Chapter Twenty-One
My dearest Fitz. I was greatly moved by your distress at my departure. Your dreadful attempts to cover it up with surliness at breakfast only make me love you even more.
PS You know how much I adore you when you growl.
DOBSON’S HALITOSIS HAD not improved during Rollo’s absence. Thanks to the hazardous wet road conditions, he suffered it at close quarters for an extra day.
Yet it mattered not, as Rollo believed himself the most fortunate man alive.
He had Rossingley, his papa, his adored Willoughby, and now he had his fabulous Fitz too.
Even if Fitz had woken with a thick head and pouted like a spoiled child whose nursemaid had refused him a twist of barley sugar.
The stupid thing was, Rollo didn’t care.
In fact, he positively relished Fitz’s mercurial moods.
As both a savage and a gentleman, Lyndon aroused Rollo on a deep, visceral level he didn’t fully comprehend.
But, by God, every single inch of him missed his lover already.
What were roughly three weeks apart when they had a whole lifetime to enjoy?
Rollo had already written to him thrice, and he hadn’t even reached home!
The only problem with nestling in the bosom of such a loving family was that Rollo never knew whose arms to fling himself into first. It all ended up being a bit of a jumble, with him throwing himself at Willoughby and squeezing until he could hardly draw breath, Kit swinging him around in a mad waltz, and finally, Papa enfolding him inside his familiar, warm embrace and hugging him tight, near suffocating him in swathes of slippery silk.
His homecoming would have been absolutely perfect if only he hadn’t had to leave Fitz behind.
“I’m so sorry, darling, for sending you away for such a long time,” crooned Papa. “Kit can confirm. I have been drenched in guilt from the moment you left.”
He stepped back, but only for half a second, so his glittery eyes could examine Rollo from head to toe as if checking he was, indeed, returned and in one piece. Then Papa clutched him to his chest once more. “Was Fitzsimmons so terribly beastly?”
Over Papa’s shoulder, Willoughby smirked and made an obscene gesture. Rollo suppressed a snigger. Goodness, how marvellous it was to be home.
“Terribly,” Rollo confirmed, winking at his twin. “On many occasions, the man was a veritable animal.” He pulled away from his father in order to expand his lungs. “But I have learned my lesson, Papa. I am returned healthy, older, and wiser.”
Letting out an enormous sigh, Papa fondled his pearls, beaming at Rollo as if he’d just laid a golden egg. Another suffocating embrace was brewing, Rollo could feel it. “Oh, my darling. Such a brave boy. And on your own all that time too.”
Willoughby snorted. “He’s nineteen, Papa. Even our Rolly can survive a few weeks being fed, watered, and entertained in an aristocrat’s Norfolk manor house. And surely, he wasn’t alone all the time, were you, Rolly?” He threw Rollo a leery look. “Surely Lord Lyndon gave you some of his attention.”
“Oh, you know. Dribs and drabs.”
Rollo attempted to look hard done by as Papa swept him up again.
If he played his hand well, he could milk this for several days.
Or at least until he plucked up the courage to admit to his father the extent of his relationship with the dastardly lord.
“He has a large library and gardens. And a particularly fine and airy nursery. It wasn’t so terrible. ”
*
DRESSED IN HIS oldest, comfiest nightshirt, Rollo sprawled across Willoughby’s bed with a happy sigh.
As much as he adored Papa and Kit and their undivided attention, the evening had seemed interminable.
He’d regaled them with tales of the dance, the Simpsons, a vivid description of his host’s beautiful gardens and a less complimentary description of the murky Norfolk Broads.
His love for Fitz and his imminent return to Goule he kept to himself.
He would wait for a few days, carefully erect the scaffolding of a man much changed from the feckless ogre Papa once knew, and then pick the perfect moment.
He could bore Willoughby with his heart’s desires though. That was what a twin brother was for, was it not?
“I’m so in love, Willoughby. I feel as if I’m a star shooting across the heavens and forever falling, falling, falling. Faster and faster. With no end to it!”
Willoughby rolled over to clutch his hand. “Then I am a star too, and we shall gladly cartwheel through the firmament together.”
Rollo raised an eyebrow. “Three is a crowd, Willoughby. As much as I adore you, if I’m to perform acrobatics through space at breakneck speed, then I’m somersaulting with Fitz.”
“Four of us shall plummet to earth,” Willoughby contradicted.
“Not three. In fact, I’ve a mind to compose a poem about it first thing in the morning.
