Chapter Thirteen #2
“People will always gossip about something,” he said.
“I cannot see anything wrong here. Alma performs her work excellently, and what she does in her free time is none of my business. I see no reason at all for anyone to express an opinion and so I will tell anyone who does. Unless you and Mrs. Thorpe have concerns? Which is to say, I, er, hope Perreau is behaving.” Or, at least, behaving as Alma wished, but Titus wasn’t discussing that with her father.
“I’ve no concerns for now. Thank you, Mr. Pilcrow. Thank you very much.” Mr. Thorpe’s shoulders relaxed suddenly. “She’s a wilful, headstrong young madam and the apple of our eye, and I just want her happy.”
“Of course.”
“And that young Frenchy seems a very decent fellow, even if he is a hop o’ my thumb.” Mr. Thorpe mimed Perreau’s short stature with a hand. “You know, sir, all round I’d say the Comte’s done this household a fair bit of good.”
It wasn’t quite You were right all along, but Titus took that as his meaning, and glowed. “Yes, I think so too.”
That encounter put him in a good frame of mind. He indulged in a second cup of tea in peaceful solitude, and was just reading the newspaper when Mr. Thorpe returned once more. “Excuse me, sir, but you have a visitor in the front room.”
Titus had made himself comprehensively Not At Home since the ghastly rout party. “I thought we weren’t admitting anyone.”
“No, sir. I felt you ought to see this gentleman.” Mr. Thorpe was looking at him meaningfully. Titus felt a rush of pure dread.
Henry had not liked Titus ending their relationship at the time, and he liked it even less now Titus was rich.
The letters Titus had opened had moved from joyous celebrations of the good fortune they would share, to complaints of his cruelty to a man whose only fault was loving him too much, to ranting threats about how he would regret his silence, interspersed with promises of forever that felt like threats.
If Henry had become sufficiently enraged by Titus’s silence to present himself in person—
Mr. Thorpe was waiting. Titus swallowed. “This gentleman. Is—is his name Henry Morris?”
“No, sir.”
Titus could have collapsed from relief. He was so overwhelmed by it that he almost missed Mr. Thorpe’s next words: “He gave the name of Mr. Vespasian Pilcrow.”
“What?”
“Vespasian Pilcrow, Mr. Pilcrow.”
Titus stared at him. Then he bolted for the parlour.
He arrived in a flurry, throwing the door open. A tall man was considering one of his favourite paintings. He turned at Titus’s entry.
“Ves,” Titus said, breathless, bewildered. “Ves?”
“Titus.” Vespasian looked older: of course he did. Older, thinner, somehow different. Titus wasn’t sure what it was in his face, but this was not quite the brother he’d known. “It’s been a long time.”
“Yes. Yes, it has,” Titus said numbly, and held out his hand. After a second’s hesitation, Vespasian took it and gripped it briefly. “Tea? Or sherry?”
“Sherry. Thank you. I hope you’re well?”
At that polite, routine query, something inside Titus snapped. “Well? Yes, I’m well. I’ve been very well over the last, oh, six years in which I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you and my letters were returned, and— What happened?”
Vespasian grimaced. “The short answer is, I needed a new start. A new life. Could we sit down?”
Titus ignored that. “A new life, without me in it?”
“It wasn’t you. It was Augustus, and Father beyond him, and thirty wasted years as understudy to a part I didn’t want. Ten of those labouring for Uncle James in his miserable pettifogging practice. I couldn’t bear the family any longer.”
“Including me,” Titus reiterated, the hurt throbbing through him.
“Yes, because you were part of the family! An obedient part who didn’t object to his role. If I was to get away, I had to get away from all of it—not just Father and Augustus, but even myself. I needed to clear my head of it all.”
“And that took six years?”
“No. No, it didn’t, but … well, time passed faster than I realised, and…
” Vespasian tried a smile. “It’s all very well to make a dramatic exit, but one does feel rather awkward when one wants to enter again.
The truth is, I walked out of your life when I walked out of the family, and by the time I was ready to return, I couldn’t find a way. ”
“My shop door was open between ten and five, six days a week,” Titus said furiously. “Red Lion Street. I didn’t move.”
“I know that. And I also know how it looks that I have come back now. To be honest, when I saw your good fortune in the news sheets, I vowed I would never see you again.”
“What?”
“Oh, come,” Vespasian said hotly. “To turn up on your doorstep and find myself side by side with Augustus expecting tribute—I suppose he has lost no time in demanding a share of your wealth? I didn’t want to do the same. I didn’t want you to assume the worst.”
“I would not,” Titus said. “Of course I would not.”
Vespasian’s set shoulders dropped slightly.
“No, I know. When your man tracked me down—after asking some damned impertinent questions, I may say—he told me that you hoped I would get in touch; that you missed me; that I need not fear you thinking me a purse-hunter. And I thought, if you had sent him for me—”
Titus had been trying to interrupt for several seconds. “Wait!” he almost shouted. “Wait. What? My man?”
“Your fellow who found me. Well, he said he was from you,” he added, at Titus’s doubtless dumbfounded expression. “No? Short fellow, French? Count Something?”
“The Comte de La Motte?”
“That’s it. God alone knows how he found me: I have not gone by Vespasian Pilcrow in years.
Do the French have Bow Street Runners? Anyway, he said you would welcome a visit from a brother, though not a would-be pensioner.
And I am not that, so I came. But if you feel it is an imposition, or you doubt my motives, or simply don’t care to renew our acquaintance—”
“It isn’t an imposition,” Titus said hoarsely. “I did tell Nico you would not come for money, and I do very much want to see you and find out what you have been doing. Please don’t go. Sit down. Sherry,” he added, and fumbled for glasses.
