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He laughed in surprise. “I was not very interesting as a child, I’m afraid.”
“A lie, I’m certain,” she teased sleepily, her hand playing lazily over his stomach.
“Oh no. It’s the truth. Nathaniel, on the other hand, was the exact opposite.”
“You loved your brother very much, didn’t you?”
He cleared the sudden, inexplicable thickness from his throat. “I did,” he answered.
She nodded, her hair rubbing against his chin, as if he had verified something she had guessed all along. Then, “Tell me about him.”
He blinked, his hand tightening on her arm. “You wish to hear about Nathaniel?”
“I do,” she murmured.
Though the words were slurred with exhaustion, he could hear the sincerity in them. It had been so long since he’d talked about Nathaniel with anyone besides his mother. Even then, she didn’t speak of him with any regularity, her pain over his passing still achingly deep, an endless chasm that he feared would never be scaled.
When he spoke again he was hesitant, carefully prodding those memories he’d purposely repressed, testing the flavor of the words on his tongue. “My brother was…vibrant. He was all light and color. There was a natural exuberance to him, a passion for life. And people flocked to him because of it.”
“You admired him.”
“Yes.” He smiled, something he had not thought to do again when speaking of Nathaniel. His chest lightened as he continued. “How could I not? He was everything I ever thought a person should be: kind and compassionate, talented and cheerful and giving. But more than that, I knew he loved me. He never left me in any doubt of it. It was in everything he did.”
“He sounds incredible.”
“He was. Now, go to sleep.”
She shifted more fully against him, her arm stealing about his waist, her leg draping over his own. “I’ve no wish to sleep yet,” she grumbled. “Tell me a story of the two of you as children.”
He chuckled, rubbing his hand along her arm. “Has anyone ever told you that you can be stubborn?”
He felt her cheeks lift in a grin. “Oh, certainly.”
He laughed again, wracking his mind for a memory that might pacify her. Finally he lit upon something.
“I was not the most eager pupil. I could not focus enough to retain anything my tutors tried to teach me. I wanted to be out and about, playing at being a soldier, riding hell-bent for leather over the countryside. My tutors were forever at their wits’ end with trying to keep me contained.
“My father was constantly on me to be more like Nathaniel, who was an ideal pupil. He excelled at everything, was quick and smart, never missed a lesson. You would think I would have resented my brother. On the contrary, it only made me love him more, even while I was painfully aware that I could never live up to his example.
“Nathaniel was kinder to me than I was to myself. He knew that what I needed was more time out of doors, not less. And so, unbeknownst to me, he used his never-ending charm to convince my father to allow him to take over my lessons for one day. If I came away from it having learned something previously beyond me, my father must promise to implement this new method of learning there on out.
“And so, the following day, Nathaniel woke me at dawn, declaring it a holiday for us both. He then proceeded to take me about the grounds of our estate for a day of fresh air and exercise. I didn’t think to question the game he made up of playing catch while reciting sums, or of the fun we had spinning our father’s globe and pretending we were visiting whatever country our finger happened to land on, or of writing letters in the dirt with sticks, pretending we were leaving notes for explorers to find.
“At the end of the day, my father took me before him and quizzed me. And I was able to recite things I hadn’t been able to before. And my father changed my lesson plans the very next day.”
He laughed softly. Damnation, he hadn’t thought of that in years. He could still remember his father’s astonishment and the bold wink Nathaniel had given him when Daniel had finally understood what he had been about all that wonderful day. It warmed him, that memory, reminding him of happier times before he had gone off to war, and found his childhood ideals crushed. Before Nathaniel had lost his life in a horrible accident.
But Margery was quiet. She must have fallen asleep. It made him inexplicably sad, for some reason. He realized then he wanted her to know these things about him, about his brother. In sharing his memories, it was as if he had not lost Nathaniel; not completely, anyway.
Heaving a sigh, he settled more fully into the mattress, knowing he must leave soon though he ached to stay. Suddenly her voice drifted to him, quiet and gentle in the still night air.
“Thank you for telling me about your brother.”
He smiled into her hair as he felt her drift off to sleep in his arms. “Thank you for listening.”And thank you for healing my heart a bit.
Chapter 15
When Margery finally awoke the following day, the sun was already at its zenith. And yet the loss of half a day was not the most surprising thing. Nor was the fact that Gran had actually allowed her to sleep, especially considering how anxious she must be for information regarding Clara and Quincy’s child. No, the bulk of her surprise lay in her disappointment that Daniel wasn’t in her bed when she opened her eyes.
