Page 88 of Again, Scoundrel

And she knew with a dreadful certainty what it felt like to have your brother lying on his deathbed. That sinking pit of despair in one’s stomach, the surreal surge of pain through one’s heart. She wouldn’t let Alistair face it alone.

But as they traveled through the dark streets of Surrey, she knew she wasn’t telling herself the whole truth either. It would take hours on horseback to arrive at Kent. Her body would take a thorough beating. And she of a certainty had caused a minor scandal at Catherine’s betrothal ball of all places by sneaking out after Alistair Crawford. The mothers would be furious with her.

No, she wasn’t going to Kent for Darius alone. She was going to hold on to every last moment she could with Alistair. Even if those moments were bittersweet for her and grief-filled for him. She wanted them just as she wanted him.

But that didn’t matter. Not now.

She pushed away any further thoughts of Alistair and her motivations to accompany him that weren’t related to his brother’s fever. She concentrated instead on all Williams had told her of Darius’s illness.

The fever, he’d said, had come on suddenly after Darius had been out with the tenants. And the surgeon had visited once already but offered no specific diagnosis, which meant it could be anything. Cholera, diphtheria, influenza, smallpox, tuberculosis, typhoid—there were many fevers, all of them potentially fatal.

She ran through the various possibilities as she rode and compared it against the catalog of symptoms in her mind. The quicker she could figure out which illness Darius had, the better his chances of survival. And if it was contagious, which it likely was if he’d gotten it out visiting tenants, she could stop it from spreading.

Violet glanced up at Alistair, the fading lights from Surrey illuminating his face as he turned to her at the same moment. His mouth was still set in that grim line he’d worn in the stables, the one that had almost made her forget the whole idea and go back inside.

But she hadn’t faltered then, and she wouldn’t now. She smiled brightly and waved instead. It was all she could think to do, when her fingers wanted to press gently into the worried lines of his forehead. And her heart wanted to hold him in her arms to ease his grief and worry. And her mind wanted him to understand that she could help his brother; that there was a chance all would be well.

She clenched her thighs more tightly around the dappled gray. It would be a long night for them both.

Every time Alistair turned to look at Violet, which was decidedly more often than he wanted to admit, she was still behind him. Following him, like some reverse Orpheus, out of the hell that was an aristocratic betrothal ball and to his brother’s sickbed in Kent.

Or is Kent hell?

He wasn’t sure. It would be if his brother died and trapped Alistair under the weight of the Marquessate and the responsibilities of title, land, family, and tenants. He didn’t want any of it. That life was for Darius, not him.

Except that Darius was not who he’d thought his brother to be either. And for the first time in nearly a decade, he realized that perhaps none of them were. His mother and father must know of his brother’s homosexuality. They must have, sometime in the last decade, accepted it as part of who Darius was. It was unheard of for a Marquess, and yet he could not deny the evidence of that acceptance every time he saw his family together.

His mind reeled at what that might mean. That his issues with his father, born long ago of something that had not been his fault, might, at least in part, be his own fault now.

Hell’s teeth.

He thought he’d come to peace with what his family was to him. His mother and brother were rarely seen strangers for whom he felt a kind of distant affection. His father was an unpleasant mystery he’d avoided like the pox for the better part of a decade.

Who are they really?

Who are they now?

He didn’t know. But he was riding through the night to find out. And that struck him as an act of love. One he hadn’t known he had in him.

He hadn’t known—

Bloody hell—

He turned to see the barest outline of Violet behind him. His heart swelled at the sight of her and cracked painfully open, stiff from disuse.

Love.

It was fierce, he realized. Not the swooning emotion of poetry or the flowery words of courtship. It was crossing the Atlantic to be with your cousin who needed you. It was riding for hours in the dead of night to care for the sick.

It was Violet.

He loved her. He really did. He’d known it since the evening he’d spent in her arms, but watching her now, love enacted, the strength of what he felt nearly knocked him off his horse.

And she loved him too. He was certain of it. Just as he was certain she didn’t know it yet. And that until she did—until she could admit to herself that she felt what he felt and let go of whatever was holding her back—they would not be together.

And that would be the most painful part of it all.

He still hoped she would balk, turn her horse around and return to Surrey. There would be no comforts on the long journey ahead of them. No stopping except to change the horses and no gaslights to illuminate their way. It took courage to ride through the night, relying entirely on the sense of the animal underneath you as your guide. He knew very few men who could manage it and not a single woman.