me why."

"I don't suppose they would have." Here, in the old house, memories of that summer whispered around every corner. There had been so much joy here, and so much anger. "I can hardly remember myself – some argument with your father. I did try to stab him. I remember that." She pouted. "I missed."

"You did?" Neil said with interest. "Why? Tell me why. Let's talk of the past – it frightens me to think of the future."

She shrugged. "I can't really remember. I suppose he tried to discipline me – and I did hate being scolded. So I stabbed him – and I was so scared I fled the house."

It was not the entire truth. It was not even part of it. Neil looked disappointed and she wondered if he knew she was lying. But there were some things she could not explain to him – to anybody, except herself, in the very darkest hours of those awful nights she was alone. Richard, she was sure, knew about it. Perhaps his father had told him. But Neil? Neil was a different breed of man. He believed in honour too deeply to ever understand compromise – compromise of heart, compromise of soul, compromise of body. And Neil, dear, stupid fool, would sacrifice heart, and body, and soul without a backward glance, if he thought his honour was at stake.

"I think I remember—a little blood on his cheek. It wasn't much. You needn't have run."

"I thought I might have killed him. And once I got away, I realized I probably hadn't, and that seemed ever so much worse, so I didn't come back."

"But you don't remember what you argued about?"

Jane shrugged. "I always was a passionate little hell-cat – and your father's got a beastly temper, though he never hit me." No. Lord Albroke hadn't need to hit her. Not when he could stroke and kiss and pet her, and leave her begging for more. What a precocious little fool she had been. And how experienced and old and wise she had felt. Older and wiser, too, in the knowledge that both his sons had been half-way in love with her. She had felt so knowing, privately gloating over her secret liaisons with their father, while they clumsily tried to flirt. She'd always enjoyed believing she had power over men, taking it from them. But at eighteen she had been too young, or too stupid, to recognize when a man had power over her. Until at last the day had come when Lord Albroke had grown embarrassed by her infantile passion, and told her father that he was sending her away – a school, in the country, for a year or two, and then a sum of money. Her father, knowledgeable of the affair, and cognizant of how it might forward her prospects, agreed. There she was. To be disposed of. That was what had hurt the most in the end. Not her breaking heart, but her trampled pride. She had been his possession, not his lover.

"Are you alright?" asked Neil.

"It's just the way you look," she said softly, forcing her lip muscles to relax. "It's quite a shock."

"I'm sorry," he said sincerely, with his stodgy honour on full display. "Dying is ugly."

"It's living that ugly." She laughed. "We bleed and ooze and seep and sweat and cry and hate and fear and fight – living is ugly. But it's interesting. Death is boring, Neil. Don't do it."

He smiled. "But we must."

"Not when we are twenty-nine," she said firmly. "You're supposed to be a saint to die young – and you're no saint." She thought a moment. "I suppose I'll live to a hundred. It'll be very dull if there aren't interesting men around for most of it. So you must stay."

"I can't say I'm very interesting today," Neil protested. "You were always more interesting than I was. You make things interesting. What have you been up to?"

"Most of London's finest seasonal residents," Jane teased. "That reminds me - have you heard about Lady Fortescue's hat?" And then the past was gone, and there was nothing but gossip for an hour. Stupid, paltry, heartless gossip. Her tongue grew sharp, but never angry. She made him laugh, twice, and rejoiced in seeing the pinch of colour it brought to his cheeks.

The nurse came in, some hour later, and told them it was time for Jane to go, and Neil to receive his laudanum. Jane laughed as she left, and dared enough to kiss Neil's forehead in parting. The nurse cleared her throat, and Neil pushed her away with a frail, but firm hand.

"No flirting," he said. "Not with me."

"It's a sore trial, as you are so very handsome right now." But Jane restrained herself, and left, her heart humming with a strange and pleasant relief. Neil did not hate her. He had forgotten he had ever hated her.

In the hall downstairs, she ran into Lord Albroke. She looked him up and down, noting with embarrassment his thinning hair, his growing fatness, and his general unattractiveness. Oh, more than ten years had passed – but still! That she had ever believe she loved him! And that he had ever scorned her!

A touch of her old wickedness returned. She gave him a curtsy, with the faintest hint of a simper to it.

It was enough of a simper that he stopped in his tracks.

"We did not end well."

"No, My Lord, we did not." She looked contrite. When he laid a questioning hand on her arm, she did not revolt.

"This is a trying time for my family." He hesitated. There was guile in the hesitation, and she, a practised liar, saw it all too clearly and hid the amusement it gave her. "I should like to know that I can count upon an old friend."

"We can always count upon old friends." She stepped closer, until her face was bare inches from his. "Except for the unfortunates, who have only held slaves, and been masters. You can never count on an old slave." She put her hand to his face, where she had once stabbed him. "You have never in your life, My Lord, had more than a slave."

She trailed her hand down his face, down his collar, down his coat, to rest just above his heart.

"I should have stabbed you here," she said ruefully, and turned and walked away.

~~

A/N: I had to rewrite a lot of this chapter to get it right. Originally, Jane did tell Neil she was his father's mistress, and then I just thought even Jane would have more sense than that. But does anybody hate Jane a little less now? She at least is the only character who's come close to killing Neil's father. That's gotta count for something.