Chapter 17 #2
Since neither of those options was particularly desirable, he went to Hugh’s club.
His feet had carried him more than halfway there before he wondered when, exactly, he had become someone who turned to his family for company. Hugh was the least objectionable of the group, and he had proven useful lately. But still. Who had Ezra become? Hugh was still a Lightholder.
Despite these—very reasonable, he reminded himself—misgivings, as soon as Ezra arrived at the club, he asked whether his cousin was present and was almost relieved to get an affirmative answer.
One of the well-dressed footmen who lined the club showed him to a private upstairs parlor, where he found Hugh alone, sipping a drink and reading a book.
“What are you doing here?” Hugh asked, casting aside the book immediately in a way that was a contrast to his unwelcoming words.
“What are you doing here?” Ezra countered, oddly soothed by Hugh’s peevishness. “Didn’t you get someone else to run this place so that you didn’t have to be here all the time?”
“I still come by from time to time,” Hugh said gruffly when Ezra just arched an eyebrow at him.
“Which I take to mean that your wife is otherwise occupied this evening?” Ezra ventured, helping himself to a glass of scotch from Hugh’s well-stocked shelf.
When he turned back, Hugh was scowling even harder.
“She might be,” he admitted. “She and Kitty are up to something. I don’t know. I very specifically did not ask.”
Ezra tried not to twitch at the mention of his cousin, Catherine. That was the thing about the damned Lightholders: if you let yourself get pulled in by one, the next thing you knew, they all had their hooks in you.
He would just make sure that he was the exception to the rule. He could do that. He would just make sure this whole thing stopped with Hugh and Persephone.
“You do realize that if Persephone is out with Catherine, you could do everything that you’re doing right now from the comfort of your own home, right?” Ezra probed, just to be contrary.
Hugh snorted. “That just goes to show what you know. Do you have any idea how many children live in my house?”
Ezra did not, actually. There were the triplet nieces that Hugh and Persephone had taken in, and then they had…three children? Two? Four? Goodness, he really had not kept up.
“Six?” he ventured.
Hugh threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender, nearly spilling his drink.
“Who can say for certain?” Hugh asked. “The fact that it’s enough to lose count should tell you something, though.”
That was fair enough, Ezra decided. He could barely keep up with the one little girl who lived with him, and he suspected that Iris was probably more well-behaved than most children her age. Or maybe he was just partial to her.
“Besides,” Hugh said. “I like coming here sometimes. It’s where I met Persephone, you know.”
His gaze drifted over to a nearby chaise, a dreamy sort of smile on his face. Ezra wasn’t sure what was going on behind his cousin’s eyes, but he made a mental note to never, ever sit on that chaise.
“Your wife is a marvel,” Ezra observed dryly. “You do not expect to find a woman of her quality in a place like this.”
“It’s a bloody nice club,” Hugh grumbled.
Ezra talked over him. “Of course, she would have to be, to put up with those innumerable children you mentioned. And, more to the point, to put up with you.”
“You can insult me, or you can drink my liquor,” Hugh retorted. “You cannot do both.”
In response, Ezra took a long sip from his drink. Hugh copied him.
“Is your recent young acquisition causing you to flee from your own house?” Hugh asked, lounging in his seat. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you have been trying to distract me.”
Damn, Ezra was losing his touch. Or maybe dealing with all those children had forced Hugh to grow cannier.
“No, Iris is marvelous,” Ezra said.
Hugh grinned wolfishly. “Oh, I see.”
“You don’t see anything,” Ezra said.
Hugh was undeterred. “It’s the governess.”
Ezra scowled his most profound scowl, but Hugh only laughed, visibly delighted.
“You know,” he said, “Persephone told me you would be back. I really need to learn to stop doubting her. I thought you could not possibly. What else could I tell you about some governess I had never met, even if she did work for Helen and Xander? I was certain that you were curious about Xander, and using the girl as a cover, but Persephone told me I was wrong.”
Ezra took another sip of his drink, and Hugh laughed even harder. Seriously, what was wrong with him? Had someone taken ink and scrawled all his thoughts on his forehead? His fingers itched to check, but he resisted on the grounds that it was insane.
“I was right,” Hugh crowed. “Persephone was, too, but I was right. You wanted to know about both of them.”
Ezra didn’t respond. Hugh’s amusement faded as he thought through the implications of this.
“You came here to meet with one of Uncle Ambrose’s old friends,” Hugh said carefully, as though he was putting the pieces together in real time. “As far as I know, that was before the governess. She was still working for Helen, then.”
“Her name is Letitia,” Ezra said peevishly, not even caring that this revealed more about his emotional state than he might have wished.
“I beg your pardon,” Hugh said, not sounding regretful at all.
He sounded as though he was laughing very much at Ezra.
The wretch. “Letitia, it is. Nice name.” He went back to his pontificating.
“Letitia had not yet come into your employ when you first came here, so it wasn’t about your little, ah, tendre then. ”
“Oh, go to hell, Hugh,” Ezra complained. “Don’t call it a tendre. God.”
Hugh gave him a mocking grin, and even though his cousin seemed determined to torment him, Ezra found that he was enjoying himself.
“I don’t know what else you want me to call it, if you’re coming around here probing for information about a woman that—again, let me remind you of this part—I have never met. That’s desperate, Ez.”
Ezra didn’t even chafe at the sound of the nickname. Maybe someone was poisoning him. That might explain his otherwise inexplicable turn toward appreciating his family.
“I regret coming here,” Ezra told the ceiling. “But I am here, so I am going to drink all of your good liquor. Please be advised.”
Hugh kept ignoring him. Stupid older cousins.
“So.” Hugh tapped at his knee. “You were seeking information about the Lightholders—or about Xander, at least. But you have gotten distracted.”
“Is it so strange that I might want to know about the family who all died before I ever got to know them properly?” Ezra asked peevishly.
He could not believe he was going to say this, but he did not actually care about what Hugh might reveal about their family history. His mind was all too full of Letitia.
“And forgive me for asking about the woman who is watching over the child in my charge,” he added.
He drank more of the scotch. He had meant what he said about consuming Hugh’s supply.
Maybe, if he drank enough, he would erase the memory of Letty’s soft mouth, or the way her breath hitched when he touched his tongue to hers.
Maybe he would forget, just for a little while, that she would be leaving him so soon that it felt like a mortal sin that he was spending the time remaining anywhere but with her.
“No,” Hugh said. “It’s not that.”
And Ezra… He could not bring himself to deny her. He could not keep her. He could not be with her for now, not when it would dismiss her wishes.
“No,” he agreed. “It’s not that.”
His tone made it clear that he didn’t wish to discuss it further.
Well, no, that wasn’t quite right either.
He did want to talk about it. He wanted to shout from the rooftops that she was incredible.
That he had met this woman, and she completely knocked him flat with how amazing she was.
That she was funny, clever, and argumentative.
That she loved Iris—that it was obvious, even if she had not said it out loud.
That she was protective of Sarah, that she was sincere at heart.
That she was secretive, and he was painfully eager to know her secrets.
But he could not do that without revealing that their relationship was more than that of employer and servant. And that was the one thing that Letitia wanted the most.
So, he didn’t say anything else.
“Drink as much as you want,” Hugh said, watching Ezra’s face closely. “Stay as long as you need. What is family for, after all?”