‘Have you tried knocking?’ Freddie whipped his gaze to Edward, who held up his hand. ‘There is no need to glare at me quite so fiercely. I am only trying to be helpful.’
‘Could you be helpful elsewhere?’
Edward sighed. ‘Come on. This is getting you nowhere.’ Edward slung his arm around Freddie’s shoulders and led him away from Emily’s bedroom door. Freddie glanced back several times but it remained closed.
‘You probably think I am being pathetic,’ he said as his brother guided him to the back of the house.
‘I would make some sort of jest here about you always being a sorry excuse for a human being, but it seems cruel to kick a man when he is down.’
They made their way to the Blue Lounge. Freddie had spent more time here in the last few months than at any previous time in his life.The extreme blueness was starting to grow on him, or maybe it was the recollection of what he and Emily had done on the settee.
‘It is a little early in the day for brandy,’ Freddie said as Edward poured them both generous measures.
‘You look like you need it.’
Freddie didn’t argue as he took the glass and swilled the amber liquid around. ‘I do not understand what is happening.’
‘Did you argue?’
‘No.’ Freddie had turned everything over in his mind during the endless night. He had done nothing wrong.
‘Could someone have said something to upset her at the ball?’
It was possible, but Freddie liked to think Emily would have come to find him if that were the case. He’d hoped they were more than a married couple, that they had become friends. Last night and this morning had proven they were not as close as he had begun to hope they were. While he was desperately in love with her, she thought him someone who needed to be kept at arm’s length, someone she could not confide in when she needed to. He was trying to be a man about it, trying to be stoic and keep a stiff upper lip, but it was very difficult when he wanted to cry. Being a man was damned hard work sometimes. ‘I do not know if anyone spoke to her at the ball. I did not see her after we were announced as a family.’ He took a sip of his drink. ‘She should have told me she was leaving.’
‘Yes.’
‘I should not have had to find out after an hour of searching for her. I thought that something awful had happened.’ Edward nodded. ‘She is my wife.’
‘Not sure you needed to add that last part. You have made that very clear in the time we have been living together, somewhat nauseatingly, if you do not mind me saying.’
Freddie ignored the last bit of that; who cared if he was obvious in his devotion to Emily? Not him. He was past that, had been over that for weeks now. He no longer cared if the whole world knew his feelings for Emily. ‘You know what I mean. This is a partnership. I treat her with respect and I would like the same courtesy in return. I do not deserve to be shut out or locked in.’
Edward froze, his glass halfway to his mouth. ‘None of us deserved to be locked in, Fred.’
Freddie’s breathing slowed. He hadn’t meant to say that last part, but it was true. Neither he nor any of his brothers had ever done anything that warranted being locked away. They had been children. Emily’s behaviour shouldn’t be bringing back memories of that time and yet somehow it was. By taking herself away from him, she was isolating him in a different yet horribly familiar way.
‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘that I am surprised by her behaviour. It is out of character.’ He remembered the fierce words she had used to defend him when he had told her about his aunt’s treatment of him. He very much doubted she would want to remind him of that with her own behaviour.
‘You will have to talk to her, Fred.’
Freddie nodded. ‘I know.’ He didn’t add that he had the strangest sense that if he did not do it soon, some part of their relationship would slip through his fingers and he might not ever be able to get it back.
‘Tobias has agreed that we should hire someone to investigate Sebastian’s death,’ Edward told him.
‘What?’ Freddie shook his head.
Edward grimaced. ‘I am sorry if this is not the right time to discuss it. I thought you might like the distraction, but I can see that now is not the time.’
‘No, it is fine.’ Freddie took another slow sip of his drink, his mind only half on what Edward was saying despite the seriousness of the conversation. ‘Have you found someone suitable?’
‘I have found the perfect person, but he is stubbornly refusing to agree to my terms. You are the most personable of us brothers after all. Perhaps you would visit him with me and help me persuade him to take the case.’
‘Of course.’ It was a mark of how upset he was that he did not want to gloat over his brother’s unexpected compliment. He went to take another sip of his brandy before stopping himself; now was not the time to get blindingly drunk, nor even a little. ‘I do not want to at this moment, however.’ He was not going anywhere until he had sorted everything out with Emily.
‘Of course not now. I get the impression part of the problem is that he hates the upper classes. It would not do my case any good if we turned up reeking of brandy.’
The door clicked open; Freddie bolted upright only to slump back down when he saw Christopher entering the room.
