Giff cast a distasteful glance around the room. Yet another instance of the dismal style that characterised the Keep, though its accoutrements were rich. Maroon velvet curtains adorned the ornate bed, the dresser was of mahogany inlaid with a Chinese design and the chairs were upholstered in heavy brocade. Only the late summer light coming through the windows relieved the sombre atmosphere.
Piers had evidently just finished partaking of some kind of broth, or perhaps the threatened posset. He handed the empty bowl to his valet and scrunched up a napkin lying on his lap.
“Take this, Bines, it’s a mess.” He waved Giff forward with his free left hand as the valet relieved him of the offending napkin. “Thanks to you, cousin.”
“Because you are obliged to use the wrong hand? Not for long, more’s the pity.”
A grim smile crossed the man’s face, but he turned to the valet first. “Leave us, Bines. Stay! Send Dunford up with wine.”
The man hesitated. “Dr Egerton did not advise it, sir.”
“To hell with Dr Egerton! What do you think I care if it sends me into a fever? Fetch it!”
Bines bowed and removed himself. Giff took his place by the bedside, eyeing Piers, who was already flushed.
“Going as fast as you can to the devil, Piers?”
“What do you care? It would suit you down to the ground if the wound festers and I die of it.”
Giff grunted an oath. “Well, if you’re determined to go to perdition, we’d best talk while you’re still able.” He looked about, spied a straight chair set against one wall and went to fetch it. Plonking it down by the bed, he sat, stretching out his legs and shoving his hands into his breeches pockets. He read dislike in his cousin’s face as he watched these manoeuvres. The sneer was back in place.
“Well, cousin. You’ve taken the point. What is your will?”
Giff raised his brows. “So easy, Piers?”
The other shrugged unwarily and winced, hissing in a breath. “Damn you!”
“Are you damning me for the suffering my handiwork is causing you, or for winning?”
“Both. And for existing.”
To his own surprise, Giff was conscious of a sliver of hurt. He crushed it, snapping back. “I regret incommoding you by living, Piers, but my doing so does not lessen your crimes. You tried to be rid of me, but still I’m here.”
“Yes, I can see you clear, I thank you. May I know what you propose to do with me?”
The mocking tone irritated Giff, but he held back the urge to respond in kind. Bickering would get them no further forward, and he had urgent questions.
“That must depend.”
“On what? If it’s promises you want, I’m in no position to refuse to make them. But I tell you now I’ve no intention of running in your harness.”
“In other words, you’d revert to your own interests the minute my back is turned.”
Piers’s lips curved in the sneering look he’d clearly perfected. “I’m relieved you understand me so well.”
Giff hardened his tone. “I understand this too. You’ve coveted what is mine from the start. And I’ve a pretty good notion why.”
A wary look came into Piers’s eyes. He seemed to study Giff before answering. Weighing his response? “It’s true I’ve long been fond of the place. Unlike you, I grew up knowing it.”
“You lived at the Keep?”
Piers looked away. “No. Like Uncle George, my father took orders. He had the vicarage in Uncle Henry’s gift. We lived not a stone’s throw from the estate.”
“My father let you run tame here, I surmise.”
Piers’s head whipped round, his eyes fierce. “Why not? When his own son had been taken? We became close. He taught me as he would have taught you, had your mother not stolen you from him.”
The words were roughly said, but Giff detected an edge of pain under them. Had Piers grown up resenting his inferior position? Chafing at the thought he could never own what he so freely enjoyed? Giff could well imagine it and felt reluctant sympathy. While he had flourished under Papa Matt’s benevolent rule and his mother’s unstinting affection, his inheritance left behind but secure — or so Matt had thought — Piers had been encouraged to think himself hard done by because he could not partake of it.