That Scandalous Summer (2 page)

“That excuse would be more convincing if you ever left.” It looked as though Alastair had not slept in a week. He took after their late father, as fair as Michael was dark, and normally he inclined to bulk. Not lately, though. His face looked alarmingly gaunt, and shadows ringed his bloodshot eyes.

Some wit had once dubbed his brother the Kingmaker. It was true that Alastair had a gift for wielding power—political and otherwise. But if his enemies had looked on him now, they would have laughed from relief
as much as from malice. This man did not look capable of governing even himself.

Michael pulled open the next set of drapes. Not for a very long time—not since his childhood, spent as a pawn in their parents’ games—had he felt so helpless. Had his brother’s ailment been physical, he might have cured it. But Alastair’s sickness was of the soul, which no medicine could touch.

As he turned back, he caught his brother wincing at the light. “How long since you’ve stepped outside? A month? More, I think.”

“What difference?”

This being the ninth or tenth occasion on which they’d had this exchange, the impulse to snap was strong. “As your brother, I think it makes a great deal of difference. As your doctor, I’m certain of it. Liquor is a damned poor trade for sunshine. You’re starting to resemble an undercooked fish.”

Alastair gave him a thin smile. “I will take that under advisement. For now, I have business to attend—”

“No, you don’t. I’m handling your business these days. Your only occupations are drinking and stewing.”

With his harsh words, Michael hoped to provoke a retort. Alastair had ever been mindful of his authority as the eldest. Until recently, such jibes would not have flown.

But all he received in reply was a flat stare.

Damn it.
“Listen,” he said. “I am growing . . . extremely concerned for you.” Christ, it required stronger language. “Last month, I was worried. Now I’m damned near frantic.”

“Curious.” Alastair looked back to the newspaper. “I would imagine you have other concerns to occupy you.”

“There’s nothing in the papers. I checked.”

“Ah.” Alastair lowered the copy of the
Times
and looked dully into the middle distance. In his silence, he resembled nothing so much as a puppet with its strings cut. Damned unnerving.

Michael spoke to break the moment. “What was this note you sent me?”

“Ah. Yes.” Alastair pinched his nose, then rubbed the corners of his eyes. “I did send that, didn’t I.”

“In your cups, were you?”

The hand dropped. Alastair’s glare was encouraging. “Quite sober.”

“Then explain it to me. Some nonsense about the hospital budget.” Michael opened the last set of curtains, and in the process, discovered the source of the smell: a breakfast tray, abandoned on the floor. Jones had been wrong; Alastair had not touched his plate of eggs. The maids were probably too frightened to retrieve it, and too fearful to tell Jones so.

“Whoever told you that we’re lacking funds was misinformed,” he said as he turned back. Devil take these gossips. He should never have let that journalist into the hospital. But he’d assumed that the article would discuss the plight of poverty, the need for legal reforms.

Instead the reporter had fixated on the spectacle of a duke’s brother personally ministering to the dregs. Ever since, the hospital had been overwhelmed by all manner of unneeded interest—bored matrons raised on tales of Florence Nightingale; petty frauds hawking false cures for every ailment under the sun; and, above all, his brother’s political opponents, who mocked Michael’s efforts in editorials designed to harm Alastair. Had his attention not been occupied by his brother’s troubles, he would have been livid with irritation.

“You misunderstood,” Alastair said. “That was not a report of rumors. That was information. You are about to lose your main source of funding.”

“But you’re my main source of funding.”

“Yes. I’m withdrawing it.”

Michael froze halfway to the seat opposite the desk. “Forgive me, you . . . what?”

“I’m withdrawing my funding.”

Astonishment briefly silenced him. He lowered himself into the chair and tried for a smile. “Come now. That’s a poor joke. Without your funding, the hospital—”

“Must close.” Alastair folded up the newspaper, his movements fastidious. “There’s one inconvenience of treating the poor. They can’t pay.”

Michael groped for words. “You . . . can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

They locked eyes, Alastair expressionless.

