“Were they not aware of your political writings, then?” asked Arthur.
Lydia felt the corner of her mouth lift. “Some of them. Two of my brothers.”
“Two of how many again?”
“Four.”
Arthur’s brows rose.
Her mouth curled up further. “All older.”
“I have heard Mrs. Hope-Wallace say that Lydia did not walk until she was two or speak until she was nearly four,” Georgiana informed the earl.
Lydia laughed a little. “I had no need to. My brothers carried me everywhere and spoke my mind for me.”
They still would, if she asked, and she felt the familiar tangle of emotions when she thought about her brothers.
Theo, Jasper, Gabe, Ned: All four of her brothers accepted her exactly as she was. They had never tried to force her into the mold of a perfect, outgoing debutante, nor had they tried to pressure her to marry one of the fortune hunters who had proposed in her first and second Seasons.
She was grateful to them—always and endlessly. But some part of her was resentful too, a creeping dissatisfaction that made her feel guilty and a little ashamed. It had always been the same: Lydia did not need to speak for herself because someone was always there to speak for her.
She had let them build a wall around her life, thinking it protection, and somehow that shield had become a cell.
Her journey to Scotland had never been about marriage, not really. It had been about choosing the person she believed she could be over the half life she’d let herself inhabit.
“And only two of your brothers know about your writings?” Arthur inquired.
“Yes, Ned—he’s the closest to me in age, and he knew from the start. I lured him in as my accomplice. And Jasper.”
Charming, rakish Jasper. He had come to her already knowing about her writings, somehow—she had not asked how. Jasper always seemed to find things out through the very force of his personality.
She’d begged Jasper not to tell Theo. Theo had become head of the family at fifteen when their father had died, and he had never stopped approaching his role with painful seriousness. She did not fear that Theo would try to stop her, precisely—no, she feared he would be sick with worry over her actions, and that was almost worse.
“All right, duckling,” Jasper had said, nudging her with his shoulder. “Only let’s not get thrown in jail, please? For me?”
They’d spoken of her writings exactly one more time, when Jasper had made a few offhand remarks about how she might keep her identity a secret. They had seemed like casual suggestions until Lydia had thought them through later and realized how perfectly each proposition solved an issue she had worried about.
Fun-loving, complicated Jasper. Sometimes she suspected she was not the only Hope-Wallace with secrets.
“And you mean to go back to them?” Arthur asked. “After all of this is done?”
“Yes. I suppose… I suppose I shall tell them we’ve been in Sussex this whole time.” She would have to leave out the zebras. It was almost a pity—Ned would have loved the story, and Theo would have turned all sorts of interesting colors.
There was a pause, a brief tentative silence, and then Arthur said abruptly: “You’re fortunate.”
She blinked up at him. He looked chagrined by his own words, his lips pressed together in a harsh line.
“Me?” she asked. “Why?”
He did not seem at first to want to answer; he put her in mind once more of an ill-tempered bear. But finally he unbent enough to say, “To know you have them all to go home to, I suppose. To have someone in your life who grew up alongside you. Who can hold the memories of your childhood with you.”
Her heart squeezed a little. “It must be difficult not to have such a thing.”
“That’s why ’twas so easy for Davis to get round me, I suppose. Because I wanted to believe him when he came back to Strathrannoch and called it home. It has always been home for me, even when he didn’t see it that way.”
“Were you happy there? Growing up at Strathrannoch?” She had not meant to ask it, not really, only—only she wanted to know.
“Happy?” He said the word as if it were unfamiliar in his mouth. “I suppose so, in many ways. I always loved the land and the people. I’ve never left Scotland, never wanted to. But… do you know how, sometimes, you love something more because it’s so much damned trouble?”
