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In a lavish bedroom at de Montforte House, a humble young woman from the colonies lay dreaming on soft, goosedown pillows. A thick, fluffy counterpane warmed her body, her skin was silky after a bath in lavender water, and the fire that crackled in the hearth filled the room with heat and light.
On a cold stone floor in a nearby mews, the heir presumptive to an English dukedom also slept, his pillow the hard leather of a saddle, his blanket the wet surtout that covered his shivering body. His skin was damp and raw, and the rain that beat down outside found its way in through the leaky roof, creeping beneath his sleeping body via grooves and channels in the filthy stone floor.
The horizon greyed with the approach of dawn. The nightman came in leading his tired horse, a lantern in his hand. He saw the nob lying apparently drunk on the floor, stepped over his huddled body with indifference, and put his horse in its narrow stall. A few feet away, the drunk was mumbling something in his sleep, tossing fitfully.
But Lord Gareth de Montforte was not drunk. He was dreaming ...
You are lazy, feckless, dissolute, useless. You are an embarrassment to this family — and especially to me. When you grow up and learn the meaning of responsibility, Gareth, perhaps I shall treat you with the respect I did your brother ... the respect I did your brother ... the respect I did your brother ...
Gareth tried to storm away. But this time he could not just go riding off to escape Lucien's savage rebuke, could not just laugh in his face and go find some other trouble in which to involve himself, because this time it was a dream, and there was nowhere else to go. Instead, he tried to escape by clawing toward wakefulness, but the dream held him in its clutches like an iron shackle around a prisoner's leg, and there was no getting away.
And still, Lucien, gazing down his nose at him with the highest contempt, those damning words echoing over and over.
Lazy, feckless, dissolute, useless.
"Oh, just sod off, will you?" Gareth cried, lashing out at that austere, forbidding face. "Bugger off and leave me the hell alone!"
He turned over and saw Charles.
"Hello, Gareth."
He froze, staring in open-mouthed shock. Then his heart began to beat in sudden, fragile excitement. He blinked, disbelieving. "Charles?" he croaked.
Charles smiled. He was in his regimental uniform with its blue facings and shining gorget, his sword at his side. For a long moment he looked at Gareth, his face tender with brotherly love; then he shook his head, gave a tolerant little smile, and, turning on his booted heel, began to walk away.
The command to follow was an unspoken one. Gareth picked himself up, shot Lucien a triumphant glance over his shoulder, and dashed off after Charles, hardly daring to breathe.
Incredibly, Lucien did not try to stop him.
His brother led him through the fields, never turning to see if Gareth followed, never pausing to wait, but continuing on his way as purposefully as if he were leading his company into battle. How long they walked Gareth did not know. Where they were going he could not even guess. But eventually Charles paused, and as Gareth came up beside him, he stood back and pointed to something just ... becoming ... discernible through a drifting envelope of gray mist. Gareth gasped. It was their mother, having tea in the garden with Perry's mother, her smile as gentle, loving, and heartwarming as he remembered. His heart leaped. Mama! he cried excitedly, but she went right on talking to the Witch, never hearing him, never even knowing he was there. And as the mists cleared even more, Gareth saw that a fine summer day surrounded them, with the pond sparkling like a blue mirror in the distance. Far off in the muck and bulrushes that ringed it, he could just see a bit of color: himself as a little boy, hiding in the weeds with Perry and giggling in preparation for their grand prank.
He glanced excitedly at Charles. His brother inclined his head, directing Gareth to turn his attention back to this long-ago scene that was unfolding before them ...
"Really, Mary," Lady Brookhampton was saying waspishly, "I don't see why you defend him so. I don't think his antics are charming at all! He's a mischievous brat, and he'll cause you nothing but heartbreak and embarrassment. Charles is the one who will be the heir if anything happens to Lucien, Charles is the one who deserves your time and efforts — not that horrid little hellspawn!"
Not that horrid little hellspawn.
Charles looked pained. He gazed quietly at Gareth, who faltered, undone by the blatant love in his brother's eyes. He knew that Charles had hated the comparisons between the two of them as much as he did, if not more. He knew that Charles had always felt guilty about coming out on top, as though it was his fault that he and Gareth were made so differently. The sympathy in Charles's gaze was almost unbearable. Pretending to be cold, Gareth shifted his feet and shivered. And then Charles turned and began moving once more, leaving the two women in their cozy summer scene far behind. Like an obedient dog, Gareth followed.