Christ
. He knew what this was about. “The hospital was not her idea!” Yes, it had been named after Margaret, but that had been by
Alastair’s
suggestion. Yes, Margaret had encouraged Michael in the idea, but it had been
his
project.
His
creation. The one thing he could do that his brother could not. “The hospital is
mine.
” The result of nearly a decade of his sweat and toil, with the lowest mortality rates of any comparable institution in the country. “Good God! Simply because she favored the project—”

“You’re right,” Alastair said. “It has nothing to do with her. But I have reflected on it at length. And I have decided it was an unwise investment.”

Michael shook his head. He could not believe this. “I’m dreaming,” he said.

Alastair drummed his fingers once. “No. You’re quite awake.”

“Then this is
bollocks.
” He slammed his hands flat on the desk and stood. “You’re right—she deserves no legacy! I’ll call in the stonemasons today. We’ll chisel her name right off the damned façade. But you cannot—”

“Don’t be juvenile.” Alastair’s words might have been chipped from ice. “You will do no such thing. The press would have a field day with its speculations.”

His laughter felt wild. “And you think they won’t when the place suddenly
shuts down
?”

“No. Not if you manage it with some subtlety.”

“Oh, and now you mean to enlist
me
in this madness?” He drove a hand through his hair, pulling hard, but the pain brought no clarity, only added a sharper edge to his disbelief. “Alastair, you cannot
seriously
think I’ll help you to destroy that place—the place I
built
—simply to sate your need for—God knows!
Revenge?
She’s
dead,
Al!
She
won’t suffer for it! The only people who will suffer are the men and women we treat there!”

Alastair shrugged. “Perhaps you can persuade some other charitable institution to take in the sickest of them.”

A strangled noise escaped him. There was no other charity hospital in London with the resources—resources funded chiefly by Alastair, the fifth Duke of Marwick—to minister to every patient in need. And Alastair
knew
that.

Michael turned away from the desk, pacing a tight circle to contain this savage uproar of feeling. This was more than anger. It was a burning mix of shock, rage, and
betrayal
. “Who are you?” he demanded as he spun back. For Alastair always had been a fount of encouragement, both verbal and financial. Study medicine?
A
grand idea
. Open a hospital?
Very well, let me fund it.
Alastair had been his protector, his champion . . . his
parent,
when he was young, for God knew their mother and father had been otherwise occupied. “This is not you speaking!”

Alastair shrugged. “I am as I have always been.”

“To hell with that! You haven’t been that man in—months!” He stood there a moment, his thoughts spinning wildly. “My God. Is this to be her legacy, then? Will you let Margaret drive us apart? Is
that
what you want? Alastair, you
cannot
mean to do this!”

“I anticipated your distress, and I do regret it.” Alastair was studying his hands where they rested, loosely linked, atop his blotter. A
bare
blotter. He hadn’t looked over his ledgers, or read his correspondence, in weeks. All of it,
all
of his business, had fallen to Michael.

He’d not minded it. As a boy, Alastair had shielded and protected him. He’d been glad to repay that debt. But now . . . now the thought of all he’d done recently felt like salt in the wound. “My God. That you would do this to
me
—”

“You’re precisely the reason I do it. And I offer a solution, if you’ll be calm enough to listen to it.”

“Calm!” A strange laugh seized him. “Oh yes, let us be
calm
!” At Alastair’s pointed look toward the chair, he gritted his teeth and sat again. His hand wanted to hit something. He balled it into a fist.

His brother eyed him from behind that desk—that overlarge abomination of a desk, from which their father, too, had lorded it over the world—like a king considering a tiresome petitioner. “I am prepared to make a very sizable settlement upon you, large enough to fund the hospital for decades.”

What in God’s name? “That would be more than
large
.” The hospital treated the poorest citizens of London, and ran entirely on charitable donations.

“Indeed. But there are conditions.”