I visited Stapleton again today, my second visit this week.
My sweet Lavinia receives my courtship warmly and matches my affections with her own.
I am of the opinion that Lord Stapleton is very much in favour. ”
“How marvellous,” responded Rollo neutrally. I’d wager they are. Fitz’s blunt appraisal of his twin’s situation played in Rollo’s ears. Shrewd observation or weary cynicism? Regardless, simply recalling his own lover’s lazy, deep baritone set his heart thumping.
“And does Papa approve of this match?”
For the first time since his return, Willoughby’s face fell. “Oh, he’s being awfully tedious about the whole thing. He says I’m too young, of course, to know my own heart. Naturally, I pointed out that he and Mama were betrothed at a similar age, yet he was having none of it.”
“But that was not a love match,” interjected Rollo. “They hardly knew each other. Neither had a lot of say in the matter, though Papa strove to be a good husband.”
“Well, Lavinia and I have been pals for yonks. Since we were infants, with never a cross word! We get on splendidly.”
“‘Getting on splendidly’ is hardly the same thing as a love match,” Rollo felt obliged to point out. “I get on splendidly with the old chap who delivers the coal.”
An occasional spat, such as the one he’d been embroiled in with Fitz prior to his departure, was a healthy sign of love, in Rollo’s opinion. Almost as health-affirming as the intimate reconciliation he planned on his return.
“A shared history of making perfume out of ground-up rose petals and toddling around the nursery together is not a formula for a love match either,” he pressed.
“It’s a form of love, certainly. But is it a love that sends you wheeling with the stars, your soul broken loose, galloping like a wild horse on the breeze? ”
Willoughby eyed him suspiciously. “You sound as if you’ve begun penning a few love poems of your own, Rolly.
Anyhow,” he continued, “I informed Papa that I am of a mind to make an offer for her soon, and he did his darndest to put me off. He says I should bide my time and have a season first, that there are many a tempting armful waiting for me in the ton.”
Willoughby fixed his blue gaze on Rollo, beseeching him. “What is your opinion on the matter?”
Rollo’s opinion was that Fitz and his father perhaps weren’t so very different after all, although his father seemed better versed in the art of diplomacy and approached the thorny problem from a different angle.
A vague unease settled in his stomach. The downfall of being a kind-hearted, generous chap such as Willoughby was that he assumed everyone else’s motives to be as pure as his own.
If what Fitz said about Lavinia’s spendthrift father was true, then whatever calf love his brother and Lavinia believed they entertained was not a recipe for a long, happy marriage.
“Willoughby,” he began carefully. “Answer me this: do your insides tremble when you picture Lavinia? Or when you visit her?”
Willoughby gave a shout of laughter. “Of course not, why on earth would they? She’s a girl, not an earthquake! And I don’t need to ever picture her. I’ve known her for so long I could draw her in my sleep.”
“But do you feel as if you could not live through another day without her by your side?” Every hour without Fitz felt like something lost that could never be remade.
“Hmm.” Willoughby thought for a second before a slow smile crept across his face. “I certainly don’t want to live through another night without her.”
Ah. Now Rollo was getting to the meat of it. In more ways than one.
“Do thoughts of her consume your every waking hour?” he queried. “Or just your lonely, night-time ones?”
Willoughby snorted. “Some of them. Except when I’m out riding with Kit or writing a poem. Oh, and playing whist, of course. Then, I concentrate hard, or Kit and Papa will fleece me for every sou.”
“I see.” Rollo gave a solemn nod. “Let me get this straight. You and Lavinia are great chums. You think of her mostly when you are alone, especially at night. But you don’t particularly miss her during the daytime when she is not by your side.
In fact, might I suggest that hours can go by when you don’t think of her at all? ”
“Yes, but”—Willoughby looked crestfallen—“now you are in love, too, you must understand. She is from an excellent family and has a sensible head upon her. She will make an excellent match.”
Rollo frowned. He didn’t recognise this picture of love his brother painted at all.
His dearest Fitz was difficult, blunt, exacting, and an absolute bloody curmudgeon when the mood struck him.
Yet he was the most certain thing Rollo had ever known.
Whereas Willoughby was describing an undoubtedly pretty, fun young woman with whom he could rub along.
And he was desperate to swive someone. Which wasn’t the same thing.
He composed his features into a stern expression. “Listen to me, Willoughby. According to Fitz, Lord Stapleton is not all he seems.”