His brother was staying at The White Hart, the second inn at which he inquired. Neil passed the innkeeper a coin as he opened the door of his brother's suite. His brother was inside, lying on the bed with a book in his hand. He sat up, squinted, and then, eyes widening, ripped off his reading glasses and stared.

Neil shut the door behind him.

"Neil," Richard said numbly.

Neil came forward and sat on a chair, his hands drooping between his knees. For a moment, he couldn't say anything. He had known exactly what he was going to say, but the words just wouldn't come out. It had been eight years. Even youth had never been kind to Richard, but now – his thick mop of dark hair was thinning, the curls lying limp over his brow. There were sagging, heavy lines around his eyes that hadn't been there before – lines that spoke of a world-weariness that went soul-deep. Since when had he needed glasses? Had the skin beneath his chin always drooped like that?

"Your looks haven't improved either," Richard said sourly, reading his expression.

Neil shook himself. "What happened to you?"

"I grew up." Richard scrutinized Neil. "Your hair went gray."

"Yours went thin."

"How did it turn gray? She said it had – she let much slip." Richard's lips twisted in the ever-familiar not-smile that Neil hated so much to see. So he hadn't changed – inside.

"She is my wife," Neil said coldly. "You will call her Mrs Armiger."

Richard began to massage his right knee, through his pant leg, frowning. "Didn't you think of us at all, when you married her?" he asked peevishly.

"No. I didn't."

"You should have." Richard looked up resentfully. "Haven't you the sense to realize that I'm hardly likely to find any woman at all to marry me – and that you're the last son father has? If our title goes to a cardsharp's daughter's son!"

"What a stain that will be on the snow-white annals of British nobility," Neil said dryly.

Richard flushed. "It's the look of the thing, Neil. For a man like you to marry so low, and through entrapment—"

"There was no entrapment," Neil interrupted. "I chose to marry her."

"Why?"

For a moment, Neil couldn't answer. He licked his lips, trying to think of why. If he knew – if he knew –

"Was it a reflex?" his brother asked acidly. "God knows when I saw her I considered – well I didn't consider marrying her, but I did consider other things. You don't have to marry girls to do that to them, you know."

"And you don't have to pay girls to do that to them, either," Neil parried. He was too used to his brother's keen tongue to rise to it, but he could see that had left a blow: Richard flushed. With a casual, scientific curiosity, Neil wondered if it was because Richard did pay women to sleep with him, or if it was because he didn't and was still a virgin. That any woman had willingly and freely slept with his brother was not something Neil could believe: Richard was too full of sharp edges to have ever known what it was to love, even if only for a night.

"I just wish you'd thought about it," Richard said bitterly. "Your children with this woman will carry on our name and title. And look at her father!"

Neil pressed his lips together tightly. He didn't care about the family name or title. He hadn't cared about them for a long time.

"Why don't you marry Lady Brocket," he said bitterly. "Go and have a thousand children with her. I don't care. But leave off my wife. I came here to tell you that. I came here to tell you that you're an absolute cad for coming up with this plan, and that even if you see it through, I'll marry her again as soon as she's twenty-one. So you needn't bother with it. Cad."

Richard made the funny, stuttering noise that he thought was a laugh but wasn't. He swung his legs clumsily over the edge of the bed and leaned forward so he could look Neil properly in the eyes. "If I were you, and in love with that beautiful woman, I'd call me more than a cad for it. Here I was, lying here, imagining all the names you might be calling me, and you call me a cad. Well I am a cad. And a snake, and a bastard, and a mean, money-loving whore-monger. I'm all of those things, and to tell you the truth, I don't like the idea of it – anymore. I stopped liking the idea of it when I saw her. Pa said a woman like that could never play countess – but he doesn't know she's a queen misplaced – star-crossed, probably, sent down a river in a basket, left on a hill to be eaten by wolves. And it's a shame to make that queen a whore, and I wish I hadn't told Pa about her now, because he doesn't care who she is – he know she's not Lady Brocket and Lady Brocket is a hundred and fifty thousand pounds ready and willing to be poured into the family coffers. Pa won't give it up, even if I tell him you'll just marry her again next January. You know he won't. So there's nothing I can do about it anymore, except be the messenger. Don't shoot me, will you?"

But Neil wasn't listening. He was looking, fascinated, at the strange, never-before-seen light in his brother's eyes, and wondering what on earth had incited it. Richard had never been passionate. He was cold and bitter and practical.

"You have changed," Neil said wonderingly. "I didn't think you had, when I walked in, but you're different now. Rich, I know you never liked me, but surely you can see what a foul thing this is that you're doing?"

