Chapter Two
“Are you going to brood all evening, brother?”
Benedict started in his chair. “I am not brooding,” he rejected immediately.
Regarding him with a smirk, Harry raised a brow. “What would you call staring at nothing with a pensive expression?”
Before he could reply, their brother—younger than Harry but older than Benedict by some years—said, “I say, Harry, I do believe you are right. He is distinctly broody.” Charles grinned obnoxiously.
“It’s the adorably furrowed brow for me,” Harry said. “What is it for you, brother?”
“The pout. Definitely the pout.” Leaning forward, Charles flicked Benedict’s ear.
Jerking away, he pushed at his brother. “I was merely thinking.”
“Thinking?” Harry said. “Thinking requires such intense concentration? Colgrove, what say you?”
Their eldest brother, the Earl of Colgrove, flicked ash from his cigar. “Leave him be. Even if he is brooding.”
Scowling, Benedict crossed his arms over his chest and sank into his chair. Being the youngest by a fair margin meant he constantly bore the brunt of their japing.
His eldest siblings—the earl and their two sisters, the result of their father’s first marriage—were over a decade older than he, while the late earl’s second union had secured the spare in Harry and then two bonus sons in Charles and finally Benedict himself.
The gap between Benedict and Charles, though, was seven years.
He was very much the younger brother, and none of his siblings let him forget such.
In fact, as the earl had married Lady C when Benedict was but ten years of age, he was closer in age to some of his nieces and nephews than most of his brothers and sisters.
Now he and his brothers sat in the dining room, this dinner absent their sisters.
Margaret was awaiting the birth of her first grandchild at her son’s estate in the country, while Catherine was in France where her eldest daughter resided with her husband.
After they had dined, his brothers’ wives and his eldest niece had removed to the drawing room to allow the men their port and cigars.
Harry and Charles had immediately commenced their ribbing of him, while the earl puffed his cigar.
“So delightful you could visit us, Harry,” he said sourly. “Why are you even in London?” His brother managed one of the earldom’s larger estates and more often than not chose to stay there with his wife and children.
“Why is anyone in London?” Harry said grandly. “Family, fortune, frivolity.”
Charles snickered. The Earl continued to puff on his cigar.
“The real question is, why do you never leave London?” Harry countered.
Because El was here.
He blinked. The thought had been immediate, jerking through his mind, but El wasn’t the only reason. He had others. He… The Earl was here, and Lady C. His nieces and nephews. Other friends and acquaintances. It was not solely El.
Also, it was not like he never left London.
When he was one and twenty, he’d toured the Continent, spending months away.
And yes, perhaps he’d missed El, and had impatiently awaited her frequent letters, and perhaps she was the first person he had visited upon his return, but that didn’t mean he fashioned his life around her.
The fact he could not remember the last time he’d left London for any great length of time without El also being absent was of no significance.
“Seeing as you never leave London,” Harry continued. “When will you set up your own household? You cannot leech off our brother forever.”
Benedict scowled at his brother. He knew he should take rooms, but when he’d taken rooms previously, he’d ended up back at Colgrove House more often then not. His rooms had been too silent, he’d missed the constant chatter of his brother’s house, and he’d missed his nieces and nephews.
At thirteen and ten, Maria and Edward would bicker incessantly, often attempting to rope him in to their arguing.
His eldest nephew, George, took himself ever so seriously, with his artlessly tousled curls and deceptively simplistic garb, as if he had not spent hours to make himself appear so careless.
Peter was at Eton, though he would visit at the end of term, but five-year-old Gregory shadowed Benedict’s every step, talking his ear off and tugging him into his adventures.
Lady C and Amanda constantly discussed the latter’s upcoming season, strategising and scheming which was entertainment in and of itself, and he supposed he did not much mind conversing with the Earl at breakfast and in his study after dinner.
He’d had none of that when he resided elsewhere, and he found himself longing for the chaos a family created.
“I could take a house, but it seems excessive when it is only me,” he said to Harry. “Neither of you took a house before you were wed.”
An unholy gleam lit Harry’s eyes. “That is another question. When are you going to wed, Benedict?”
The Earl’s gaze swung to Benedict. Abruptly, his collar felt too tight. He resisted the urge to tug at it.
