Chapter 27
William had never struck his brother before.
The realization came somewhere between Algernon driving an elbow into his ribs and William catching him by the front of his coat and forcing him backward against the stone floor.
He had never wanted to.
Even during the past several days, when every new discovery had forced him to question another piece of the man he thought he knew, William had never imagined this. Algernon had been his brother before William understood what the word meant. The person who had always been there.
Older, quieter, occasionally exasperating, but permanent in the way family seemed permanent when one had never been given reason to question it.
Now they were wrestling on the floor of the same house where Algernon had once been locked away as a child.
“Stop!”
Rosalind’s voice reached him from somewhere nearby, but William could barely hear it over the rush of blood in his ears.
Algernon twisted beneath him and struck him hard enough across the mouth that William tasted blood.
“You sanctimonious little bastard.”
William caught his wrist before he could strike again. “You imprisoned him!”
“He was going to destroy everything!”
“He helped you!”
William shoved him back against the floor.
“Eastmere helped you when Father would not. He taught you. He listened to you. You said yourself that he was the reason you learned to stop being ashamed every time you opened your mouth.”
“And then he betrayed me.”
“He did not!”
The shout tore from William so loudly that his throat hurt.
Algernon stared up at him, and for the first time William saw his brother shout back with equal fury.
“You know nothing about it!”
“I know he helped Father change.”
The words came between ragged breaths as Algernon struggled beneath him. William barely recognized his own voice anymore.
“He made Father kinder. He made him listen to you. He spent years trying to repair damage he did not cause, and this is how you repay him? You take him from his daughter? You lock him beneath this house and leave his family believing he abandoned them?”
“He knew what would happen.”
“What would happen?” William demanded. “What terrible thing were you so frightened of? That I might learn the truth?”
“Yes!”
Algernon threw his weight sideways, and suddenly William was the one striking the floor. Pain shot through his shoulder as Algernon came over him, fist drawn back.
William blocked the blow.
“I did not know!” he shouted. “I knew nothing about your birth. Nothing about what Father did to you. Nothing about what Eastmere knew.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes!”
William drove Algernon backward and scrambled to his feet. His brother rose almost as quickly, breathing hard, blood darkening the corner of his mouth. For several seconds, neither of them moved.
William stared at him and struggled to reconcile the man standing across from him with the brother he had known all his life. An entire childhood had existed beyond William’s sight, filled with cruelty and fear while he remained safely protected from it.
“You hurt everyone because you were afraid,” William said, still struggling to catch his breath. “Eastmere. Rosalind. Mother. Even Augusta.”
“Do not speak about my wife.”
“You think this has not hurt her too?”
“Augusta is the only person who understands.”
The answer struck somewhere William had not expected.
“And what about me?”
Algernon faltered, and some of William’s own anger faltered with him.
“What about me, Algernon?” His voice was quieter now. “I am your brother.”
“You are his son.”
“So were you.”
“No.” Algernon’s face twisted. “Apparently I was not.”
William took a step toward him. “You were to me.”
Algernon shook his head, but William could no longer stop the words that had begun to come.
“Whatever Father did, whatever secret he kept from us, none of it changes what you were to me. You were my brother yesterday, before I knew any of this. You were my brother when we were boys, even if I was too young and too sheltered to understand what was happening to you.” His throat tightened.
“And you are still my brother standing here now.”
For the first time since the fight began, William wanted to reach for him rather than strike him.
Algernon must have seen it because he backed away.
“Stay away from me.”
William stopped.
Only then did he realize tears were running down his face. He wiped at them impatiently, but more followed, and after a moment he stopped trying to hide them.
“I am sorry.”
Algernon stared at him, and William’s voice broke when he tried again.
“God, Algernon, I am so sorry. For what Father did to you. For every hour he left you in this miserable house and every time you had to watch him give me the kindness he denied you. Most of all, I am sorry I never knew.”
“You were a child.”
“I know. But I was not a child forever.” William swallowed against the ache in his throat. “If you had told me later, I would have listened.”
“You could never understand.”
