Chapter 6 #2
A strange shadow crossed Micha’s face, his lips twisting cynically. But whatever had inspired the thought, he did not utter it. “Well.” He shrugged. “I’m not clever, I’m not learned, I’m not rich, I’m not anything, really. No wonder he tired of me.”
Once, when Thomas was quite young, he had been walking with Edward somewhere in the lands beyond Montrose, past the ordered loveliness of its widely admired gardens.
Edward’s idea, he seemed to recall. There had been wild lavender tangled among the hedgerows, and then a storm of sunshine-yellow butterflies.
One had alighted, in the confusion, on Thomas’s nose.
“It has mistaken you for a flower,” Edward had said, laughing.
And Thomas had stood there, barely daring to breathe, afraid for the transience of the moment, yet knowing the transience was part of it.
He felt rather like that now. “Any man would be honoured to have your friendship.”
“Right.”
Thomas was learning to hate that word. Never had he heard it imbued with such utter scepticism and such utter despair.
He leaned across the table, trying to catch Micha’s eye, though Micha was rather practised at looking anywhere but at Thomas except when he chose.
“You have a . . . lustre,” he said, earnestly.
“A what?”
“I don’t know. Something remarkable. It draws the eye and fixes the attention, as though you bring light to a room just by being in it.
” Micha’s expression had grown, if possible, even more scornful, so Thomas went on, in a more playful tone: “And, besides, there is more to merit than wealth and more to cleverness than being able to play chess.”
Micha’s whole cuff had practically unravelled, and he was still not looking at Thomas. “Rubbish,” he muttered. “Also, between having merit and having money, I’d rather have money.”
“Surely merit can readily produce money.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Micha glanced up, frowning, a flash of anger in his eyes as though Thomas had somehow tricked him into confidences against his will.
Thomas was, however, tolerably accustomed to this too and quickly sought for a way to turn the conversation to something frivolous.
As much as he pretended not to, Micha seemed to genuinely enjoy it when Thomas amused him.
And that dreamy, shyly tender mouth of his seemed made more naturally for laughter than for scowls and sneers.
“So much for merit then. And you said yourself that chess was a stupid game.”
“It is. Who rides their horses in an L shape?”
“For . . . flanking?”
“And why do bishops barge up and down, diagonally, always stuck on their starting colour?”
“Ah, now that, I think you must agree, is a startlingly accurate portrayal of an English bishop in action.”
Micha raised his eyes slowly, and the corners of his lips twitched as though he was trying to suppress a smile.
And Thomas gazed at him, smiling too, enchanted. “You can laugh,” he whispered. “I won’t tell a soul.”
“I’m not giving you the satisfaction.” But Micha’s face betrayed him. He smiled with everything except his mouth. “You’ve already won at chess. Twice. What more can you want?”
“I think . . . I think I’d like this better.”
“All the more reason not to give it to you.”
“‘And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.’”
Micha spluttered, his expression a wonderful tangle of surprise, amusement, and outrage.
For someone who hid behind scowls and indifference, he could be very animated when caught unawares.
“You said that when . . . when you found me. The way you use scripture, I sometimes think”—he drew in a slow breath—“that beneath your facade of virtue you might be a very wicked man.”
“I sometimes think,” returned Thomas, “that beneath your facade of wickedness, you are a good one.”
Micha pulled back, and the moment shattered like a mirror. “I wouldn’t count on it.”
There was what Thomas thought must have been a mutually bewildered silence, and then the door burst open, and George came striding in.
He looked better than he had the last time Thomas had seen him, though not by much and, once again, travel-stained.
Stripping off his overcoat and tossing his hat aside, he threw himself down in a nearby chair.
“Please.” Thomas smiled. “Don’t stand on ceremony on our account.”
George cast a disparaging glance in Micha’s direction and then said to Thomas, “I see he’s still here.”
Thomas fully expected Micha to come back with something cutting, but when he tried to catch his eye, Micha was staring fixedly at his hands.
What Thomas could read of his expression, which was little, suggested some scalding combination of fury and mortification, and seared him as painfully as if he had been the subject of George’s discourtesy.
