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"I shouldn't have had to. Yes, I handled it. I had himhandled." A gentleman who cares to not make an international incident manages situations like that delicately, but the outcome was the same. The one who'd tried to defile her was feeding the fishes, my hands are clean, and my future clear. But that didn't mean Ruby is recovered.
"He didn't manage much," Benedict says, as if that excused his lack of action on the matter. I make a sound in the back of my throat that has him jerking his head up.
"He didn'tneedto, she is damaged all the same. And all of her brothers should have been there with her. It should not have been up to only me. So tell me, what exactly has kept you away from us all this time?" I pin him down with a gimlet stare I perfected in Europe. It's good for reminding other men of their place in life, even my betters.
Benedict's face is starting to show the first hints of age, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes folding there, telling me that something deep, something dark, has been dragging him down in the months since our last meeting.
It's that face that seems to transform as I press him for answers, and his eyes darken, jaw tightening in fury. My stomach turns, clenching. This is not the same brother I left behind when Ruby and I went on our travels. This is someone else altogether, and as the fire of anger licks up inside his eyes, I realize something.
He has become like me. Hard,harder, because we've had to be.
"Do not test me," he says, his voice pitched low, but his tone anything but soft. And with that threat hanging in the air, he turns from me, and goes back to the billiards table. My stomach refuses to unknot.Something, something terrible, has happened to my middle brother, and I'm not sure what I've brought Ruby into, but our home is not the safe place for her it once was.
One look from my brother has told me all I need to know. He is ruthless, and has some other goal than simply being a noble dandy. Whatever that plan is, that singular focus of is, it's a mystery to me, for now.
My guard will need to be up here, perhaps even more than it was in Europe. And I'll need to get to the bottom of what has taken control of his heart and stolen his thoughts, and destroy it.
Even if it's the nanny.
Especially if it's the nanny.
32
Eva
"And don't forget, she's going to need her dressbeforethe luncheon, so get it now," Mrs. Harris says to me, and I groan internally. There just isn't… time for this. I've got so much to do today, and now…? One more trip out to the laundry, and my legs are already screaming from all the running around I've done.
I hurry down the stairs, leaving Mrs. Harris to huff and puff her way along the upper halls. At least my bed is soft, and I'll be able to collapse into it tonight.
I turn the corner and gasp, nearly running into a broad, firm chest. My gaze skates upward, and of course, being my luck, it's him. The youngest brother. Lord Noah King. He might be the youngest, but that's not to say he'syoung. He's older than me, a stern look on his face.
"I'm sorry, my lord," I say, with a brief curtsey, not able to meet his eyes any further.
"Hold for a moment," his words carry the same weight as Mason's, although his eyes? They remind me of Benedict. Mischief and something else hiding in them I can't quite put myfinger on. The absolute entitlement of a man who believes he's right to take what he wants, and to hell with what I'm actually needing?
No, maybe not that. But something close to it.
"Of course, my lord," I say, still doing my best not to look right at him. Unfamiliar nobility are an unknown entity, and I don't know what side Noah falls on.
If he falls on either side. If he even knows what his middle brother is plotting against the eldest. Would he care? I have no idea what the family relations are like between the three. It's been so busy that barely anyone spared the time to talk about the twins while they were gone, least of all to me.
"So you're the one who has charge of Madeline's care," he says, his voice smooth and silky, wrapping around a core of danger I sense is there.
"Yes, for a few months now. She's a brilliant young lady," I add on the end, hoping that'll endear me to him. He clears his throat, part-chuckle, part something else. I lift my head to look at him fully, trying to steady my breathing.
This isn't the first time I've been in front of a noble, and given where I'm currently living, it won't be the last. I have got to calm the fuck down. But even as I try to breathe in deep and slow, my heart races, my eyes searching his face, chasing the hints of Mason and Benedict in the lines of his jaw and his cheekbones.
His eyebrows mirror theirs, but his nose is entirely his, refined and distinct.
And his eyes.
Deep green whorls I could get lost in. My body feels like it's starting to sway, as if the ground is falling out from under me.
"I don't see you in the magazines like I do the marquis," I blurt out, for stupid reasons, to distract him from the fact that I'm staring at him, maybe.
His mouth tugs into a sly smirk.
"Benedict is loud. I'm quiet," he says, and takes a step toward me, closer. My skin hums with electricity, his nearness is too much. But if I step back, that's rude. The corners of his eyes crinkle.
