"And have had no time for introductions to our present company," Benjamin interrupted with a shade of impatience, looking pointedly at Elizabeth.
"The most charming surprise of all," Sebastian agreed.
The scowl dissipated from Gideon's features, and he turned slightly to glance at Elizabeth. "Elizabeth, these two rogues are my brothers, Benjamin and Sebastian."
"We already make free with our Christian names?" Benjamin asked, not smiling. Sebastian, on the other hand, made his eyebrows dance over his sea blue eyes, and Elizabeth thought Gideon's title of "rogue" suited this fellow admirably.
"Christian names are all we have, in this instance," Gideon said glibly. "Benjamin, Sebastian, this is Miss Elizabeth. Her surname is unknown. She has been injured recently and has been unable to supply us with a surname. She has been convalescing here this past week or so."
"Miss Elizabeth." Sebastian greeted her with a little bow, as did Benjamin.
Upon straightening, Sebastian slipped with negligent grace onto a settee, but his eyes were wide as though with fascination. "There you are, Brother Ben! I told you something was astir. I told you Gideon's letters were peculiar."
"Peculiar?" Gideon frowned again.
" 'Chatty' is the word I should use," Sebastian said, grinning at Elizabeth when she gave him a quizzical look. "Perhaps there is a better word, but since I have never before received a chatty letter from you, Gideon"—he belatedly looked toward the object of discussion—"I am new to the experience and do not know what to call it."
"I can see you are in a mood for sport," Gideon said, grimacing. "But I, alas, at present do not have the time for it. I have an alderman to call upon, who I hope can afford me some answers. I am anxious to know why you two have come from afar, but my curiosity will have to wait." Gideon turned to Elizabeth. "May I carry you to your room before I leave?"
"No, thank you. I would like to hear what you have to say when you return," Elizabeth said, looking up at him from under her lashes, feeling abashed by the startled look Benjamin had thrown his brother upon hearing the word "carry."
Gideon either missed the look, or else did not consider any need to explain, because he bowed to Elizabeth and moved to the library door. There he turned. "Elizabeth is my guest, gentlemen. Please mind your manners." With a scalding glance at his brothers, Gideon exited.
Elizabeth looked to the two other occupants of the room. Benjamin lifted an eyebrow in disapproval, and Sebastian grinned widely.
"So, you are 'Elizabeth the house guest,' of whom Gideon wrote."
"House guest?" Elizabeth repeated, unsure why Sebastian found her role so amusing.
"Come now," Benjamin said, rotating in a crisp military turn to face Elizabeth. "Tell us what happens here? That is to say, what are you to Gideon?"
"He means," Sebastian said with a wicked gleam in his eyes, "are you the cause of our brother's sudden aberrant behavior?"
"Aberrant?" Elizabeth began to sputter out a confused protest, but Sebastian interrupted her.
"Let me see if I can put it more politely. How about, what magic have you worked to change Gideon so?"
"Magic?"
"We will get nowhere if you repeat everything I say," Sebastian quipped.
"Come, come, Miss Elizabeth," Benjamin said, taking the chair opposite hers and running a hand down his uniform front to rid it of any subsequent creases. "We tell you freely, we came home because Gideon had sent each of us a letter—"
"A letter about the chess games?" Elizabeth inquired.
"Yes, only these were different. It was evident that something was altered—significantly."
"You have to understand," Sebastian explained, "Gideon's letters are usually three sentences long. They read: 'Queen's Rook to Rook Four. Lost the wheat crop on the lower twenty acres. Frick has the toothache.' And that is all they say, Miss Elizabeth. But these letters we each just received were suddenly three pages long, full of bits and pieces of news, such as some maid or other had a girl child—"
"I still cannot approve of Gideon taking in a servant who is in the family way," Benjamin interrupted. "It is one thing to see to one's own, er, discrepancies, but taking in a girl already in a family way from another household, without references ... ! It is undignified. Not to mention the mother will no doubt expect Gideon to grant the brat employment when he is old enough to hold a horse."
"She. The baby is a girl," Elizabeth corrected, her lips threatening to tilt upward in happy surprise to learn the child was not Gideon's. It was silly of her to feel so blithe of a sudden, but Elizabeth had to bite back a smile.
