Once Upon a Marquess (The Worth Saga 1)

“Salt makes everything better,” she had said then. “Here. Try it now.”

Amazingly, Theresa had eaten it. Ever since, it had been a household favorite. Which just went to show that children were disgusting.

But it didn’t matter. If she could make Benedict’s life better with turnip sandwiches, she’d spoon out all the salt in the world.

“You don’t have to lecture me,” he said, cramming a full quarter of the sandwich into his mouth and talking around it.

She hadn’t lectured him, so she just waited.

“I know how important my role is. I’m to go to Eton. I’m to make friends and pave our way into society and take my place as earl one day, and…and…” He faltered. “I don’t want to let you down, Judith. Nor Theresa, nor Camilla. But I can’t go back. I can’t.”

“Here,” Judith said as he bolted down the last bit of crusty bread. “Have another sandwich.”

He took it.

“I know,” he said through a mouthful of food. “I’m a Worth. Worths do impossible things.”

She had told him that a thousand times.

He contemplated the toasted bread. “I tried. Really, I did. I tried being friendly, and they pummeled me. I tried being meek, and they pummeled me. I tried asserting myself, and they pummeled me. I offered them the ginger-ginger biscuits that you sent the first week as a peace offering. They took them. Then they pummeled me, and thereafter, they just stole them out of hand.”

Her stomach hurt listening to this bare recital. Her fingers clenched around the sandwich plate. “Who are they?” Judith asked innocently.

Not innocently enough. He looked over at her. “I didn’t try being a snitch, Judith,” he said scornfully. “It’s beneath me, and besides, it wouldn’t work. They’d just pummel me again.”

“You wouldn’t be snitching,” Judith said matter-of-factly. “Just disclosing a fact to your dear sister in confidence.”

“Oh, well, in that case.” Benedict shook his head. “Did you know I was born yesterday?”

Judith remained diplomatically silent.

“I know you, Judith,” Benedict said. “You’re imagining talking to them. You’re thinking of how you can fix things, figuring out some way that you can make V—” He coughed. “Make them into my friends. But you can’t fix this. You can’t.”

He did know her. He knew the precise direction of her thoughts, questing forward. She just wanted everything good for him.

But even before he’d been pummeled, as he put it, Benedict had always acted older than his physical age. He looked up at her with eyes that said he understood how things worked now, that he knew better than to try.

It broke her heart that he should think so. He’d been hurt, and he’d decided there was nothing to be done about it.

This isn’t going to happen. Not this way. Not to my little brother, she promised him. I will fix it. I will fix everything.

She smoothed back the hair on his forehead. He looked up at her with wide, unblinking eyes, eyes that seemed like little oil lamps illuminating her.

Judith set her hand on his shoulder. “All right,” she whispered to him. “We’ll figure out something later. Sleep well.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek.

“Did you have a sandwich?” he asked her. “You need to eat, too.”

He was too young to be so old.

She crossed the hall to her next charge. Theresa, unlike Benedict, was sitting up in the bed that she shared with Judith. Her nightrail, a thick blue flannel, fanned out around her feet.

She was idly rubbing the cloth in her fingers. She was going to wear it out prematurely. She always did.

“Good night, Theresa.” Judith might have scolded her for the cloth, but she’d scolded her enough as it was today. Any more, and she’d always be screaming at her sister. “Do you need anything?” she asked instead.

Theresa nodded. “I want you to tell me a bedtime story.”

On another night, perhaps Judith might have obliged. Tonight, she wanted to go back to her desk. To look over her current project upstairs. She wanted to think of Anthony’s journals—she had no idea why Christian really wanted them.

But when he had said they would be a comfort…

Up until that moment, he had looked precisely as she had expected Christian to look: confident, charismatic, and far too attractive. For a moment, though, he’d looked…weary. Bereft.

He should be bereft. He’d practically killed her brother.

