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But Ago’s voice was rough. And he felt that roughness straight through.
“Does she love you?” Tiziano asked.
And something inside of Ago seem to shake, and keep shaking, until it broke. It was a shattering so intense that he wasn’t sure that there would be anything left of him at all when it was done.
If it was ever done, for there seemed to be no end in sight.
“How would I know?” he gritted out.
And though inside him everything was shattered glass and a deep howling, he could still see the way his brother’s face filled with the sort of compassion he would have said Tiziano did not possess. When really, now that he was seeing things more clearly than perhaps he ever had before, he suspected that he was the one lacking these crucial building blocks that everyone else on earth seem to possess.
Especially Victoria.
He thought of the way she’d melted in his arms. He thought of the way she’d given herself over to him when they had come back from Rome, holding nothing back. He had a simple, perfect memory that could have been from any morning at all. Catching up with her as she walked through the fields and tangling his fingers with hers. The passion between them might have kept them up at night, but it was the simple things that he remembered now. The way she had always held on so tight. The way she tipped her head up to look at him, and smiled.
He could not recall ever deserving her generosity, but she had given it anyway.
He remembered their evenings together, lingering at the table as they had debated the kinds of things he hadn’t spoken about with anyone since his Cambridge days. The merit of this novel or that. Some bit of philosophy, or scrap of poetry she’d read. He had been shocked to discover that Victoria, while unable to boast of the sort of Oxbridge education he’d had as a matter of course, had read widely, deeply, and with the kind of rapt attention he wasn’t sure that most Cambridge first years gave to their subject matter.
Not even him.
When he’d said something to that effect, she had made a face.
What else was there to do in all my years of genteel imprisonment?She had laughed at that, though now, Ago wasn’t sure that he would.The entire purpose of books is to expand even the most limited horizons. I know they did mine.
And there he’d been, with every advantage of the world and more besides, thundering about threatening to limit her even further. While she stood at the base of the stairs, surrounded by portraits of his ancestors, ripe and round with his child.
And she’d spoken to him of love, the one thing he knew nothing about.
“Our father loved our mother,” he said now, though it hurt him. And he thought it hurt his brother to hear it, too. “Do you remember that he always said so? With all his heart, he loved her. And in the end, it was her undoing.”
Tiziano stared. And then, slowly, ran a hand over his face. “I suppose it could have been a factor,” he said, not quite committing to his usual drawl. “But I rather think it had more to do with the opiates.”
Ago couldn’t process that. His heart set up a wild clamor behind his ribs. “What? You are mistaken. She was unwell.”
“She was an addict,” Tiziano corrected him, and not as if he had the slightest doubt. “And more than that, brother, she was a selfish woman who was remarkably good at blaming everyone around her for her problems.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Tiziano’s mouth curved, though his eyes were bleak. “Of course you don’t. It was kept from you, the better to hammer into you that you and you alone should stand as the paragon of virtue they never were. Grandfather was eternally outraged that he was unable to convince our grandmother that she ought to love him when she’d made it clear she never would. And Father? Where do you think a simple girl like our mother learned to experiment with so many lovely pills? Neither one of them ever stopped to consider that the main problem in their marriages was them.”
Ago couldn’t tell, now, if the floor beneath him was moving or the world was suddenly spinning too fast. He only knew he was near enough to dizzy with it, and he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from his brother.
While Tiziano said these things that should have been impossible.
Even if some of what he said Ago already knew was true, because Victoria had told him.
“What you’re saying is not possible,” Ago argued anyway, with the strange, unsteady notion deep inside that he was fighting for his life. “They were the best of men. Upright, dutiful, wholly dedicated—”
“To rolling responsibility downhill, Ago,” Tiziano cut in. And he was warming to the subject. “To pretending that any problem they had was yours to solve. Talking endlessly about legacies, and doing nothing to preserve their own.”
Ago could only stare at his brother, though he was afraid that all he could see were the ghosts of the men he’d spent his life trying to make proud of him.
In a way, he had seen nothing but them, all this time.
And Tiziano was still speaking. “And even if you don’t believe a word I’m saying, think of this. Both of them died bitter men. Is that what you want? Both of their wives preferred the company of intoxicants to their presence. Does that sound appealing to you? Think, Ago. You have a child on the way.”
“Son,” Ago managed to croak out. “Victoria is giving me a son.”