"Where are we going?" Gareth called after him. "Are you a ghost or a memory? Where are we? Charles!"
The scarlet-clad figure neither turned nor answered, merely kept moving, the sunlight glinting off his accoutrements and catching the gold in his hair. And when he stopped again, it had grown dark, and the two of them stood before the statue in the village green.
Gareth knew immediately what he would see: Chilcot with the bucket of purple paint in his teeth, Cokeham rooting in the grass and making pig-noises, and all of them foxed out of their heads on Irish whiskey. An involuntary burst of laughter escaped him, for it really was quite funny.
He glanced at Charles.
His brother wasn't laughing. He looked infinitely sad.
The guffaw died abruptly in Gareth's throat. He cleared his throat and looked away, suddenly ashamed of his behavior. While he had been running wild over Berkshire, his brother had been off fighting for his king. While he had been up to his usual drunken debauchery, his brother had been dying a lonely death in a land far from home. Suddenly, Gareth could not bear to meet Charles's gaze. Could barely force himself to raise his head and look again at what Charles had brought him to see. And when he did, he saw himself clinging to a rope slung from the statue's neck, a paintbrush in his hand and a foolish, drunken expression on his face that now made him cringe with embarrassment. He heard his silly words, saw his friends acting like fools, felt Charles's infinite despair as he stood quietly beside him.
"Please, no more, Charles," he said, turning away from the scene of mayhem. "This is damned embarrassing."
Charles merely studied him for a moment, thoughtfully, then turned and began walking again.
And when he stopped once more, it was in the Spitalfields church where Gareth had married Juliet just that morning. The Den members were laughing and insulting each other, the vicar looked harassed, and everyone was behaving as though marriage was some grand joke. Everyone, that is, except Juliet. There she stood, alone, looking sad and mature beyond her years, pledging herself to a man who didn't know the meaning of the word "responsibility." There she stood, still and silent, facing the adversity that was marriage to Lord Gareth de Montforte with the same stoic resolve with which she must have faced everything else in her young life. She, who had crossed an ocean to secure a future for her baby; she, who was putting her entire faith, trust, and future in the hands of a fellow who was sadly undeserving of any of it.
Gareth swallowed, hard, and looked away. He did not deserve her. He was everything Lucien said he was, and he did not deserve her.
He put his hands over his eyes, overcome with shame and self-disgust.
You are lazy, feckless, dissolute, useless. You are an embarrassment to this family, and especially to me.
He bent his head to his balled fist, seeing all the stupid things he had recently done, seeing Juliet — his sad, woebegone little Juliet — standing trustfully in that church once again. Oh, God... He did not know how long he stood there, rocking silently back and forth in his self-imposed agony. But when he finally look
ed up, the scene was gone, and he and his brother were alone in the deep quiet of a Lambourn night, the stars pricking through the black sky that arced up over the downs, the insects humming all around them.
Charles was staring out over the downs, his hawkish profile dim against the night sky. And then, for the first time since this strange journey had begun, he spoke.
"You have two choices," he said, quietly. "You can either abandon your pride and go back to Lucien — or you can make something of yourself." He turned then, his clear, intelligent gaze holding Gareth's own. "Whatever you do, I trust you not to let her down."
They stood looking at each other for a long, silent moment, two brothers, two friends.
Then Charles turned and walked down the hill, leaving Gareth all alone. And this time he knew he could not follow.
He stared after that scarlet-clad figure, growing smaller and smaller, now fading into the darkness. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Pain gnawed at his heart. And now the wakefulness he'd tried so hard to reach was starting to drag him away.
"I'll prove myself!" Gareth shouted into the darkness that had swallowed up his brother. "I swear it, I will! I'll prove myself worthy of Juliet's loyalty, her trust, and her hopes for me! I'll be a good husband and a good provider! By God and heaven, I will, no matter what it takes!"
He opened his eyes. The dream was still very near, Charles's quiet words still ringing in his head. For a moment he lay there in the darkness, disoriented. Then he heard the rain drumming on the street outside. He felt the cold, hard stone beneath his back, smelled the pungent aroma of horses, and knew that he was still in the mews, where he'd been all along.
And Gareth suddenly knew what he must do.
A finger of early light was just creeping toward him through the open doorway, stretching across the dirty hay scattered across the floor, the patches of bare stone, and bits of litter until it finally glowed against a crumpled white wad that lay several inches from Gareth's face.
His heart pounding, he reached out and picked it up.
It was the card that Snelling had offered him earlier.