She wanted to be able to feel all the things she hadn’t let herself feel during the day, and she couldn’t do it around her sister. She felt achy inside.

The novel from the lending library on Theresa’s nightstand—something set in the time of Arthur—was the last thing she wanted to look at. Who wanted to read about courtly doings and brave deeds on a night like this?

She gave her sister a smile instead. “Theresa, I have so much to do. Do you really need me to read to you as if you were a child again?”

“Oh, no,” Theresa said with a puzzled frown. “Of course not. I don’t want you to read me a story. I want you to tell me a story.”

Judith sighed. “Tee, none of the stories in my head are suitable for bedtime.”

“I want you to tell me a story about Anthony.”

The smile Judith had been keeping on her face froze.

Oh, God. She should never have told those stories in the first place. Years ago, when she’d believed Anthony was still alive, she’d brought out his journals to read to her siblings at night. But dry lists of men he’d encountered when he’d accompanied her father on that ill-fated ambassadorial trip to China, along with descriptions of the trade deals they’d made, had not made for good bedtime reading.

Judith had improvised. Instead of sitting in tents and reading reports, Anthony had fought off pirates. He’d caught sharks. He’d bargained for exotic trinkets and fought with swords.

Theresa knew that the stories had been stories. She had, after all, accompanied Anthony on that exceedingly boring trip. She had still adored Judith’s tales, demanding they be told again and again.

“I scarcely remember him,” her sister was saying. “I keep trying to hold onto the things I know. I know he loved me.” She ticked these off on her fingers. “I know he called me ‘Teaspoon.’ I know when I used to fly into one of my rages that he was the only one who could calm me. I know he gave me the best hugs, like he was wrapping me up and squeezing me. He told me he would always be there for me when I needed him. I’m forgetting everything else.” Theresa looked up at her sister. “I know I spent those two years on the ship with him and Father. I should remember him better than anyone. What if I don’t remember him when he returns?”

Oh, God. The evening had wanted only this. Judith sat on the edge of her sister’s bed and tried to stay calm and collected. “Theresa. Sweetheart. My memories can never be a substitute for yours.”

Her memories were spiked, sharp things. She had watched her brother’s trial. He’d not said a word in his defense. She’d watched his conviction, too. She’d ached as he sat in the dock, his face not changing as the evidence against him mounted. Speak, she had wanted to scream. Speak.

Anthony hadn’t spoken. She wasn’t sure who he had been protecting. Maybe her father, if she was being honest; when the evidence against her father had come out, the House of Lords had not yet convened. Anthony had stood trial first. He hadn’t spoken at all. She’d watched him take his sentence of seven years’ transportation without a hint of emotion. She’d traveled to Plymouth to watch him board the prison ship that was supposed to take him to Fremantle.

Judith had been the one to first read the newspaper report: His ship had encountered fierce weather. It had been blown off course, had landed not in Australia, as planned, but on the coast of Sumatra, of all places. When the population of prisoners was accounted for, Anthony had not been present.

“But at least you have real memories,” Theresa said. “I don’t trust mine. I r

emember—” She cut herself off with a sidelong glance at Judith. “I don’t even remember what he looks like.”

Judith had waited and waited to hear anything about her brother after that ship had sailed. A year had passed, then two. She had hoped and hoped. Back then, she’d had nothing but hope.

“Theresa,” Judith said softly. “I want you to consider the very real possibility that…”

That our brother is dead.

“That I might lose all my memories?”

“No.” Judith shook her head. “You won’t. You’re fourteen, now. You won’t lose memories that easily. But it’s not the memories that matter, darling. It’s the feelings you have. What are the feelings you have for Anthony?”

Theresa looked upward. “I used to think that the world could not spin correctly on its axis if he were not present.”

“I’m sure you’ve learned otherwise.”

“Oh, no.” Theresa shook her head. “I’ve just learned to walk off-center.”

The world is never returning to center. He’s not coming back.