"Never mind that. I was talking about Gideon's letter," Sebastian said, angling his head as he recomposed his thoughts.
"Ah, yes, Gideon also wrote of the ghost that has been active again, and how his favorite hunter has recovered from taking a stone under its shoe, and, well anyway, he just went on and on."
"And at the end of my letter—" Benjamin began.
"Not mine, I am piqued to say," Sebastian put in.
"At the end of my letter, which I felt compelled to share with Sebastian here," Benjamin went on pointedly, "there was mention of a house guest named Elizabeth. Gideon wrote of how this female, of whom he offered no proper title or surname, had had her things taken, some jewels or other."
"I ask you, who would not be intrigued?" Sebastian asked, spreading his hands as though seeking Elizabeth's affirmation.
Elizabeth gazed from one to the other, seeing the coolness in their faces, even under Sebastian's impudent manner. She sighed, knowing what they must be thinking. "I can scarce blame you for wondering if I am hunting a fortune."
Sebastian inclined his head in acknowledgment, but Benjamin just stared hard at her. "Well, are you?" he asked without polish.
"Gentlemen," she said, laying a hand atop her jewelry on the table. "This is all the fortune I have. I brought the pieces with me, and I shall leave with them and nothing else, be assured." She paused, "Well, that is not quite true, for I am to have three dresses, for which I will one day repay your brother."
She saw their doubt and put up her chin. She boldly lifted the hem of her skirt, exposing the bandages that yet wound around her foot. "My heel was badly injured. Now it is better, and I am free to leave. I promise you, I would not take anything else, not even were it offered to me."
At the satisfied look that came over Benjamin, Elizabeth fixed him with a look of her own. "Your brother has been very kind, and I would not repay that kindness except with my thanks," she said pointedly. "Although, there is one thing I would do for him, to truly thank him."
Sebastian sat forward, his expression urging her on.
"I would ask that you either stay here with Gideon, or else take him with you when you leave," Elizabeth said firmly.
"What?" The two men exchanged sharp glances.
"Why?" Benjamin demanded.
"I think, because you came so promptly when his letters changed, that you know why."
Both men had the grace to look discomfitted.
"He has everything, the estate, the servants, the weight of everything on his shoulders," Elizabeth continued. "It is a weight that ought to be shared, not borne alone."
"We are well aware of that," Benjamin said crossly, his shoulders moving in agitation under his uniform coat. "The only one who does not know it is Gideon."
"That is not true," Sebastian said, his mouth downturned for once. "He knows it. He just does not know how to stop being in charge, to take a breath and be free of it for a day, or a week, or a month. Imagine if Gideon could be unworried for a month! He would be a changed man."
Elizabeth sat forward in her chair, feeling growing excitement. "Take him with you, to London or Brighton. Or abroad, if you can! I can imagine Gideon in Rome or Greece. He would like the sea, I think."
"How well you seem to know him," Benjamin said drolly. "How long is it you have known him? No, do not answer, it does not signify. Let me tell you instead, that you ask us to move a mountain, Miss Elizabeth," Benjamin went on, rising from his chair and shaking his head. He crossed his hands behind his back, a habit very like Gideon's. "Do you think we have not tried to wrestle Gideon from this pile of bricks before? He is convinced the entire earth will cease to spin if he leaves here for so little as a day."
"Oh," Elizabeth said, feeling deflated.
"As to that"—Sebastian crossed one leg over the other, allowing the topmost to begin to swing in a small, insouciant arc—"perhaps Miss Elizabeth has powers of persuasion we do not?" He glanced up at his brother.
Benjamin turned to give Elizabeth another of his abrupt stares, his features marked by a curious mix of doubt and hope. "Perhaps," he conceded. "Gideon certainly thinks well of you, that much is clear." He straightened his shoulders. "Would you speak with him? Do your best to convince him of a holiday?"
"Yes," Elizabeth said at once.
Both brothers exchanged glances again, and Benjamin resumed his seat. "Perhaps we should tell you Gideon's history, that your powers of persuasion might be heightened," he said, and Sebastian nodded agreement.