"I can."

"Then can't you stop it?"

Richard made again the sound he thought was laughter but never was. "No one on earth has ever stopped Lord Thomas Armiger, Earl of Albroke once he's decided on a course. You'll just have to let him trample down everything in his path – and rebuild it all when he's gone."

He was right, thought Neil. Their father had a bull-headed tenacity and an intolerance for opposition that had seen many in his path destroyed. Time and time again in his youth, Neil had come up against his father's uncompromising will. Time and time again, he had been beaten down under it. Only once, when he ran away to marry the Italian girl he loved, had he managed to truly oppose his father. And even then, he had never dared bring her back to England with him, to take up a life there. He had feared that only at a distance from his father could he control his own destiny.

His stomach twisted, wondering if maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't dare marry Verity for a second time – maybe his father was right.

Richard, seeing Neil's bitter expression, said, "Look, Neil, I'm sorry about this – I didn't realize what I was doing, when I suggested it to father – and now it's too late to undo it."

Some faint remnant of affection lit up in Neil's soul. There had been times, in his youth, when his older brother had tried to protect him from his father's rages. Blinded by nostalgia and some faint lingering childhood admiration, he didn't realize that there had been just as many times when his warped brother had directed his father's rage towards him. He gave Richard a bitter smile. "It was good to see you again. It was bad – but it was good."

*       *       *

After Neil left, Richard remained for some time unable to concentrate on his book. Eventually, he put it to the side and limped to the window to stare out over the darkness of the valley. Here and there lit windows broke the blackness, but most of the light came from the blanket of stars in the sky above. It was an alien and attractive view for a man who spent his tired days and wakeful nights in hectic, gassy London. There was silence out here. If he had a library, and a house, and a dog... perhaps even a wife...

But the woman of his dreams appeared to Richard that night as an elegant young thing of twenty, dark-haired, and fair-skinned, with a pair of fine green eyes full of withering scorn.

He pulled the curtains over the window, shutting out the silence. The country was a terrible place, he told himself. Nothing to do and no one interesting to talk to. That must have been why Neil had married Her. He had to do something, or die of boredom. Well, She was the something, and now, now, now...

Richard went back to the bed, lay down, and stared at the ceiling. Someone had, long ago, thrown something at it – a cricket ball, perhaps. There was a series of confusing round indentations in the plaster. It irritated Richard. He wished the innkeeper would cover it up.

But Richard was perpetually irritated by life, and at that moment in particular would have found cause for complaint in anything he set his eyes on. With nothing to set his eyes on but the ceiling, slowly, his irritation drew back to its source.

Neil.

The last time Richard had seen him, he had been a boy of twenty, still with those gangly boyish proportions, and a trace of pimples across his brow. Now he looked – old. Lined, with grey hair shot through the black. Something had aged him – something terrible.

Richard was peeved to find that there were mysteries about his brother, but not anguished to find that they were sorrowful ones. He read the sorrow clearly on his brother's face, and discarded it with a shrug of his shoulders. Sorrow happened. Richard had experienced it. And it passed, or it didn't pass, but it was nothing that could be conquered, only endured. Obviously, Neil had endured it passably well and was not dead of it. There was no point lingering on the matter. But it did make one curious.

And for Richard to be curious was to be mad with the obscured truth of the universe.

Analyzing his younger brother's reactions, bit by bit, trying to understand him, in the clinical, unemotional way Richard analyzed everything, he came to realize that Neil did not love Her. At first it was only a suspicion he treated with caution, for he was not without introspection, and he could see how convenient a balm it was for his jealousy. But slowly, the evidence mounted against Neil. He had not been angry enough. He had been so unruffled. He had called Richard a mere cad. Richard had intimated he was tempted to seduce his wife, and Neil had only tossed a bawdy taunt back at him.

No. Richard knew well what he called Neil's quiet mad streak. He had never stood any such taunts against the Italian girl he had married. That he could stand them now was evidence that whatever Neil felt for Her, it was not love. Respect, lust, certainly. Richard could even empathize with those. But not love.

"There's not much attaching him to Her," he mused to himself. "Once her charm wears off, he'd probably even prefer an annulment. I'll tell Pa..."

But he frowned at the deformed plaster ceiling. No. He would give his father no more ammunition. It was a foul thing. It wasn't what She – it wasn't honourable.

Richard was not without introspection, but at times, he was wont to cast it into his shadow, and look blindly into the sun.

Lot of italics this chapter. Thanks for all the reads and votes recently, guys <3 It means a lot to me.