been too short for unhappiness? The thought chilled him.
He did remember his mother as a warm presence, games on the lawn, reading at bedtime. But mostly, he remembered Frances, who’d come to stay right before his mother died. Frances had certainly seemed happy; that he could recall. She’d been more than kind to all of them, serene and competent until—well, until his father died. Since then, she’d gone moody and unpredictable. Had she been in love with his father, Alec wondered suddenly? He’d never imagined such a thing, not even once. As he thought of it now, he felt dizzy with memories realigning, assumptions turning on their heads. What people called love so often seemed something else entirely; yet here was a nameless, unacknowledged thing that might well have been love. What else had he failed to notice? Why was he noticing now?
He shook his head. He was thinking about Edward. Edward had also lost a parent young. His father died when he was ten, right before he went off to Harrow. Why had Aunt Bella sent him there? The Wyldes went to Eton. They would have become better acquainted at school. He shrugged. They hadn’t. Then, Edward hadn’t bothered with university. He’d come to London and established himself in society with the careless grace that Alec sometimes envied and sometimes despised. By the time Alec arrived, his cousin was a fixture, and only too ready to laugh at a young man’s awkwardness among the ton.
Alec knew he was never at his best around Edward. His cousin brought out every vestige of self-doubt that was in him. He remembered a Christmas twenty years ago, when Edward had lured him into singing a song before the family. It was to have been the two of them; Alec, reluctant, definitely in the secondary role. But Edward had led him to the center of the room and then vanished. Standing in that circle of expectant adults, at a loss, had been excruciating; it still made him flush to think of his grandmother’s open mockery, his father’s embarrassment.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Alec said aloud. How had he gotten bogged down in the past? He reached for a pen and the inkwell and dashed off a note to his cousin. The visit was not a choice but a necessity. Edward would most likely refuse to see Hanks. And Charlotte’s position was insupportable. He sanded the wet ink, folded the page, and addressed it. Leaving the note on the hall table for delivery in the morning, he went upstairs to bed.
***
Edward Danforth’s rooms in Duke Street were precisely what a young man on the town would desire, Alec thought at eleven the next day. The large sitting room combined comfortable furniture and relaxed untidiness—a toasting fork on the hearth, a litter of invitations on the table, an assortment of bottles ready for a convivial evening. An open door revealed a spacious bedchamber with a dressing room beyond. There was no dust, just bachelor clutter—no females to watch over, nothing to consider but his own wishes and pleasures.
Edward lounged in a broad chair, one leg draped over the arm. “To what do I owe the honor of a visit, cuz?” It was his usual tone, implying that Alec was too serious, a touch tedious, and of course, amusing.
Alec gritted his teeth. “I came to talk to you about Uncle Henry.”
“That old bore?” Edward picked up a snuffbox and turned it over in his fingers.
“He was killed,” Alec pointed out.
“Well, I do know that.”
“We need to discover who did it.”
“We?” His cousin raised an elegant brow. “I mean, of course it’s outrageous. Footpads running rampant in the streets, and so on. But it isn’t really our business to deal with them.”
“I disagree. I have hired a Bow Street Runner…”
“There you are then.”
“He is having difficulties getting information.” Alec didn’t want to tell him about the accusation against Charlotte; he didn’t trust his cousin not to repeat it. “That is why I wanted to ask you about Uncle Henry. You saw him often at his club?”
Edward sighed and put the snuffbox down. “We’re both members. If I happened to run into him, I’d say a few words. Mama was always after me to do it. She thought he’d leave me his money. Favorite nephew and all. You know how she is about inheritances.” He gave Alec an arch look, which he ignored. “It made sense, so I went along.”