They told her much she already knew, about their blustering, bullying father, a man poorly suited to affect any good in their mentally fragile mother. About how Gideon, from a tender age, had protected his mama and saw to her welfare until her death.
"Do you know about the one time Mama was a patient in the asylum?"
Elizabeth shook her head. 'The one that burned?" she asked.
"Yes, we saw that as we drove past," Sebastian said. "And good riddance to it."
"That very one," Benjamin confirmed.
They told her that their mother had gone into some manner of decline when Gideon was around the age of eight. Their father, in typical response, had sent her to recover at the asylum. Gideon had insisted on visiting her, and when he came home again, Benjamin remembered his brother was white around the mouth, both from horror and rage.
"I never knew exactly what he saw there, for even in later years Gideon would not speak of it, other than to confirm our mama had been fixed to her bed with ankle chains to keep her from wandering the asylum wards. And she'd had nothing but one meager blanket wrapped around her as she'd waited for her clothes to dry following a dunking in a cold-water bath. Cold-water baths," Benjamin said, his face tight with disdain and doubt, "being frequent. They are supposed to shock the patien back into sensibility."
Sebastian took up the tale, explaining that Gideon had gone into their father's library, and although he was too young to re member it himself, Sebastian explained that raised voices had been heard. Gideon had received a caning for daring to shout at his father, and Papa had refused the boy's demands that Mama be returned home.
"Gideon stopped eating. Completely," Benjamin said, and there were echoes of those strident times in his eyes as he spoke. Father said "let him starve", and he did. I tried to take food to him, sneaking it from the table in my pockets, but Gideon would not eat. 'I should rather starve than eat from a table that does not feed my mother,' he said to me, to the servants, to the doctor who was called in a week later, to our father. Over and over again. They spoke of forcing food into Gideon . . ." Benjamin's voice trailed away, and Elizabeth thought she saw a shudder course up his spine.
Sebastian took up the tale. "That is when Gideon began haunting our father. He would just stand before him, gaunt-faced, saying nothing, just staring. He received another caning, and then the doctor came and took Gideon away from the house. The doctor came again, two days later. Again there were shouts in the library. But the next day, Gideon and Mama both came home."
"And both ate at the table," Benjamin said. He gave a small, bitter laugh. "Although Gideon could only eat a half cup of broth and a single bite of bread. It took weeks for his appetite to return."
"But Mama never returned to the asylum," Sebastian said quietly.
"No, she never did," Benjamin agreed. He sighed. "Unfortunately, Gideon never lost that stubborn streak. He has it yet. It is what keeps him here, what keeps him from letting us help him."
Elizabeth looked up sharply. "You have offered to help?"
"Of course." Sebastian scowled. "But for all intents and purposes he has had the reins of this household in his hands since he was eight years old! He does not know how to apportion duty. I think he fears he is like Mama, that if he releases even a hint of control, he will begin to disintegrate."
"Gideon," Elizabeth said on a near whisper, a lump forming in her throat as she remembered the shadows she had seen in his silvered eyes.
"Yes, our stubborn, dutiful Gideon." Benjamin stared into the ashes of last night's fire on the grate. Sebastian rose to ring for a servant, murmuring about requiring something to eat after their travels.
Elizabeth lapsed into her own musing. Meeting Benjamin and Sebastian did not make her own leaving less painful, but she was glad, more than glad, that Gideon's brothers had returned. It seemed clear they would do all they could to break Gideon free of the prison this house had become for him.
Did the childhood tale, or his brothers' concern, prove Gideon was not mad like his mama? No. Certainly Society thought the man had inherited her terrible legacy. But Society had not spent any time in his company, had not looked into his compassionate gaze, had not seen the good Gideon did, that he could not seem to keep himself from doing even at a terrible cost to his own peace of mind. Elizabeth had seen these things ... and if they were signs of madness, then let Society be entirely overrun by such madmen, for the world could use more men of Gideon's ilk.
Frick entered, rather than the servant with a luncheon tray whom Elizabeth had expected. A frown creased his face.
"What is it?" Benjamin asked, sounding as concerned as Elizabeth abruptly felt.
"A caller," Frick said, "a man who claims no acquaintance with Lord Greyleigh, but who insists he will wait in the entry for my lord, no matter how long it takes for him to return."