Page 29 of Fair as a Star

“Of course not,” he said.

“Exactly so. I’ve never met a man more suited to the clergy. If I’d have succumbed to your pleading and bought you a commission— Well.” Henry’s mouth flattened. “I daresay you’d be as dead as Jack right now.”

Mark’s chest tightened. “Don’t use Jack’s death to win an old quarrel.”

They walked in silence for several steps before Henry spoke again. “I sometimes wonder what he’d have had to say about this distance between us.”

Mark didn’t reply. Not at first. He couldn’t. Jack had been gone a year. The pain of his loss had lessened, but the emptiness left by his death was a pain in itself. He’d been the glue that had held Mark and Henry together. Without him, it sometimes felt as if there was nothing left between them but hurt and recrimination.

And jealousy.

Mark was ashamed to admit it, even to himself. “He wouldn’t be surprised. Jack knew how difficult you could be.”

“Because I didn’t allow him to squander his money? Didn’t permit him to marry that farmer’s daughter when he was eighteen, or to set up that music hall singer as his mistress when he was twenty?” Henry kicked at a stone in his path. It skittered off into the underbrush. “Jack was wild for a time. He needed taking in hand.”

“I wasn’t wild.”

“Not wild, no. But you haven’t always known what’s in your best interests.”

A cloud drifted past the sun, briefly darkening the path in front of them.

“It seems to me,” Mark said in a voice of creditable calm, “that you have a strangely self-serving way of calculating what’s best for people.”

Henry’s shoulders stiffened. They were perilously close to an argument. And Henry despised arguments. He had no tolerance for passionate displays of any kind. “Have you ever had reason to question my judgment?” he asked. “Every decision I’ve ever made has been proved out in the end. Rivenhall Park is evidence enough of that.”

Mark felt a rare flash of pity for his brother. “Human emotion is rather more complicated than the workings of a country estate. You can’t tally it up in a ledger. It doesn’t always balance the way you expect it to.”

“It balances. If one is disciplined enough.” Circumstances had obliged Henry to be disciplined. He was almost soldierly in that regard, more so than Jack had ever been. “You think me unfeeling,” he said, “but I’ve always tried to look after you.”

“I know you have,” Mark admitted. “Though I sometimes question the way you go about it.”

“We each have our talents. Yours is for listening, and being compassionate. And mine is for recognizing hard truths. For choosing the right course and staying it.”

Mark gave him a look. “You might try listening on occasion.”

“I listen enough. But in the end, I must do what’s right for those within my power, though it may make some revile me for it.”

Mark was tempted to laugh. “I don’t revile you. That would take too much effort.”

Henry’s mouth twitched. A threat of a smile. “Not you. Miss Winnifred.”

Mark’s brows lifted. “What have you done to get in her black books?”

“Nothing yet. But I’ll be selling that horse she’s been riding. The one she’s grown so fond of. It can’t be helped.” Henry’s features settled back into a frown. “He unseated her on the road.”

Mark came to an abrupt halt. “Is she all right?”

Henry stopped. “She’s fine. A little shaken, the groom said. But not troubled enough by the event to tell me about it herself. It happened days ago.”

Mark recalled the disheveled appearance Winnifred had presented at the Grange when she’d come to fetch her sister from the garden. “She was probably too embarrassed to admit to it. She prides herself on her riding skill, and with good reason.”

“She has too much pride,” Henry said. “Too much reckless confidence. She’ll break her neck one of these days.”

“Is the horse that dangerous?”

“He’s suitable enough for a man. But he’s not meant for a lady. I’m sending him up to London next week for the sales. I’ll get a better price there.”

“You’ll break her heart.”