A Kiss For Midwinter (Brothers Sinister 1.5)

“It’s been over a year. And you’ve enough money in the bank, there’s no need to worry.”

“A year? Faugh,” Mr. Grantham grumbled. “It’s been a few weeks at most, and I’m feeling better already.”

That was one of the things that had begun to go wrong. In the first few days after his father’s heart attack, he’d seemed confused and stricken. But he’d survived, and even if Lucas found himself short of breath most of the time, Jonas had harbored hope. That hope died more everyday. It wasn’t just his father’s body that was failing, but his mind. His sense of time had melted away. He no longer remembered that it had been months since he was able to leave the bed. And he’d focused on bringing in scrap iron, more and more of it. Perhaps some part of him believed that if he could only bring in enough, if he could fill is home with the rubbish that had made up his past, that the future wouldn’t come.

Jonas had tried everything. One time, he’d even hired a pair of men to go in and forcibly clear the house. But his father had shrieked and carried on. He’d called for the police, in fact, and when they had come, they had regretfully informed Jonas that as it was Mr. Grantham’s house, and as he did in fact own the rubbish, it would be theft if Jonas removed it.

That had been a lovely day, his father threatening to have him prosecuted if he continued. Now, he simply tried not to upset the man.

At this point, Jonas could have recited the relevant section in Conolly’s Indications of Insanity from memory. “Where the individual has always been eccentric, the eccentricity will probably be increased by age. For one unacquainted with the previous habits of the patient, he may seem to be mad, although, perhaps, merely a humorist, who has in declining life become a little more childish in his humors.” Mr. Grantham was still the same man he’d always been—a little dour, a little suspicious, and extremely frugal. It was just that those qualities had been refined over and over until he could think only of scrap and scrap metal, until his home had become a veritable midden, with himself appointed as King of Rubbish.

All Jonas had to do to stop this was to have his own father declared incompetent.

“You’d be married by now, I wager,” his father said, “and giving me grandchildren already—if only you still saved fastenings.” This was said with a sad air. “Now you’re all alone.”

Jonas might once have pointed out that he was twenty-six years old—that his father had married far later than he, that he might still have his choice of a dozen women. But there was some truth in what his father said.

Oh, not the folderol about fastenings. As for the rest…

He could have been married last year, but for his fascination with Lydia Charingford.

The mornings when he tipped his hat to her on the street were always the brightest. He smiled when he saw her. He saw so little hope in the world, and she saw far too much. There were days he wanted to sit and watch her, to figure out where all that good cheer came from.

He knew he tended toward gloom. It made him consider blood poisoning and heart attacks when someone else might see a touch of indigestion. Those carefully considered worst-case scenarios made him a good doctor, but they also made him feel like a dark little raincloud.

When Lydia Charingford was around, though, he felt like a smiling dark little raincloud. He liked the way she saw things, even as she baffled him. He liked the way she saw all the world…except the portion of it that contained him.

He was the one person she didn’t like. He should have given up.

But every once in a while, he’d catch her eye by accident, and the blush on her face when she turned away… That alone had kept him from moving on.

He knew he should have said something—something other than stray, blunt remarks that never turned out well—but it was difficult to talk to a woman who always thought the worst of him. Besides, she’d become engaged to Captain Stevens six months ago, and Jonas wasn’t the sort of man who would encroach where he had no right.

Months had gone by. He’d called himself a fool. In love with another man’s fiancée? Now that had been truly insupportable. But then she’d ended the engagement.

“You’re right about that,” he said to his father. “It’s time I made up my mind on that front. I don’t suppose you’d agree to clean this place out if I married within the year?”

“Clean this out?” his father echoed, looking about him. “I suppose I will, at that.”

Jonas looked up sharply. “You will?”

It was time—past time—to attempt to win her over, notwithstanding all the many defects in his personality. His father’s agreement on this score was all that he had been waiting for. If he succeeded, she’d make him happy. And if he failed…it was long past time for him to choose someone else.

“’Course I will,” his father said. “I told you, the only reason it’s piling up a little now is that I’m not on my feet. Once I’m well again, I’ll take care of it all.”

Jonas sighed, and judged that promise to be as worthless as the junk that spilled out of boxes around him. “Of course you will,” he said, looking upward. He’d been hearing that from his father every day for the last year, and every day, he could mark another sign of his increasing fragility. “Of course you will.”

“WELL, MISS CHARINGFORD,” JONAS SAID, “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here.”

Miss Charingford traced the edge of her scarf with her finger. It could no longer be called a morning sun, that brilliant light that spilled through the plate glass window in the front parlor of her parents’ home, but it was only just past noon. The light kissed the face of the eleventh prettiest woman in all of Leicester, and Jonas felt jealous.

But she didn’t look at him. She simply shrugged. “Not at all, Doctor Grantham,” she said. “I’m not wondering. Wonder requires thought; thought requires concern.” She looked over at him and raised one eyebrow. “And concern, Doctor Grantham, requires me to care about your motives in the first place.”

Which I do not. She left that implied, but unspoken.

“I am constantly amazed by you,” he said. “To say that you view the world through rose-colored glasses would be the greatest of understatements. You don’t just see things tinted in pink; you see a world that is pink all the way through.”

She gave him a tight, forced smile.