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“Are you suggesting you wouldn’t make a good friend?” Why in heaven’s name was he so fun to goad? “Because I can assure you, I am an excellent friend. Besides, if you can’t trust the distant nephew of your worst enemy, who can you trust?”
Finally, a smile broke through across Lord Brooks’s face. Alice’s heart did a strange flip, one that left her feeling quite warm.
“All right, then.” Lord Brooks shifted in his chair, angling around to face her better. “My mother passed when I was barely out of leading strings. My father joined her when I was only fourteen.”
So young. Her heart ached for that boy.
“I had no other uncles or grandfathers,” Lord Brooks continued. “So at a very young age, I was expected to run my father’s many holdings.”
“But surely there was a man of business you could rely on?” Alice had fiercely depended upon her late husband’s man of business since his passing.
“There was a man, one IthoughtI could trust. But I was impressionable and foolish.”
“You were young.”
“Yes, well, Mr. Grant took advantage all the same. He acted quite sorrowful at the death of my father, claimed he would take me under his wing. After a few months of seeing each other regularly, he suggested I had too many lands to manage. He said he’d looked over things with my man of business and one estate in particular was more of a drain than anything. He offered to take it off my hands, to ‘save’ me from the destruction the estate would surely bring me.”
Alice had a sinking feeling she knew where this was headed. “He paid you a very small sum for a very profitable estate.”
Lord Brooks nodded. “It wasn’t until I attended University that I went back and reviewed the actual numbers.” His gaze met hers. “He paid me less than one tenth of what that piece of land is worth today.”
That sounded like something her father would have done. Yet another sickening plot carried out behind the eyes of society. “What of your man of business? Why did he not stop you?”
“I did some digging after I realized I’d been taken in. Turns out my man of business had been paid off by Mr. Grant to hoodwink me. I threw him out, of course, but this was years after the fact, and there was little that could be done.”
Alice stretched her fingers out, wanting to place a hand against his arm or shoulder, wanting to reassure him that all was not lost. She stopped herself, curling her fingers back in and resting her fist against the arm rest.
“Which estate was it?” Alice asked instead.
“Langdon Hall.”
“The estate near Kent?”
“The very one.”
She’d been there only a few months ago. It was a most profitable estate, indeed. One of the best she’d inherited from either her father or her husband. “Then I am sorry to hear it.”
Lord Brooks tossed his folded paper onto a side table. “Let us talk about more enjoyable things. I don’t like to hold onto the past.”
“Oh?” Alice said, unable to keep all the challenge out of her tone. “Is that why you insist on scowling at her ladyship whenever you are both in the same room?”
“Ah, she’s told you then?”
“She may have mentioned it in passing.” Talking about herself as though she were someone else was getting easier. It was yet another odd change that Alice wasn’t sure was a good thing or not. This change, however, at least helped protect her secret.
“I suppose it is not so very gentlemanly of me, but I don’t care to be bamboozled by another Grant.”
“You think her just like her father?” What a disheartening thought.
“Unlike you, she has Mr. Grant’s blood in her veins. So yes, I don’t deny that I am wary when it comes to her. And then there’s that look I see in her eyes.”
Alice’s face went from lukewarm to blazing hot. A heady awareness spread through her. “Excuse me?” What look in her eye? What did that even mean?
Lord Brooks shook his head. “Forget I even said it.”
Not a chance. “You can’t say something like that about a man’s cousin and then not explain.” And did he see the same thing in Mr. Allen’s eyes?
Did helikewhat he saw in her eyes?