“He’s my guest. And,” he went on, striving for a way to resolve the tension peaceably, “he’s sitting right there, fully able to witness your abominable manners. ”
George still refused to acknowledge Micha, and Micha still refused to show any sign of being alive—it was, in short, a rather awkward situation all round.
Thomas knew George was best confronted directly.
His heart was stubborn, though, Thomas believed, generous in its way.
And it was not like Micha to be cowed by mere bluster.
But perhaps it was difficult to be reminded of dependency.
Like most things too fiercely protected, Micha’s pride was a fragile thing.
“You don’t know anything about him,” George was saying, at his most blustersome. “Who is he? Where has he come from? Rather convenient for him, isn’t it, being able to latch on to you?”
And, again, Micha was uncharacteristically silent, though his eyes were burning coals beneath the shadow of his lashes.
“His name,” said Thomas, as patiently as he could, “as I have told you, is Michael Dashwood. He is a gentleman who has fallen upon hard times, and he is my guest here while he recovers. That is no concern of yours. I only ask that you treat him as you would anyone else—with respect.”
“Respect?” repeated George, turning the word into something more exclamation than question.
“Yes, respect. It is not easy for any man, let alone a proud one, to accept aid from a stranger. Mr. Dashwood has been gracious enough to allow me to help him, and I am grateful.”
Micha cleared his throat. There was a feverish flush standing out upon the jutting bones of his still-gaunt face and, as familiar as Thomas had grown with his humour and expressions, this was the first time he had seen him in something like real distress.
“Don’t pretend I’m better than I am,” he whispered, so softly that Thomas barely caught the words at all.
But before he had a chance to answer him as he might have wished, George had swung himself to his feet and Thomas’s attention was distracted.
His brother had that sullen, resentful look Thomas had always disliked and was beginning to witness far too often.
“And if I don’t meet your exacting standards of civil behaviour? What then?”
Thomas stifled a sigh and also stood. He was, by disposition, self-effacing, but birth had made him a brother before life had made him a priest, and nothing in this world or the next would induce him to sit still and uncomplaining while George loomed over him and acted the bully.
The worst thing to do when George was in one of his moods was yield.
“Are you trying to start a fight with me in the drawing room? What nonsense.”
George swaggered a step closer. He had strength, but Thomas was taller, something he suspected had always annoyed George, who put great store in the scant handful of minutes between them as though, in being older, it was his right to be bigger too.
Up close, Thomas could see the fine lines that had gathered at the corners of his brother’s eyes and the deep shadows beneath.
“I doubt you still have it in you,” sneered George.
Thomas was deeply conscious of the ludicrous picture they must have presented to a stranger. Grown men acting like children. But he could not back down. Not in the face of Micha’s stifled silence. “Then try me.”
George laughed, the harsh sound reminding Thomas unexpectedly of Micha. “Is that what you preach on Sundays? Brotherly love.”
“The Bible says honour thy mother and thy father. Not thy brother when he is being a . . .” Thomas cast an uncertain glance at Micha, his tongue tripping slightly over a word he had never found occasion to utter aloud: “. . . a prick.”
“Oh, a hit,” returned George, with a theatrical stagger, “a palpable hit. Is that the best you can do?”
Thomas’s patience, often believed to be unassailable, finally broke. “Why,” he said, with evident frustration, “are you trying to provoke me? If you want to strike me, then do it. If you don’t, sit down, be quiet, and try to be courteous.”
There was a long silence.
“You sound just like His Lordship,” muttered George.
And it seemed to Thomas, in those few fleeting moments, very likely that his brother would hit him.
It was something he would have preferred to avoid, but, all things considered, it was easily borne.
While Thomas could defend himself if necessary, he lacked the will—or perhaps the need—for violence that sometimes seemed to take hold of George.
His time in the army had hardened him, and his personal frustrations had few outlets while he lived beneath the marquess’s eye.
It had also been their preferred measure for solving disputes when they were young, and the marquess had encouraged it.
Usually it had been left to Edward to pull them apart before anyone got really hurt—though, in general, Thomas tended to receive the worst of it—but now it was Micha who suddenly interposed himself between them.