“Fouled it with his friends the very next year.”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “My brother was colorful. He made people laugh and his friends were wild.”
“They burned down a barn,” she said.
“They were practicing breathing fire.”
“And you rebuilt it.”
He shook his head. He was leaning against the battlement across from her, his hands shoved in his pocket. “He paid for it. Father saw to that. Took it all right out of his pocket money.”
“But he didn’t do the work.”
“He was the heir. They don’t do the work.” His mouth was twisted as he spoke, and she heard a note of resignation in his voice. He knew his place in Cornwall and had long since stopped fighting it.
She folded her arms. “He went hunting with his friends and was so drunk he nearly killed some of the tenant children.”
“He was a stupid teenager. He regretted it immediately and sent a guinea to the parents.”
“You were the one who stopped him. You grabbed the gun and tossed it into the ocean.”
He winced. “I should not have done that. The pistol was a favorite of my father’s.”
Which his brother stole and used to go hunting when he was too drunk to see the difference between a child and a rabbit.
“Why do you hate Bob Mellin?”
“What?”
“Your tenant. Bob Mellin. His wife is Anne, his son—”
“I know who they are. How do you know them?”
“Everyone talks of him. Said you told anyone they would be kicked off the land if they gave him so much as a drop of ale. He’s to have water and nothing else until he can walk again. Some say you broke his leg.”
“He broke it himself driving a wagon when he couldn’t stand straight. Fell right off and snapped his leg in half. He could have smashed his brains if he had any, but he doesn’t, and his damn fool wife won’t leave him.”
She tilted her head in surprise. “You want her to leave her lawful husband?”
“He’s a mean drunk, and he’ll kill her one day. I can’t stand to see a good woman destroyed by an idiot man.”
“Why did she marry him?”
He winced and slumped further against the battlements. “I don’t know for sure.”
“But you suspect something.”
He came forward and flopped down on the blanket beside her. His gaze went to the stars as he exhaled in a long slow breath. She wasn’t sure he’d speak, but in the end, he told her the tale. “She was sweet on my brother. He was never going to marry her. As an earl—”
“He had to marry an aristocratic wife.”
“Yes.”
“But he ruined her?”
He looked up at her. “I don’t know. I just know that suddenly she was going to marry Bob though he was a drunk even then. Peder encouraged the marriage. Even gave them an exorbitant wedding gift.”