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I found myself wondering if there was more to it than that. If I were a young boy with a rebellious heir for a sibling, I’d probably look up to him. Actually, thinking of Matthew, I knew what that was like completely.
“I have an older brother too,” I told him.
Frederick looked down at me curiously. “Do you? What’s he like?”
I smiled. “Matthew? He’s…” I tipped my head. “He’s kind of like Xavier, actually. Not as big, and his temper isn’tquiteas bad. But he’s smart and kind of broody. Doesn’t smile enough. Really loyal to his family. Like, would do anything for us.” I rubbed my palms on my knees, suddenly aching for my family. “He took care of Sofia and me for years. Let us live with him when we didn’t really have anywhere else to go.”
Frederick, I realized, was an uncommonly good listener. His body language turned to me slightly, yet completely, and he watched me until I was finished speaking before he looked away. There was no judgment in his light gray eyes, and it occurred to me I assumed he was just like his mother when, in fact, he’d barely said anything at all around her.
“Why didn’t you tell Xavier?” Frederick asked after a moment’s thought. “About Sofia, I mean. I can’t believe he would abandon you. He would have supported you, too, I’m sure of it.”
“Would he?” I frowned, looking back at the house.
I had thought so briefly, but now I wasn’t so sure. Xavier would have given us money. But I wasn’t sure he understood how to really take care of another person. It required so much more than money could buy.
“It’s what he did with Imogene’s sister, before she died, and they weren’t even involved like that,” he said.
I bit my lip. I didn’t want to think about Imogene right now. Sometimes I wondered if she resembled Lucy more than people said. I wondered if that was why Xavier never seemed to rebuke her completely.
Frederick was quiet for a bit longer, picking a daisy from a weed growing at the base of the bench and fiddling with it a bit before speaking again.
“I was only six when Xavier came to Kendal,” he told me. “The duke had just married my mother, you see. But then he had that accident, and it was obvious he couldn’t have any more children. Mother even left him for a bit, and we went back to live with my grandparents. There was talk of another divorce, but it was just a separation in the end. I suspect Mother liked being a duchess too much to end it completely.”
I bit back a snort, despite Frederick’s wry tone. That seemed very true to Georgina’s character.
“Then Xavier’s mother died, and so he came to Kendal until he could start at Eton.”
I blinked. “That must have been…interesting.”
I could only imagine what Xavier had been like after losing his mother, and then coming here with the understanding that he was a mere illegitimate offspring—with no right to any of the grandeur that surrounded him. He would have been so sad. But probably very angry.
“I was young,” Frederick said. “But I do remember, there was this one night Xavier found me crying in the library. I don’t know why.” He gave a crooked kind of smile that told me, even at six, this was embarrassing. “Young gentlemen are not supposed to cry.”
“I think that’s what men of all ages learn pretty early on,” I said. “Gentlemen or not. Complete malarkey.”
“Yes. Well. Xavier found me, but instead of leaving, he smiled and told me to wait there. Then he dragged a duvet and some pillows in from the bedroom beside the library—they were Mother’s.” Frederick chuckled at the memory. “I couldn’t believe it. Mother would have boxed my ears for even entering her chamber, but Xavier didn’t care a fig what anyone thought. He draped the duvet and the pillows over the Chesterfield in the library and built a fort for the two of us. And then snuck down to the kitchen and brought up some ham and cheese. We had a proper picnic, right there on the floor while he read to me fromWind in the Willows.”
“I’ll bet he enjoyed that too,” I said. “More than you think. Even at sixteen, boys like to play more than they let on.”
Frederick only shrugged. “Perhaps. But you know, I was the one smiling about it, not him.” He gave me a long look that seemed much older than twenty-two. “Since you’ve been here, I’ve seen my brother smile more than all the time I’d known him. It’s clear to me that you make him happy. Even if we do not.”
I opened my mouth to respond but found I didn’t know what to say.
Did I make Xavier happy?
All we seemed to do lately was fight.
“Thank you for telling me, I—Adam?”
Frederick turned, and we both watched as the last person I expected to see came walking down the path into the gardens: Adam Klein, looking for all the world like he knew his way perfectly around the maze of hedges and flowers. Like be belonged here. Like he thought it was all his.
“Frankie,” he greeted me, albeit not particularly fondly. “You’re…here.”
He sneered, but the action made him wince. His entire face was black and blue from the effects of yesterday’s brawl. He wasn’t wearing a brace, but it did look as though he rather needed one.
“I am,” I said. “And so are you.Whyare you here?”
“Not to get another broken nose,” he supplied helpfully as he came to stand in front of us, prompting Frederick and me to join him.
