Heart of Brass (27 page)

“This is rather convenient,” his brother commented, turning his petulance toward Arden. “The lord of the manor returning just days before he’s to be declared dead.”

Luke stiffened, but to her credit Arden showed no reaction to his words. “I couldn’t have planned it any better myself.”

Henry’s chin—so similar to his own—jutted in Luke’s direction. “You expect me to believe that this is my brother? That he chose to return now rather than before?”

Arden shrugged. “He had little choice in the matter, I assure you.” Then she turned her lovely face to Luke, her expression wry. “Did I not tell you he’d wonder if you were an actor?”

“How much did she pay you?” the younger man demanded of Luke, as though he hadn’t heard her—or didn’t care. “I’ll double it if you renounce her as a liar.”

“Watch your mouth, runt,” he growled, standing up straight. “I’ll break more than your hand.” It didn’t matter that Arden had lied to
him.
Nobody else was going to accuse her of falsehood, especially this little wanker.

Blue eyes blinked. For a moment, all of Henry’s anger was replaced with amazement, but it quickly disappeared under the onslaught of deepening distrust. “Did she tell you to call me that?”

This was ridiculous. Perhaps he’d have more patience if it wasn’t for how heated his interrupted conversation with Arden had been.

“I’m Lucas Grey,” he informed his brother. “The Earl of Huntley. Either you believe that or you don’t, but not believing won’t give you the title.”

Henry’s spine snapped straight, and he jumped to his feet, still cradling his hand. He was pale, but angry red splotches appeared in his cheeks. “You dare accuse me of title-grubbing when you claim to be a man dead these seven years! I should call you out, sir!”

Luke’s fists clenched at his sides. He knew he was supposed to love this man as his sibling, but right now he couldn’t summon anything more positive than sheer dislike. “Please do. I hope you’re a good shot, because you’ll have to be.”

Arden stepped between them, though there scarcely was need. There was still a good ten feet between the two of them, and though Luke could close that distance very quickly, he wasn’t feeling
that
violent at the moment.

“This is not the reunion I had hoped for,” she told them both. She turned to the younger. “Henry, what will it take to prove to you that this is indeed Lucas?”

He turned his baleful glare on Luke. “What did you do to the puppy father gave me when I was six?”

Luke had no bloody idea. His memory was weaker the further back he tried to go, and what he had remembered often came to him unbidden. “I sincerely hope I didn’t kill it.”

Henry’s brow lowered in disgust, and his lips curled into a sneer. “I knew you weren’t my brother. I’ll have Scotland Yard on you. You’ll hang for impersonating a Peer of the Realm. Both of you will swing for it.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake! You’re the one who belongs on a stage.” Arden fisted her hands on the sweet curves of her hips. “Henry, Lucas has suffered an injury that impedes his memory.”

“Again, very convenient.”

If he didn’t wipe that sneer off his face…Luke’s head was beginning to ache from trying to remember what had happened with Arden, and now trying to recall something that could prove he was who he was.

Christ, if it wasn’t for the fact that he’d remembered the things he had, he would wonder if he was really Huntley as well.

He hadn’t killed the puppy. He might be a changed man, but he was never cruel to animals, he knew that. He liked animals, even the foolish, foppish Beauregard who’d tried to make love to his leg just that morning.

“I dressed it up in a pair of your short pants and taught it to sit at your place at the table. Mother didn’t find it nearly as amusing as Father and I.” He met his brother’s gaze. “You cried.”

A dull red stain spread across Henry’s cheeks. “One of the servants could have told you that.”

Luke pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine. You don’t want to believe I’m your brother, then don’t. Get the hell out.”

“You cannot order me about as though you were master of this house.” The younger man’s eyes blazed with fury. They looked so very much alike, though Henry was a little heavier. Was the resemblance not enough? Or would his brother rather believe he was dead and gone than accept the truth?

“He is master of this house,” Arden informed him. “He hasn’t and cannot be declared dead, and once he’s out in society, everyone will accept that he is Huntley—alive and well.”

“We shall see about that!”

As Henry whirled about, ready to march out, Luke pushed to remember something—anything. If asked, he wouldn’t be able to say why it was so important that this man, who looked so much like him but didn’t feel like family, believed him. But he needed him to believe.

