“Who’s to say I won’t do the same?” Reaching over to squeeze her hand where it lay on his arm, he said, “What if I botch it? Yates has already ensured that they are wary of me. How on earth am I going to change that?”
“By being their older brother. You are not their papa, so do not try to be that. Instead, be their sympathetic brother. Listen to them. Ask them questions about what they want and need.” She patted his arm. “Most importantly, try not to lose your temper. It is important that they see you restraining it.”
He gazed at her a long moment. “When did you get to be so wise?”
She blushed. “No one ever calls me wise.”
“Doesn’t mean that you’re not.”
Determined not to let him see how gratified she was by the compliment, she went on the offensive. “You will not think so later when I demand to know exactly how many women you have been intimate with in your thirty years.”
He gave a start. “What makes you think there were more than the six who were in court today?”
She rolled her eyes. “Please do not take me for a fool. A man does not gain a reputation like yours by being with only six women.”
He shook his head ruefully and lowered his voice. “Then it’s a good thing we aren’t really marrying. Because you have an uncanny ability to root out a man’s worst behavior.”
“I do. What is more, that kind of ability only improves with age.” She smiled coyly. “And you had best not forget it, sir.”
Chapter 11
The ride back to the town house seemed interminable, and not only because the five of them were crammed into one coach, with the boys on one side and Heathbrook and Giselle on the other. Truth was, Heathbrook didn’t have the faintest idea what to say to the lads or how to put them at ease.
By being their older brother.
That was easier said than done. He had barely been their older brother in his youth. Father had packed him off to Eton at the age of ten before Evan or Kit had even been born. After that, he’d only seen the two of them during holidays and had never even known Zachary. Jon, Percy, and Scovell had become his brothers instead, first at Eton and then at Verdun.
Perhaps he could start there. “So, lads, from what I’ve been told, you have not been to school anywhere since a year after Mother’s death. I had heard you’d been at Eton until now, but my attorney’s investigators found out that was not quite the case.”
Evan looked at him with a cool-eyed stare eerily like their father’s. “That’s right. Kit and Iwereat Eton for a while after Mother died. But Cousin Yates eventually decided to hire us tutors instead. He said we would gain a better education that way.”
And would not have the undue influence of lads like Heathbrookand his friends at Eton? Either that or Yates had known it would make them more reliant onhim.
“I can continue that if you prefer,” Heathbrook said. “Or I could send you back to Eton if you like. Father sent me to Eton himself.”
“You would really let us choose?” Evan asked.
Heathbrook’s heart settled like lead in his chest. God knows they’d had few enough choices given them in the past ten years. They hadn’t chosen to have the two oldest men in the family leave them. Or for their parents to die. Or to be taken out of a school they were used to.
He cleared his throat. “Of course you can choose. You and Kit are old enough to make such choices, I daresay.”
Zachary thrust out his lower lip. “I want to choose, too. I don’t want to go to school. Mother said I wouldn’t have to.” He gazed out the window. “Before she died, I mean.”
Leave it to the one brother Heathbrookdidn’tknow to break his heart.
“I liked school when I was there,” Kit announced. “But am I too old to go now?”
“No. You can always go to university if you prefer,” Heathbrook said. “I’d be happy to send you if that’s what you want.”
“You didn’t go to university,” Kit pointed out.
“No. Instead I went on a trip with Father and didn’t come back for over eleven years. So, I am definitely too old for school.”
A smile crossed Evan’s lips before he caught it and went back to being aloof.
“You can take some time to think about it,” Heathbrook went on. “Since the Michaelmas term is already in session, you can’t start just yet. And the next term doesn’t begin until January, so you have plenty of time to decide. We’ll be traveling to Longmead tomorrow, and I can hire you any tutor you like to get you through until the next term.”
“Willshebe going with us to Longmead?” Zachary asked, jerking his head to indicate Giselle.