An uncanny feeling ghosted down his spine. A minute ago, he’d felt as though he did not recognize the man across from him. But perhaps he recognized him too well.
There are conditions.
That had been one of their father’s favorite phrases.

“Go on,” he said warily.

Alastair cleared his throat. “You are generally regarded very warmly in polite circles. Accounted . . .
charming,
I believe.”

His premonition strengthened. According to Alastair’s hierarchy of virtues, discipline and enterprise ranked first; charm appeared somewhere below a firm handshake and basic hygiene. “I won’t like what’s coming.”

Alastair’s mouth twisted, less a smile than a grimace. “Perhaps
too
charming. You must know your reputation. Being glimpsed entering a widow’s town house before noon—that was poorly done.”

Done
three years ago,
in fact. “Christ, but you’ve a memory like an elephant! I’ve never been so sloppy again!” He’d never given another lover cause for complaint. He’d refined discretion to a bloody
art
.

“Your disinterest in politics does not help matters.” Alastair settled his fingertips atop the rim of his brandy glass, turning it in increments. “You are not taken . . . seriously, shall we say. But that must change. You are thirty years old. It is time you overcame your objections to marriage.”

Michael could no longer follow even the smallest bit of this conversation. “What objections? I have no objections.
I’ve simply never met a woman to inspire the thought.” Perhaps he never would. Their parents had offered a very good lesson on
that
count. But what difference? “Whether or not I marry has no bearing on any of this!”

“Not so.” Alastair took up his drink and bolted the remainder. “It bears directly on the family. Unless you marry, the title will go to Cousin Harry’s future offspring. And that is not acceptable.”

“Wait.” Alarm sharpened his voice. “What of
your
future offspring?”

Like a light going out, his brother’s face shuttered. “I will not marry again.”

Christ
God.
“Alastair, you did not die with her.”

He might as well have not spoken. “And so the choice falls to you,” his brother went on, his cadence curiously flat, as though he recited from memory. “I will require you to marry before the year is out. In return, you’ll have the aforementioned settlement, enough to safeguard the hospital until your death, and to make your life quite comfortable besides. However, I reserve the right to approve your choice of brides. Your taste in women to date does not recommend your judgment—and I will not see you repeat my own mistake.”

Michael felt as though he were underwater, hearing through a great distortion. “Let me be clear,” he said. Let Alastair hear how much a
lunatic
he sounded. “I must marry a woman of your choice. Or you will see the hospital closed.”

“Precisely,” Alastair said.

He stood, the ground beneath him seeming to shift. “You need help, Al. More help than I know how to give you.” God help him, he did not even know where to
look
for the kind of help that Alastair needed. An institution? Every instinct in him recoiled at it. And how would he even enforce such treatment? His brother was the bloody
Duke of Marwick.
No one could force him to do anything.

Alastair rose, too. “Should you refuse my conditions, the cost will be more than your hospital. You will need to look for new lodgings; you’ll not be welcome any longer in the flat on Brook Street. Also, of course, some form of employment. When I cut off your allowance, you’ll require an income.”

Michael’s laugh felt like a razor in his throat. He had not been treated this way—bullied and ordered—since their father’s passing. And to endure such treatment from
Alastair,
of all people. “You can’t take the allowance. It was designated to me in our father’s will.”

Alastair sighed. “Michael. You’d be quite surprised by what I can and cannot do. That said, I do not expect to deprive you very long. Given a taste of poverty, you will no doubt revisit your intransigence.”

Intransigence?
He took a ragged breath. “Let’s not pretend, here.” So difficult to keep his voice even, to speak in a manner that might persuade his brother to listen, when anger was bidding him to scream. “Your threats, my . . .
intransigence
—they have nothing to do with your concern for heirs. This is about
you
.” He’d assumed this isolation to be a passing phase, a peculiar manifestation of his brother’s rage and grief. But for Alastair to make such threats . . . why, it was his soul they were battling over. “You’ve let her win. You’ve given up. On your
own life
. My God!”

His brother shrugged. “I must plan for the future. Once the news comes out—”