“We three have done our duty to the family before we turned five and twenty,” Harry continued. “Here you are almost forty—”
“I am nine and twenty, Harry.” For another month only, not that Harry knew or cared. “I should like to know how you believe I am somehow of a sudden two years your elder.”
Harry waved his hand. “You are old, and getting older, and you are yet unmarried. What if you can no longer function as a man due to your dotage?”
“I can assure you, it is not a concern,” he said.
Charles groaned. “Leave off, Harry.”
“How would you know?” Harry persisted, ignoring Charles. “You have not ever tried to get a wife with child.”
The Earl choked on his cigar. “I should hope not, seeing as he has no wife of his own,” he spluttered. “We do not need the scandal of our brother impregnating someone else’s wife.”
“Of the six of us, you alone remain unwed. Why is that?” Harry’s gaze sharpened. “It’s that girl, isn’t it? The one you are always around. Why don’t you just wed her?”
Charles shot Harry a sour look. “We have known Lady Eleanor since she was practically an infant. You cannot claim you do not know her name.”
Harry shrugged, but Benedict heard little of his response.
Everything in him had frozen and all he could think on was El.
El as his bride, pretending modesty as she walked down the aisle only to grin at him as he took her hand.
El as his wife, her stockinged feet in his lap as she read a book in their library.
El in their bed, her head thrown back and her hands tangled in his hair as he pleasured her.
El holding their child, humming softly as she rocked the baby to sleep.
He shook himself, thrusting those thoughts aside. El was his friend only. His friend who would never marry.
His friend who had announced she wished to take a lover.
“You would do well to take her to wife,” Harry was saying. “She is not unpleasant to look at and she comes with a substantial dowry.”
Spine snapping straight, he clenched his fists. “I would never marry Eleanor for her fortune.”
“But you would marry someone else for theirs?” His brother smiled thinly. “There is no shame in it, little brother. Indeed, Colgrove would welcome an increase in the family coffers.”
Charles’s breath exploded in exasperation while the Earl said nothing, merely smoked his cigar while he regarded Benedict thoughtfully.
He was saved from snapping at Harry as a whirlwind in the form of a boy rushed into the room. “Uncle Benedict!” the whirlwind shouted and launched himself.
Benedict was smothered in boy, his chair rocking back with the force of his nephew’s leap. “Gregory, why are you not abed?” he asked once he managed to right both boy and chair.
The Earl’s gaze moved between Benedict and his son. “I too wish to hear this answer.”
Gregory did not even glance at his father. “You did not read me my story,” he said to Benedict.
“I think you’ll find I did read you a story, and I listened to your battle plan for your soldiers conquering Mount Colgrove, and also how Maria and Edward are plotting against you.”
“They are plotting against me.”
“Again, Gregory, we are awaiting your explanation for why you are not abed,” the earl said mildly.
His nephew finally glanced at his father. “Because Uncle Benedict did not read me a story.”
Harry watched them avidly, no doubt champing to return to his ribbing. Like a flash of lightening, a solution came to him. “I cannot read you a story, Gregory. I am promised to the club.”
“Convenient,” Harry muttered.
Benedict ignored him. “In fact, I am about to leave now.” Perhaps he was fleeing, but it was one of his few defences against his brothers.
“Can I come?” Gregory said, his lower lip sticking out.
Looking down into his nephew’s sweet face, his heart clenched. “Not yet, I’m afraid. You need to be a little bit older.”
“When?” he demanded.
“Leave Uncle Benedict alone, Gregory.” The Earl took his son despite Gregory’s protests. “Come, we will deliver you back to the nursery, but first we will walk your uncle out.”
Getting to his feet, he disregarded the look Harry shot him and the salute Charles gave him as he followed the earl and Gregory out the dining room.
“You are still unable to find rooms?” the Earl said as they traversed the corridor.
Benedict kept his gaze straight ahead so his brother could not see how his face heated. “Yes.”
“It has been how long now?”
He shrugged. He could not tell his brother he had only half-heartedly undertaken the search.
“If you cannot find rooms, perhaps instead you can take the townhouse on Lowell Street. The tenants have recently departed and there is no reason for it to sit empty when you have need.”
“It is as I said to Harry. It seems excessive to take a whole house when it will be just me, and it is too generous besides.”