“When you were ten years old you caught Father with one of the maids. You were so upset you ran and told Mother. I remember that you didn’t understand the next day when we found out the maid had been let go. Her replacement was a homely little thing, and Father began spending more time away from home. I told you that you should have kept your mouth shut.”

Henry stopped, back rigid. He didn’t look over his shoulder. “You said all men of rank had mistresses.”

Luke didn’t remember that part, and the words made him wince. How jaded had he been at twelve? But that didn’t matter so much as the expression on Arden’s face. She looked disappointed.

He’d been a top-notch twat indeed.

“I was an idiot,” he said, casting his wife a meaningful glance. “And wrong. You never forgave him. Not even when he asked you to while on his deathbed.”

Henry gaped at him. It was obvious now that he believed Luke was who he claimed to be. But the wonder in his face quickly gave way to something more disturbed. “Are you quite all right?”

Luke frowned. Then he felt moisture above his lip. He reached up and touched it with his fingers. They came away red. His nose was bleeding. Damnation. He pressed the ball of his hand to his forehead, but it did little to ease the skull-splitting pain—it only made the incision hurt.

“I told you his memory had been impaired,” he heard Arden admonish. Slender, but capable hands gripped his shoulders, guiding him.

“Sit down, dearest.”

Dearest? How could she use any endearment with him? He was broken, perhaps beyond repair. No, she loved who he used to be, who she thought he was, and he’d do well to remember that, even if the former Lord Huntley didn’t deserve it. Still, he did as she commanded.

“Is he dying?” Henry asked. Luke might have laughed if he didn’t think to do so might make his head literally split open.

“No, he’s not dying!” Arden’s sharp tones made him both wince and smile. He opened his eyes so he could see the ferocity in her expression. Henry was suitably cowed.

Such a governess.

She held her hand out to the other man. “Give me your handkerchief.” She snapped her fingers. “Now, Henry.”

Henry reluctantly obliged, and within seconds the snow-white cotton was shoved under Luke’s nose. “Hold this,” his wife instructed. “Tilt your head back a little.”

He knew what to do for a nosebleed—he was a man, after all, and had been hit in the nose often enough to know the procedure—but he liked having her fuss over him. No one had fussed over him in a very long time, and his chest was tight with it.

“I’m going to send for Dr. Stone,” Arden told him, her brown eyes filled with concern. Her fingers combed softly through his hair, and it was all he could do not to close his eyes and lean into her soothing touch.

“I want Dr. Vincent to examine him,” Henry announced, in a tone that might have been imperious were it not for a hint of reticence.

Arden paused in the act of pulling the bell for one of the maids, and fixed the other man with a gaze that could freeze Lucifer’s bollocks. “Now that you know it’s him, you’re going to try to have him declared incompetent, are you?”

Henry’s shoulders straightened. “If he’s my brother I want the family physician to examine him.”

“He is your brother, and you want your doctor to claim he isn’t mentally or physically fit to be the earl.”

She was an astounding woman, Luke realized. At times she seemed almost afraid of him, but back her into a corner or challenge her and she developed a backbone more rigid than the metal covering his bones. Henry was bigger than she, stronger too, and yet she stared him down as if he were no more than a spoiled child. Perhaps that was how she saw him, but Luke saw a man caught up in duty. Henry’s apparent callousness wasn’t out of a lack of fraternal love—not really—but out of his sense of duty to family, and to the title.

Henry didn’t want to believe, because then he’d have to accept that he had buried a ghost, and all the pain that came with that would rear its head.

“It’s all right, Ardy,” he told her, removing the handkerchief so he didn’t sound like a nasal git. The bleeding seemed to have stopped. “If it gives the runt peace of mind, let him have his doctor.”

Her face tightened in displeasure, and she hesitated before giving a curt nod. Napoleon couldn’t have been so imperious. “Fine.” Then to Henry, “You will speak to me beforehand. I won’t have you descend upon him whenever you wish.”

