Titus had made himself comprehensively Not At Home since the ghastly rout party. “I thought we weren’t admitting anyone.”
“No, sir. I felt you ought to see this gentleman.” Mr. Thorpe was looking at him meaningfully. Titus felt a rush of pure dread.
Henry had not liked Titus ending their relationship at the time, and he liked it even less now Titus was rich. The letters Titus had opened had moved from joyous celebrations of the good fortune they would share, to complaints of his cruelty to a man whose only fault was loving him too much, to ranting threats about how he would regret his silence, interspersed with promises of forever that felt like threats. If Henry had become sufficiently enraged by Titus’s silence to present himself in person—
Mr. Thorpe was waiting. Titus swallowed. “This gentleman. Is—is his name Henry Morris?”
“No, sir.”
Titus could have collapsed from relief. He was so overwhelmed by it that he almost missed Mr. Thorpe’s next words: “He gave the name of Mr. Vespasian Pilcrow.”
“What?”
“Vespasian Pilcrow, Mr. Pilcrow.”
Titus stared at him. Then he bolted for the parlour.
He arrived in a flurry, throwing the door open. A tall manwas considering one of his favourite paintings. He turned at Titus’s entry.
“Ves,” Titus said, breathless, bewildered. “Ves?”
“Titus.” Vespasian looked older: of course he did. Older, thinner, somehow different. Titus wasn’t sure what it was in his face, but this was not quite the brother he’d known. “It’s been a long time.”
“Yes. Yes, it has,” Titus said numbly, and held out his hand. After a second’s hesitation, Vespasian took it and gripped it briefly. “Tea? Or sherry?”
“Sherry. Thank you. I hope you’re well?”
At that polite, routine query, something inside Titus snapped. “Well? Yes, I’m well. I’ve been very well over the last, oh, six years in which I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you and my letters were returned, and— Whathappened?”
Vespasian grimaced. “The short answer is, I needed a new start. A new life. Could we sit down?”
Titus ignored that. “A new life, without me in it?”
“It wasn’t you. It was Augustus, and Father beyond him, and thirty wasted years as understudy to a part I didn’t want. Ten of those labouring for Uncle James in his miserable pettifogging practice. I couldn’t bear the family any longer.”
“Including me,” Titus reiterated, the hurt throbbing through him.
“Yes, because you were part of the family! An obedient part who didn’t object to his role. If I was to get away, I had to get away from all of it—not just Father and Augustus, but even myself. I needed to clear my head of it all.”
“And that took six years?”
“No. No, it didn’t, but… well, time passed faster than I realised, and…” Vespasian tried a smile. “It’s all very well to make a dramatic exit, but one does feel rather awkward when one wants to enter again. The truth is, I walked out of yourlife when I walked out of the family, and by the time I was ready to return, I couldn’t find a way.”
“My shop door was open between ten and five, six days a week,” Titus said furiously. “Red Lion Street. I didn’t move.”
“I know that. And I also know how it looks that I have come back now. To be honest, when I saw your good fortune in the news sheets, I vowed I would never see you again.”
“What?”
“Oh, come,” Vespasian said hotly. “To turn up on your doorstep and find myself side by side with Augustus expecting tribute—I suppose he has lost no time in demanding a share of your wealth? I didn’t want to do the same. I didn’t want you to assume the worst.”
“I would not,” Titus said. “Of course I would not.”
Vespasian’s set shoulders dropped slightly. “No, I know. When your man tracked me down—after asking some damned impertinent questions, I may say—he told me that you hoped I would get in touch; that you missed me; that I need not fear you thinking me a purse-hunter. And I thought, if you had sent him for me—”
Titus had been trying to interrupt for several seconds. “Wait!” he almost shouted. “Wait. What? Myman?”
“Your fellow who found me. Well, he said he was from you,” he added, at Titus’s doubtless dumbfounded expression. “No? Short fellow, French? Count Something?”