“I grew up with four older sisters,” Harry said. “I’m very fond of them, but they were somewhat overprotective of me. I was very much their little brother and even now they would like me to continue in that role.”
She chuckled. “As is the prerogative of older sisters with a beloved younger brother. And vice versa, I should point out.” Tobias was back in her head again. She cleared her throat of the lump that had lodged there. “My own brother was five years my senior and for a while quite doted on me. Until he went up to Oxford and…” she hesitated. “Fell in with a group of young gentlemen my father strongly disapproved of.” The beginning of the end, if she’d but known it then. But she’d been barely thirteen, and couldn’t understand why the brother she’d loved all her life had changed so much.
Harry’s face gave away his curiosity. She’d never told anyone about Tobias, though. Geoffrey had known, of course, but no one else knew, not even Melissa now she was a young lady. The longing to confide in Harry burgeoned. A longing she’d never felt before. “He shot himself,” she said, almost stumbling over the words in her haste to get them out. “Thankfully, he did so several years after the death of my parents. They never knew he’d lost all the money they left him. The house, everything. And then shot himself.”
“Oh.”
She could read the compassion in Harry’s eyes. They were like dark, peaty pools. She could drown in those pools if he let her. If she let herself…
He pulled an expression of resignation. “I’m sorry for your loss, Miranda. The death of someone young is so much worse than the loss of someone who has lived a long and full life.” He paused as though considering his words. “As a military surgeon for a number of years,I’ve seen my fair share of self-inflicted wounds. A man can only take so much.” His eyes sparkled with unshed tears. Who for? Had he lost someone the same way? For the first time in over ten years Miranda felt the urge to cry about her beloved older brother. She’d never spoken with Geoffrey about him since his death. In fact, Geoffrey had ordered his memory packed away like the dirty secret he considered it. She’d certainly never been allowed to cry over him.
These were the first words of comfort she’d ever heard concerning Tobias.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I appreciate your kind words.”
Harry smiled, a gentle, sad smile. “When you’ve been in the army as long as I was, you see a great cross-section of humanity. Some men can cope and go stoically on, into danger every day, heedless of the roar of guns, the smoke, of death racing headlong towards them. But for some this is too much. For some the only way out is death. The fear of it coming for them is greater than the fear of it happening here and now. I’ve known a few take their own lives because the fear of what was to come drove them to it.” The tears still sparkled there, unshed.
She swallowed, gazing into the kindness in his dark eyes, convinced he wasn’t just saying this to comfort her. He meant it. He’d seen it. And even though he must know that Tobias hadn’t taken his own life for fear of going into battle, he’d understood that it had been fear that had driven him to his own death, and not blamed him for it.
She had to wipe the tears from her own eyes with unsteady fingers and was relieved to see he’d deliberately looked away from her to allow her to do so.
Yes, he would make a very suitable, caring husband for Lissy.
