24. Brothers
brOTHERS
The very proper butler admitted Reginald at once, taking his hat without a word. Almost as though he had been expected.
Then the study door opened.
Harry, known to the world as the Duke of Malum, intimidated nearly everyone in his midst. Tall, dark, and severe, he possessed the sort of presence that left most English gentlemen shaking in their Hessians.
Harry had never frightened Reginald. The disappointment in his eyes this morning, however, came closer than anything else ever had.
“Tell me you weren’t about to turn these people out without warning.”
For a moment, Reginald nearly forgot about the debacle with Sedgewick.
HIs brother’s expression hardened.
“Of course I wouldn’t.” Reginald dragged a hand through his hair. “I’m not. Sedgewick, damn his eyes, acted too soon. But the fault is mine. I did not make myself clear enough.”
Harry studied him. “But now?”
“Now I make it right.”
And before Reginald could ask the question burning through him, his brother provided the answer with a frown. “Nell sent Miss Darling to see if I’d step in.”
Reginald went still. “She is here, then?”
“Nell?” Harry’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“No, Rose—Miss Darling.”
“Ah, yes. She’s upstairs with Melanie and the baby.”
Rose was here.
Reginald glanced toward the staircase.
And Harry noticed. Of course he did.
But he didn’t comment.
“You’re lucky I didn’t have to sail down the Thames to come after you,” he said instead.
“No.” Reginald looked toward the stairs again. “Of course not.”
“Join me in here.”
Reginald hesitated.
Rose was just steps away.
Still, Harry was already striding back into the study, intent on settling the matter of The Domus without delay.
Reginald nearly refused. Every part of him wanted to go after Rose.
But he couldn’t ask her to believe he meant to do right by her until he had first made things right with The Domus.
So he followed.
Harry crossed to the sideboard, poured two measures of brandy, and handed one over.
“What happened with Sedgewick?”
Reginald took the glass but did not drink. “The protections were written into the agreement. Stipends. Time to make other arrangements. No one turned out without warning.”
“And yet?”
“And yet Sedgewick acted as though they were minor inconveniences.” Reginald’s mouth tightened. “Which makes me wonder what the buyers will do once the place is theirs.”
Harry leaned one hip against the desk. “Due diligence becomes rather difficult from halfway across the world.”
“I see that now.”
Unfortunately, he’d been so eager to rid himself of The Domus that he had treated the contract as a guarantee, never stopping to ask who would be left to enforce it once he was gone.
Reginald stared into his glass.
The stipulations he’d written into that contract required both time and money. But no clause determined how compliance would be assured.
No doubt, once the ownership changed hands, the purchasers would satisfy their conditions as cheaply as possible. Delay what they could. Ignore what they could.
“I won’t complete this sale with men who consider its residents disposable.”
Harry’s expression shifted. Only slightly.
But Reginald saw the shift—and as the truth settled over him, he understood why.
The Domus worked because they all cared what happened to each other. Much like the crew on his ship.
That was what made it safe.
Reginald finally lifted the glass to his lips. “If I had not been so determined to wash my hands of the place, I might have understood that sooner.”
Harry held his gaze. “But you understand it now.”
There was no accusation in his brother’s voice. Not even a hint of anger.
Marriage and fatherhood really had changed his brother.
“I saw the plan,” Harry said. “For the record, I never doubted your intentions.”
Reginald’s jaw tightened. “I don’t trust the buyers. Nor Sedgewick. But I trust you.”
With this, at least.
Neither of them needed to say more. The distance between them had never vanished entirely, yet there was trust enough to put these people’s lives back in his brother’s hands.
Harry nodded. “I’ll see that you stipulations are enforced. You needn’t remain in London on account of The Domus.”
Harry had always known how to command, and if he promised to oversee the sale, he would.
His brother studied him, wondering perhaps why he was not already out the door. “If you go quickly, you can still catch the tide.”
But Reginald lifted his chin, unable to let go of an idea now that it had occurred to him. “You should take it back.”
Harry’s expression didn’t change, so Reginald pressed.
“It’s yours. You built it. Take it back.”
“No.”
“I can’t keep it. It’s a brothel.”
“I know what it is, Reg.”
Harry walked around his desk, but instead of sitting, placed his palms on the gleaming wood, staring down at nothing.
“Our father hated women,” he said.
Reginald gave him a flat look. “He hated everyone.”
“Not like he hated women,” Harry said.
Reginald dropped into the nearest chair. Their father had wounded his sons.
He had destroyed women.
The worst of it was knowing. Seeing what the old bastard did to their mother, to the servants—and being unable to do a damned thing about it.
“People believe I opened The Domus to humiliate him,” Harry continued. “To make a mockery of the family name.”
“Didn’t you?”
Harry’s mouth shifted. “That was an agreeable consequence.”
Despite himself, Reginald nearly smiled.
“But it was never the reason.” Harry’s expression sobered. “Every woman our father touched came away diminished. Less safe. Less herself.”
His gaze hardened with an old anger.
“I wanted one place to exist where a man’s desire didn’t give him power. Where the women could choose. Refuse. Earn their own money and keep it. Leave when they wished—or remain. If that’s what they chose.”
Reginald looked down at the floor.
“It wasn’t perfect,” Harry said. “I know that. But it was meant to be the opposite of everything he taught us.”
“Then keep it.”
Harry’s mouth softened.
“My life is here now. Melanie. My son.” The affection in his eyes was surprisingly obvious, even at just the thought of them, bright and open. “They’re my world now.”
Harry pushed off the desk and stood straight. “You’re your own man, Reg. I won’t ask you to hold something you cannot believe in.” A faint, rueful smile touched Harry’s usually hard mouth. “Even if that means my only brother is absent from London years at a time.”
The words landed harder than Reginald expected.
Before either of them could sink any further into sentiment, however, a knock sounded at the study door.
It opened without waiting for an answer, and the duchess stepped in.
And just behind her was Rose, an infant—Reginald’s nephew—cradled carefully in her arms.
Reginald rose so quickly his glass nearly slipped from his hand, and for one stunned moment, Reginald could only look at her.
She wore the same gown he’d peeled from her the night before, in his quarters on the Phantom Gale. Though it was creased now. And her pale hair had been drawn severely back from her face, making her dark eyes appear even larger.
She looked exhausted. Nearly colorless.
But when her gaze found his, it flashed bright.
With anger. Accusation too.
And beneath both, Reginald saw something worse.
Hurt.