A flush swept up Henry’s neck to fill his face. “You talk to me as though you are my better. This is my family home and I will call on it whenever I please. I let you stay in this house because you were my brother’s wife, but you will never be anything more than an impoverished baronet’s daughter who got caught fucking an earl and forced him to marry her.”

Luke sprang from the chair, lunged toward his brother, and caught the younger man by the throat. He lifted him with one hand, so that his toes dangled just above the ground. Henry sputtered and gasped, clawing at the fingers around his neck.

A chill settled over Luke as he met the other man’s bulging gaze, but he knew his anger had to burn in his eyes like a raging blaze. “You may be my brother, but if you insult my wife again, you little twat, I’ll crush your windpipe and watch the life drain out of you. I promise you I won’t feel the least bit bad about it either.”

“Luke. Luke!” It was Arden. He turned his head toward her. “Let him down.”

His fingers twitched around the throat in their grasp. It wouldn’t take much more than a gentle squeeze—not with his strength. And he knew how to dispose of a body so that no one ever found it.

But that wouldn’t win him Arden’s trust, and it wouldn’t look good to the Wardens, who would probably kill him. He could run. Arden might come with him. He turned his attention back to Henry, whose face was turning a most amazing shade of plum.

The memory came like a flash of light—he was standing in front of this man, but they were both little more than boys. There were four other boys there as well, all of whom had been picking on Henry. They had hit him until he was bruised and bloody. Luke had stopped the fight, and he was prepared to take on all four of those boys to protect his little brother. He did take them all on, and took quite a beating for it himself. This boy had loved him back then. Looked up to him.

He lowered Henry to the ground and released his grip on his throat. His brother gasped for air, wheezing.

“You’re an animal,” he rasped.

Luke nodded. “But I’m still your brother, and you will treat my wife with respect. She’s the only one who believed I was alive all these years. How long was it before you gave up hope, Henry? How long before you first tried to take what is mine?”

The other man’s face was still so purple it was difficult to tell if he was ashamed or not. “I have looked after the accounts, the holdings and everything else associated with the Huntley title.”

“Did you look after my countess?” Luke asked in a quiet tone. Henry’s averted gaze said more than words ever could. “I’ll see your doctor, let him poke and prod me, but now you need to leave, because I don’t like you very much, and for the past seven years that’s been all the reason I’ve needed to kill a man.”

Henry didn’t need more prompting that that. Cradling his injured hand, he tore from the parlor as though the hounds of hell champed at his very heels.

“Well, that went perfectly smashingly, don’t you think?”

His mouth curved at Arden’s dry tone. “The genuine brotherly love was quite humbling.”

She sighed and came toward him, capable and slightly calloused hands cupping his cheeks. She turned his head from side to side, all the while studying his face. It was a little disconcerting knowing she was practically looking up his nose. He was torn between shoving her hands away and kissing her. Instead he asked, “Is it true what he said?”

Her gaze lifted to his as she lowered her hands. “You mean about why we were married, or that I’m a liar?”

“About how we came to be married.”

She smiled—an oddly sad expression. “How will you know I’m not lying about it, though?”

“Because a woman who didn’t care about her husband wouldn’t have waited seven years.”

She swallowed, and for a second, her composure cracked. “I suppose not. We were caught together at a lecture my father gave at the Royal Society. You had already asked me to marry you and we were…uh, celebrating perhaps a little too enthusiastically.”

Luke grinned. “I imagine we were.” Damnation, but he wished he could remember it. “How old were you?”

“Oh, nineteen I suppose. You would have been four and twenty. Your mother wasn’t impressed that you wanted to marry so young. She thought it was a mistake.”

“Obviously I knew what I was doing.”

Arden blinked. “Yes, I suppose we both did. Although there were times when I thought you agreed with your mother’s sentiments.”

Raking a hand through his hair, Luke tried to remember something—anything—that would make him think better of his old self, and couldn’t. It hurt too much to push, and he didn’t want to risk another nosebleed. “When’s my birthday?”

“September twenty-third.”

In a few months he would be four and thirty. It might seem a small thing, but this information made him inexplicably happy. Slowly, he was beginning to think of himself as a person, not just Five. And the Earl of Huntley was beginning to feel less like an assumed identity and more like who he really was.