A darkness seemed to briefly cross his face and was gone so quickly she thought she imagined it.
“Actually, my two closest friends and I returned to England together.”
“Do I know them?” Oliver asked.
“Rothford and Knightsbridge,” Lord Blackthorne answered.
The Duke of Rothford and the Earl of Knightsbridge,she thought in surprise. No lowly soldiers, those men. They’d purchased commissions in their youth, and would have been Lord Blackthorne’s superiors. It seemed he got on well with authority, unlike her brother.
“They have both sold their commissions and officially retired from the army,” Lord Blackthorne continued. “So when I return to India, it will be without them.”
Return to India.That phrase sent a surprising shiver of sadness through her. She wanted him gone—why did the thought so disquiet her?
The silence grew tense, and Cecilia felt a need to change the subject. To Lord Blackthorne, she said, “So what childhood memory did you discuss with your fellow soldiers on those long lonely nights?”
“I had little to say,” he answered, smoothing his hand over the cover of the book almost absently.
“You were so very perfect as a child?” Oliver taunted.
“ ‘Boring’ is the better word,” Lord Blackthorne said wryly. “Every chance I got, I played with my toy soldiers and staged elaborate battles in the library. My mother permitted me to keep them set up for days, so that I could conduct entire wars. And when I outgrew that, I buried myself in war history and battlefield memoirs.”
“You really were boring,” Oliver said, setting a song sheet on the piano, then leaning against a sideboard to contemplate his ever-receding brandy.
Lord Blackthorne’s childhood sounded lonely to Cecilia. “What did your brother do while you prepared yourself to be a soldier?”
He shook his head with bemusement. “He released frogs onto my battlefields, dragged me fishing, and occasionally agreed to a sword battle with sticks.”
“We could still fence,” Oliver interjected.
“No sharp weapons,” Cecilia reminded them, but inside, she felt glad that Lord Blackthorne’s brother had played with him. He had those memories—she had memories, too. And they never discussed them, as if Gabriel hadn’t existed. Obviously, even her father kept quiet about his son, for Lord Blackthorne had never heard of him.
“Our brother Gabriel was a daring prankster,” she said, glancing at Oliver. “Do you remember when Gabriel confronted that pack of wild dogs in Bombay?”
Oliver tensed, and she worried she’d made a mistake.
“Your brother had to be quite young,” Lord Blackthorne said.
“He was eight.” Oliver took a sip of brandy. “Cecilia told him to stay in the carriage, but he wouldn’t. I egged him on.”
“Our family used to take carriage rides in the evening along the Esplanade,” Cecilia explained. “It was near the seashore, and there were rotting carcasses and... other things thrown there by the fishermen. The smell—” She gave a shudder, and said to Oliver, “Do you remember?”
“How could I forget?” he murmured.
Cecilia turned back to Lord Blackthorne. “There was a pack of wild dogs that fed there, and if you were foolish enough to leave your carriage to walk the sand, they would attack. Gabriel was determined to see how far from the carriage he could go before spotting them.”
“I assume your parents didn’t approve,” Lord Blackthorne said.
“Of course not.” Cecilia smiled. “But Gabriel had it all planned, and darted out of the carriage before Mother could stop him. He chose a night Papa wasn’t with us. While she shrieked, and the coachman hesitated to risk his own life, Oliver and I crowded the single window to watch. Gabriel went twenty paces before the dogs appeared over the nearest mound. We screamed his name, and he ran back, vaulting into the carriage, falling onto the floor laughing, while Mother slammed the door shut and pounded on the roof for the coachman to drive off. We were all flung back by the speed of those panicked horses.” Her smile faded. “He was very daring.”
“And it killed him,” Oliver said, turning to look out the window as if he could see anything in the night.
“How did he die?” Lord Blackthorne asked.
She winced, but Oliver didn’t respond. It had been ten years, after all. She found she didn’t want to tell the story either.
“Go ahead, say it,” Oliver prodded, looking down at her where she sat hunched on the piano bench. “You brought it up.”
Something in her eased when he didn’t openly blame her for Gabriel’s death. But she had enough guilt of her own.
