Doubtless, I must have misplaced mine, for I do not recall attending.”
“Nick…” Ethan eyed his brother, wondering why they were having this conversation now, when Nick was at his bath. Perhaps it was because that should have put Nick at a tactical disadvantage.
“Explain this to me, Ethan.” Nick went on scrubbing his hair, his voice deceptively casual. “Even given our estrangement, you could not drop me a note? Not when you got married, not when you had your firstborn or your second?”
“How do you know I married?”
“You would not sire a bastard, much less two,” Nick said, dunking again and coming up, sloshing water all around the tub.
“I did not sire bastards, but neither am I married as we speak.”
“You lost a wife,” Nick concluded, staring straight ahead and frowning mightily. “You did not think to inform me of this either?”
Ethan crossed the room and picked up one of the two pitchers of warm water sitting beside the tub. “Close your eyes,” he ordered then poured both pitchers over Nick’s hair.
Nick rose out of the tub and took the towel Ethan passed to him. “Talk to me, or so help me God, Ethan, I will start pounding on you, and pounding hard.” For some reason, that Nick offered this threat while very casually naked, his every bulging muscle in plain sight, made the menace more believable.
“I had a mistress,” Ethan said, running a hand through his hair, “a perfectly mundane business arrangement with a woman suited to that purpose. She got pregnant, and because my dealings with her were exclusive, I married her to prevent my child from being illegitimate. Once married, a second child came along directly. When Joshua was two, and Jeremiah three, their mother succumbed to typhus.”
Nick scrubbed his face dry but stood for a long moment, naked and dripping all over the hearthstones while he clutched at the towel and stared at his brother’s face.
“How long ago did she die?”
“Several years. Several years this summer.”
“Did you love her?” Nick’s tone was puzzled.
“By the time she bore the second child,” Ethan said wearily, “I hated her, and she hated me.”
“I’m sorry,” Nick said, looking like he meant it quite sincerely. “I am not sorry you told me, though, and it goes without saying I would like to meet—no, I would like to know—my nephews, and I can promise you the rest of the family will feel the same way.”
Ethan nodded, wishing to hell he’d kept his mouth shut, for there was a damned uncomfortable spasm in his throat; an ache, really.
“Della doesn’t know?”
“I haven’t told her.” Ethan lowered himself back to his hassock, the scent of sandalwood wafting around the room. “I didn’t want to put her in a position of having to keep a secret from you, though she somehow got wind of my marriage.”
Nick stalked over to the bed and surveyed the outfit Ethan had assembled for him. It was tidy, conservative, and altogether appropriate for a social call on a lady. Ethan watched as Nick transformed himself from a gloriously naked male animal into a properly clad gentleman. He finished the ensemble with a sapphire pin for his cravat, then fished a comb off his vanity tray.
“My damned hair is too long,” he groused, combing the hair straight back from his face.
“You look dashing and fresh from your bath.”
“Leonie likes me clean and sweet smelling,” Nick muttered, regarding himself in his full-length mirror, then splashing on some scent. “I’m forgetting something.”
“Your jacket.” Ethan picked it up from the bed and tossed it to him.
Nick shrugged into it. “I still don’t feel quite dressed.”
“So stop in the garden and pick a bunch of posies. They are the perfect accessory for a gentleman with awkward explanations to concoct.”
“Pick some yourself, then,” Nick suggested, spearing Ethan with a look. “I can appreciate now is not the time to interrogate you regarding your sons, Ethan, but when you’re ready for the telling, I want to know why you’d keep them from us for years. Bellefonte did not do right by you when you were a boy, but those children are our family, and I would not have them think otherwise. I want to know who they are, what makes them laugh, what gives them nightmares, and what they do that reminds you of us when we were their ages.”
Ethan nodded, not knowing how to reply. If anybody had told him today was the day he’d tell his brother about his family, he would not have found the accusation