“Of course I would have—”
Davis turned sharply, his eyes bright and vehement. “Would you? If I’d told you I needed the scope but I could not tell you why? If I said I’d been lying to you—to everyone—for nigh on half a decade but I could not explain any of it?”
Arthur’s chest felt tight, and he had to look away as Jasper ahead of them angled his horse down an alley and picked up speed.
Would he have trusted Davis? He would have wanted to. But his beliefs about Davis had been informed by a lifetime of rivalry, by five years of lies. What he thought of his brother—and of himself—had been twisted up into a wrong shape and had long ago calcified.
What would it have taken to break away from that old familiar shell? What would have been required to shatter it?
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I don’t know what I would have thought. But I can tell you truly now that I understand why you acted as you did when it comes to the rifle scope. But why”—his jaw went tight, and he had to force himself to get the words out—“why did you lie to Lydia?”
Davis shook his head. “I don’t understand how any of this happened. She was never meant to be involved. She was meant to be at home, safe and unaware of all of this. I…” He hesitated. “I was going to tell her. When all of this was over, the French agents captured, I was going to tell her the truth.”
“I don’t understand why you lied to her in the first place.”
“I never intended for it to go this far. I thought to gather some intelligence—I did not even know her identity at first! ’Twas half a year of passing information to the Home Office before I learned she was Hope-Wallace’s sister. And then—Christ, by then the lie had gone on so long I did not know how to extricate myself and still—and still—”
“Still what?”
Davis’s horse pressed forward, its head outstripping Arthur’s mount. “Still keep her!”
The words lodged somewhere between Arthur’s ribs, a hot heavy weight.
It had not been one-sided, then. They had had feelings for one another, Lydia and Davis. That much had not been a deception on Davis’s part.
Davis was not a traitor. Lydia had believed in him, and she had not been wrong.
All those letters—all that correspondence—Davis and Lydia had been aligned in truth, not just in pretense. Davishadbeen the man Lydia had come to Scotland for. Arthur had been wrong.
“What would have been left if I told her the truth?” Davis saidharshly. “How could she forgive me once she knew I’d deceived her?”
“Davis—”
His own gray horse had nudged forward again, but Davis pressed his knees into his chestnut’s flank and shoved ahead. “No, goddamn it. I wanted her to choose me—to wantme—and all along she believed that I was you. Do you know what that was like?”
“Of course I do.” His horse rocked into a canter. They were coming past Jasper, squeezing together through the narrow alley.
“Strathrannoch,” Jasper snapped, but Arthur waved him back.
“I recognize the streets. I know the way.”
Davis’s feet in their stirrups jostled Arthur’s own. Davis’s voice dropped, a clear imitation of the old earl. “You’re all surface, boy, no substance—that’s what he used to tell me. You were the steady one, the one he trusted with the estate, with the tenants. I was good for nothing so much as dinner parties. Even with Lydia, ’twas your name—your ever-honorable bloody words—that won her over.”
Arthur almost could not make sense of his brother’s words.Hehad been the one his father had trusted?
Davishad been the favored son. Davis had been the one their father had made much of—the one he’d sent to Eton, the one he’d taken to meet his friends. The earl had told Arthur—again and again, with his words and his actions—that Davis was the son he valued more, the one who ought to have been his heir.
But—the realization was slow and sweeping, crashing like a wave through his understanding of their past.
Their father had sought to foster rivalry between them. Their father had told Arthur time and again that he was less worthy than his brother.
But what had he told Davis?
Arthur had assumed that when they were alone together, the earl had praised Davis, the same way he’d always done in Arthur’s hearing.
But he did not know that, not really. He had not heard what their father said in private.All surface, Davis had said,no substance. He could hear it in their father’s voice—the way the earl would have said the words and laughed.
Arthur had not seen it. It took him hard and suddenly—how many things about his brother he had failed to see.
