Ethan flicked a glance at his old papa spouting off so cheerfully about his egregious infirmities, and then his eyes shifted to his father’s hands, which the earl could not have rendered steady had he wanted to.
“You’ve learned a little restraint,” the earl decided as his son poured for them both. “Can’t say as I ever got the knack, myself. The ladies despaired of me.”
“Was it lack of restraint that caused you to send me off in such disgrace?” The desk was so large Ethan had to get up, walk around it, and hand the earl his half-full, heavily creamed cup of tea. The earl knew a moment of something—shame, relief, glee… gratitude?—when Ethan wrapped his father’s cold fingers around the warm cup.
The earl carefully—and shakily—brought the teacup to his mouth.
“Used to like it hot,” the earl mused on a sigh, “but a lapful of hot tea modifies one’s priorities. Now…” He turned his gaze on his firstborn and saw a handsome man in his prime, completely composed, shrewd and patient enough to wait him out. But approaching death had only heightened the functioning of the earl’s bladder, so waiting all afternoon wasn’t an option.
“The disgrace was mine,” the earl said, looking his son straight in the eye. “I know full well you did not attempt to burn your brother with that iron.”
Ethan took a delicate sip of his tea. “Were you merely being petty and tyrannical then, when you turned the little thugs and perverts of Stoneham loose on me?”
“Perverts.” The earl tasted the word, found it foul. “Interesting choice. I’d discovered you asleep in Nicholas’s bed just the night before, and not for the first time.”
“Of course I was in his bed,” Ethan scoffed, “or he was in mine. How else were we to stay up half the night whispering without waking the younger boys?”
Ethan’s anger swam much, much closer to the surface, so close the earl perceived that the frigid cool in Ethan’s eyes was not impatience, annoyance, nor anything else half so tame.
A betrayed boy yet lurked in the man who’d come to call. A devastated, betrayed boy.
“I comprehend now, Ethan, that you and Nick remained innocent of the most lamentable adolescent behaviors. It took some time, Della’s incessant carping, and raising several more boys before I understood my mistake. By then, you were no longer speaking to any of us, save Della, and things turned out for the best.”
Ethan took another measured sip of his tea, then another, clearly trying to absorb the explanation the earl offered, but no doubt stumbling over the emotional enormity of the wrong done him, and not for the first time.
“In what manner,” Ethan spoke very softly, “do you consider things turned out for the best?”
“The two of you were entangled. You protected Nick. He protected you.”
“Is that not what brothers do?” Ethan asked with chilly civility.
“Not when one will take a seat in the Lords and the other is merely an earl’s by-blow. Sooner or later, you and Nicholas were going to have to face facts. I did neither of you any service by letting you get so close in the first place.”
The earl reassured himself of this version of the facts regularly. Things had worked out for the best—or they would soon.
“So having made that mistake,” Ethan said, but not quite dispassionately, “your only recourse was to compound it by separating us the way you did, bellowing accusations, and setting us against each other?”
The earl let his teacup clatter unsteadily onto its saucer. “I’ve said I was wrong, both in what I did and how I did it. I am not a perfect man, as you well know. But admit to me, please, that both you and Nicholas thrive, and despite my errors, you are both people to be reckoned with, capable of standing on your own two feet.”
Ethan rose to those two feet with an ease the earl tried not to envy. “You think old age alone has impaired your hearing and vision, sir. I can assure you, your faculties have long been wanting, else you would have realized Nick and I have always been capable of standing on our own two feet, regardless of our relationship as brothers or friends. Good day.”
He departed in a few brisk strides, closing the door with enviable decorum.
Round one to the pup, your bloody uncrapping lordship. The earl sat back with a sigh, sipping his cooling tea disconsolately. God willing, there would be a round two.