A Kiss For Midwinter (Brothers Sinister 1.5)

“You’re late,” was what he said.

“Forgive me.” The words came out sarcastic and hard. “I was unavoidably detained, treating the injury caused by your carelessness.”

“My carelessness! If Henry had not been so clumsy—”

Jonas set the tray down in front of his father. “Do not talk of Henry to me at this moment. What am I to do with you? I can’t ask anyone else to come into this house to look after you. It is downright hazardous.”

“Hazardous? To those who are unable to walk in a straight line, perhaps, but—”

“I would call it a pigsty, but the greatest danger a sty presents is the possibility of mud. This place is a death trap, and I should have done something about it sooner. The only way you could make it more of a menace is if you installed spring-guns and man-traps.”

Lucas Grantham squared his shoulders as best he could. “You should have done something?” he echoed, his voice arctic. “It is my home, my responsibility. Did I raise you to talk to me in that tone of voice? Tell me, did I?”

Jonas set a bowl of soup and a piece of bread in front of his father. “You didn’t raise me to mince words in the face of stupidity.”

“I raised you to respect your elders,” his father spat. “To respect their wisdom and experience. To treat them with the courtesy that they deserve.”

He had. His father had taught him to respect the old. If Jonas did that, though, he’d be prescribing prussic acid and traipsing merrily from autopsy to examination of infants. The elderly were as much a repository of hoary myths as they were keepers of wisdom. They’d just learned to voice their superstitions with greater authority.

And what did respect for his father even mean under these circumstances? Did it mean doing as he was told, keeping his mouth shut and his hands behind his back, no matter what the consequences?

“You also taught me to do what I believe to be right.” He laid out a spoon. “I’m having a crew in tomorrow,” he bit out. “And they are going to clean this place out.”

His father almost choked. “I’ll—I’ll have the constable in again, I will. Thief—that’s what you are, no better than a thief!” His face turned florid and blotchy, and he raised a fist in the air, shaking it. “You just want me to be dependent on you, to have nothing of my own. What kind of son are you?”

“Calm yourself.” Jonas took hold of his father’s wrist in some alarm. The pulse was hard and irregular, racing at a worrisome rate. He’d had one heart attack once, and that had left him in his current weakened condition. Another one…

“Calm myself! How can I calm myself when my only son is threatening to remove my livelihood?”

Once, Lucas Grantham would have shouted those words. Now, he could scarcely draw breath to speak them loudly. But his face reflected his fury, red and mottled.

He reacted this way any time Jonas suggested taking anything away. It was beyond rational explanation. He’d simply become fixed upon his scrap metal. The person he had been in his life was still there, but he’d hardened and solidified around this irrational core. Even if Jonas did hire a work crew—even if the constables allowed it to happen—he suspected that his father would work himself into an injury just watching. How could he do that to him?

But the alternatives—to let it go undone, or worse, to rob his father of all his dignity and to actually etherize him, as if cleaning his house were an act of mental surgery—were equally unpalatable. There was no good way out of this situation.

“No, no,” he said soothingly. “You misunderstand me. I won’t be removing anything from the premises.” It wasn’t lying, what he said. Just a change of mind, a change of tactics. “I just…”

He sighed, and thought of Lydia. He wasn’t sure how his project was going. She’d talked to him today. He didn’t think he’d shocked her too badly.

“There is a young lady I would like to bring to see you,” he finally said. “Her name is Miss Lydia Charingford, and she is very dear to me.”

His father lowered his fist. His breathing slowed. “A young lady?” he echoed. “That’s good, Jonas. Is she pretty?”

“Very pretty.”

Pretty didn’t even begin to describe Lydia.

“I want you to meet her. All I want is to have some people in, to…rearrange things.” He winced at the thought. “To put some of the loose items up in boxes. You know ladies these days, Father, with their wide skirts. After Henry’s accident, I’d hate for anything to happen to her if she should brush up against the wrong pile.”

“Just rearranging?” his father said in a querulous voice. “Not…not getting rid of anything, are they?”

“Just rearranging. I promise. Perhaps some of the boxes might be put out back, to make a little room. And then we can find someone to come in and do for you until Henry is on his feet again.”

His father’s pulse had returned to normal. His skin was no longer so dangerously flushed. For now, the crisis had been averted. He picked up his spoon and took a bite of soup. “That’s good,” he said. “So tell me about your Miss Charingford. How did you meet?”

LYDIA SPENT THAT NIGHT IN A DAZE. She scarcely heard her father and mother speak over dinner. She returned her mother’s queries as to Mrs. Hall’s health with a minimum number of words—there were children; Lydia had given them oranges—and tried not to think about all the things that Doctor Grantham had said.

She was not successful. Men and women couldn’t talk of intercourse like that. If they could, it meant that all the pain she’d suffered out of ignorance had been heartbreakingly preventable. She couldn’t think that.

And angry at him about what had happened? She wasn’t angry at him. What a ridiculous idea. She didn’t care about him, not one iota.

She thought that as she sat with her mother after dinner, embroidering. She often sat with her mother of an evening; on nights when he had nothing else to do, her father would join them. Tonight, however, it was just her and her mother, sitting together in companionable silence.

She didn’t care about Grantham. Maybe, every time she saw him, he made her want to look away. But it had nothing to do with what Tom Paggett had done to her all those years ago. It was simply that she disliked his insincere smile, his knowing eyes. His gaze followed her across the room and she could feel it against her skin. He made her belly feel uncertain and fluttery, and she hated that mix of fear and anticipation, that moment where she couldn’t tell if she wanted him to look at her more or never look again.