“Perhaps not completely, but I could have tried. I am trying now.” He drew a shaky breath. “You have suffered enough. Let it end here.”
Algernon gave a strange, humorless laugh. “You think it is that simple?”
“No. Nothing about this is simple.” William glanced toward Edmund behind the bars before looking back at his brother.
“But Father hurt you because he had power over you and believed that gave him the right to use it. You know better than anyone what that did to you. Locking Eastmere behind another door will not undo a single hour you spent locked upstairs. It only gives that pain to someone else.”
Algernon’s gaze followed his toward the cell, and for a moment William thought he saw something give in his expression.
“Please, Algernon,” he said. “Let him out. You do not have to become the man who hurt you.”
Whatever William had seen disappeared.
“You still do not understand.”
“Then make me understand.”
Algernon was quiet for a long moment before he said, “I heard them.”
William frowned. “Who?”
“Father and Eastmere. Years ago.” The fury that had filled Algernon only moments before began to recede, leaving something colder in its place. “I was looking for Father. I heard my name before I entered the room, so I stopped outside.”
A terrible unease settled over William. Edmund had already told him that Algernon overheard the conversation, but not how much of it he had heard.
“How much did you hear?”
“Everything.”
Algernon looked toward the ceiling, and William followed his gaze. Somewhere above them were the rooms Rosalind had described, still littered with the evidence of a frightened little boy’s attempts to earn his father’s approval.
“I learned that the man I had spent my entire life trying to please was not truly my father in the way I believed. I learned about the maid. About the lie they had constructed before I was old enough to know my own name.” His eyes returned to William.
“And then I heard him say that perhaps the greatest mistake he had made was allowing me to inherit.”
William’s stomach dropped.
“He said I had become dark. Unsteady. That he no longer knew whether I possessed the judgment required to lead the family after he was gone.” Algernon’s voice began to shake. “Do you understand? After everything he had done to me, he looked at what I had become and decided that was my failure too.”
“Algernon…”
“He made me this!”
The shout echoed through the cellar as Algernon struck his own chest with one hand.
“He locked me in this house. He starved me. He made me repeat the same words until I could barely speak at all, and then years later he looked at the man who survived it and decided I was too damaged to deserve the future he had promised me.”
William could think of nothing to say to that. The cruelty of it was impossible to defend, and he would not insult his brother by trying.
“He was going to tell you,” Algernon continued. “Perhaps not that day, perhaps not the next, but eventually. Then he died, and for a while I thought it was finished.”
His attention shifted toward Edmund.
“Until Eastmere began spending more time with you.”
“He never told me.”
“I watched the two of you become friends. You sought his advice. You trusted him.”
“He was your friend too.”
“He was preparing you.”
William frowned. “Preparing me for what?”
“To take my place.”
For a moment, William could only stare at him. Of all the things he had expected Algernon to say, that had never occurred to him.
“You thought I wanted the dukedom?”
“I knew you did.”
“No.” William shook his head. “Algernon, I have never wanted your title.”
“Everyone wants power.”
“I don’t.”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
“I have spent half my adult life avoiding responsibility whenever possible. When, precisely, did you imagine I was plotting to become a duke?”
The question would have been absurd under any other circumstances.
William had spent years escaping every responsibility he reasonably could while Algernon dutifully shouldered his own.
Yet here they stood, surrounded by iron bars and the wreckage of everything his brother had done to preserve a title William had never once coveted.
His anger gave way to something far more painful.
“I never wanted what was yours,” he said quietly. “I wanted my brother.”
Algernon looked away.
“All these years, I thought the distance between us was simply who you were. I thought you preferred it that way.” William’s throat tightened. “I never understood what you were keeping on the other side of it.”
“You could not have understood.”
“Perhaps not. But I wish you had let me try.”
William started toward him, only to stop when Algernon immediately retreated. The movement was small, but something about the look in his brother’s eyes unsettled him.
Until that moment, William had believed Algernon’s suspicions came from fear. Terrible, consuming fear, certainly, but fear that might still yield to the truth if William could only make him understand it.
Now he was no longer certain.