A smile spread over Vespasian’s face—and that was what was different, Titus realised; these days he looked like a man who smiled a lot.
“It’s good to see you too. And I must know exactly how you have married a fortune because I will say, Titus, of all the men I might have expected to do such an extraordinary thing—”
“Oh, Lord, don’t. I know.”
Vespasian took a seat, and the sherry Titus held out. “All right, little brother. Tell me everything.”
Nico returned to the house at around six that evening. He went straight up to dress and came downstairs for dinner looking self-possessed, perfectly groomed, and entirely without embarrassment.
“Hello there,” Titus said.
“Bonsoir, mon ami. Has it been a good day?”
“An interesting one. I had a visitor.”
“Ah?”
“My brother Vespasian. Who said he came to see me because you went to see him.”
“… Ah.”
“What on earth? You went looking for him? You didn’t tell me you did that!” Titus yelped.
“I did not,” Nico admitted. “I didn’t wish to raise your hopes if I could not find him, and when I did, I wanted to know if there was anything of which I should warn you.
I was going to tell you about it tonight, but I take it he was more eager to see you than I knew.
” He examined Titus’s face a little warily.
“Did it go well? I hope I did not overstep?”
“Overstepping” didn’t even cover it. He had taken Titus’s casual, inebriated reminiscences of his long-lost brother, found him, and brought them back together, and done it all without a word of warning, let alone permission.
It was an act of breathtaking presumption. Titus didn’t think anyone had ever gone so ludicrously out of their way to make him happy.
He shook his head, speechless. Nico’s brows drew together. “If this is a problem, I shall—”
“He’s not a problem,” Titus choked out. “He’s my brother and you found him for me. Nico—”
He opened his hands helplessly. Nico took a couple of quick steps over and grasped them, his warm fingers wrapping Titus’s palms. “Mon ami, it was my pleasure.”
Titus held on. He didn’t think, or hope—but he could have this, the touch of Nico’s hands, the evidence that he truly cared for Titus, if only as a friend. The closeness and those glorious eyes looking up at his, and if he just bent his head now …
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Nico let go and stepped back. Titus barely had time to feel the shock of rejection before the door opened for a footman he hadn’t even heard coming.
“Ah, merveilleux, we eat,” Nico said with smooth cheerfulness. “So now you must tell me all about the good Vespasian, or rather, Monsieur Valentine Harper.”
Titus pulled himself together as he took his seat. “Uh, yes indeed. He became an actor, just as he wanted. He hoped to be a comedian at first, he loves comic parts, but he says he has the looks for a villain—I think that’s rather unfair—so he has developed a good line in playing evildoers instead.”
“Villain parts often have a great deal of comedy to them,” Nico observed.
“That’s what Ves said. So he has done well, and if I were a theatregoer, I might have seen him on stage at any time.” And since he wasn’t, he might have gone on never knowing his brother lived in the same city, close by. “How on earth did you find him?”
Nico gave a pitch-perfect rendition of a casual shrug.
“You said he had dreamed of the stage. I was an actor once, and it is a profession of connections. You would have located a Vespasian Pilcrow easily enough, so I concluded he was using a new name, and it seemed unlikely that a man named Vespasian Pilcrow would become merely George Smith. Alors, to begin with, I put the word out for a tall man with a striking first name beginning with V, who had joined the profession around five years ago. I was fortunate, et voilà.”
“That’s utterly ridiculous. You are a marvel, Nico, and I can’t thank you enough.”
“You have thanked me too much: It was nothing. No, I assure you, a bagatelle. Tell me how he is.”
Titus had heard of people who pretended their hard work was effortless, but he wasn’t sure he’d met one before. No amount of gratitude had ever sufficed for Henry.
“He is married to a lady who makes theatrical costumes, and she is expecting a child in the autumn, so I shall be an uncle! Well, I am already, but I shall know this one. And he is—I was going to say just as he was, but actually he is much happier. He was so often angry before.”
Nico raised a brow. “It sounds as though he had reason.”
“He said he should have escaped the family a long time ago, but he could never quite stop hoping for Father’s recognition.
And when he died and left us nothing but his affectionate remembrance, Ves realised that if he ever could have mattered, it was too late now.
He needed to get away from all of it, of us, before it soured him entirely.
I understand that, although I wish he had not included me. ”
“No. That hardly seems fair.”
“But it was probably necessary,” Titus said. “As the second son, he always had the possibility of Father’s attention dangling in front of him, like a carrot. At least I never hoped Father might notice me: I always knew he wouldn’t.”
“Your father—” Nico said, and visibly stopped himself.
“Ves said Father should have just hired child actors for the roles of Younger Sons: It would have been cheaper and easier. That felt … Anyway, I quite understand why he had to make a clean break, but I am very glad we have met again. I am to go to dinner with him and his wife soon. And he made me promise I would not try to reunite him with Augustus.”
Nico blinked. “Did you intend to?”
“It hadn’t crossed my mind, but it’s the kind of thing one might do in my position, I suppose.
Except I don’t greatly want to see Augustus either.
I daresay I will have to at some point, so it is best that I know Ves’s wishes, though I hope Augustus never finds out.
The important thing is that I have Vespasian back, and I realise I have thanked you, but really, Nico, that you thought to do that for me—it means everything. ”
Nico smiled. It wasn’t his usual shining confident smile, but something a little more hesitant, quieter, and it squeezed all the breath from Titus’s chest. “I am glad you are happy, and pleased I could do you some good, mon ami. You have been very good to me.”
Titus didn’t know how to reply, except by saying things he had no right to say. He extended his wine glass wordlessly instead, and Nico reached out with his, and the two crystals met with the lightest chime, the sound of a fleeting kiss.