Rivals and Revels (A Regency Romance)

The Brothers' Quarrel (2 of 2)

Once settled, all three Chestertons turned their remarkably similar eyes at her. Radcliffe's damaged one stood out, of course, but for the first time she had noticed that Everett's eyelashes were fluffier, curvier and a lighter shade than his mother's. Perhaps, the mysteries of the lady's boudoir were to blame... ahem, the kind of mysteries concealed in the stoppered jars, vials and boxes of make-up, not the intrigues that fed gossip.

This wasn't the only thing that singled Everett out.

He was big and rowdy, flash with vivacity in the room appointed to hold fragile, sensible persons. Like Lady Catherine. Like Radcliffe. Yes, despite his deformities, Radcliffe was cut out of the same cloth as their mother, while Everett was different. The parent he must have favoured, the old Lord Chesterton, was dead, and a monster.

"Mabel, my dear?" Lady Catherine tilted her head to one side as if listening for music that wasn't promised.

She sat up straighter. A vivid memory flashed before her. A scoff on those etched lips, Everett's wide back when he had walked out of the merry ballroom in Chesterton's Manor. "Mr. Chesterton wasn't pleased by my poor abilities at pianoforte before. Perhaps we can play charades?"

Teasing him after he was already beleaguered was a move from Hazel's arsenal, but he'd walked out just when she was poised to turn her luck around.

Everett laughed. "Miss Walton, you play divinely. I merely have a weak stomach when it comes to the self-satisfied ditties written by men who hadn't tasted a single snuff of gunpowder."

Her head spun from her own boldness, but she couldn't miss this cinch in his armour. A secret poison coated her imaginary rapier. "How unkind of you! Why, I'm positively sure every boy writes odes to their military heroes. Can't you find it in your heart to forgive such men for their enthusiasm?"

Everett squinted. Let him! Let him squirm like she had squirmed when he came to their house, probing after her secret trips to the lake.

"Miss Walton has you there, Everett." Radcliffe chuckled, unknowingly helping her. Or knowingly. "I seem to recall from our boyhood that even you weren't averse to penning such verses."

"I grew out of it. Some men don't." It was clear by his curt tone that the barb hit the target. She'd almost pitied him, but the revenge was too delicious to surrender to the pangs in her heart.

"Perhaps, you should come to the Opera with us, Everett," Lady Catherine intervened, "They have every type of performance at the Covent Garden. Something comedic will offer you a diversion from these gloomy thoughts."

The tip of Everett's tongue rolled the inside of his upper lip, almost imperceptibly, stopping Mabel's breath. Was he truly considering it?

"I have invitations to several friends' boxes. Perhaps I will join you of an evening," he said evasively.

Her mouth tasted sour. Those friends, doubtlessly, were ladies.

"Marvelous!" Lady Catherine beamed. She either didn't pick up on what some enterprising ladies and gentlemen got up to when the lamps burned low and the performance gripped the society or wilfully ignored it.

Everett's shoulders relaxed, and for a moment he, rather than Radcliffe, seemed to belong with Lady Catherine.

Radcliffe coiled in his armchair, readying the next volley.

She was imagining things, Mabel scolded herself. There was no brotherly tug-of-war with their mother's affection in the middle. Or if there were, it was not her concern beyond doing her duty to the family by playing the pianoforte. Maybe it could deliver the unhappy trio from the stalemate and provide the antidote to the sting of jealousy.

"I heard a charming piece at Lady Milton's salon the other day. Let me see if I can pick it up by memory..." Warm glow filled her chest: this would be her olive brand. "I trust Mr. Chesterton would enjoy it."

She rocked her wrists, imagined the tune in her mind, then set out. The music took a hold of her even before she stole a look at Everett to find him transformed again.

"A waltz! It's a crime for you to not be dancing to it!" He exclaimed, clapping after she had finished. The smile died on her lips. The blue that sparkled from between his eyelashes while she played wasn't merriment. It was malice, pure malice. The cad was making light of her misfortunes and months of anguish!

She ruffled through the musical sheets to find something comical about the unformed love of boys or odious oldmen chasing after ladies in vain. Weren't there suitably sharp couplets...? If he rejected her offer of peace and the sweetness of reconciliation, then— Pooh!

"I'm afraid you will have to be satisfied with the singing tonight, Everett." Radcliffe climbed from his armchair, then his cane tapped on the carpet. He stopped by the pianoforte. "May I beg you for a song, Miss Walton? And to allow me to accompany you?"

As if she could turn him around now, after he walked all this way!

The aura of calm that surrounded him caught her. A candle of mischief in her heart stopped its frantic flickering, as if he hooded it. She stood up, one arm still on the instrument, her eyes on his profile. He presented his handsome side to her as he sat on her vacated stool. Of course, he would.

"You play, Lord Chesterton?" She nearly rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. Of course, he played. That is why the pianoforte was here, in his study, not in the salon. Only, she had never heard him play before.

"Not as beautifully as you do." It wouldn't be Radcliffe if he missed a chance for a compliment. "But let us say I had time in my youth to pursue accomplishments that didn't require excessive vigour."

Her heart went out to him. How many lonely hours did he have in his adolescence? And did he have a journal stashed somewhere with bad poetry and silhouettes?

Everett scooted over to take Radcliffe's seat by their mother's side, as if it were a parlour game. He sprawled in it, leaned over to confess something in a sotto voice to Lady Catherine.

'Let him,' Mabel thought, focusing her attention on Radcliffe. "What shall I sing for you, Lord Chesterton?"

He extended the sheet to her before replacing it on the pulpit: 'The Mansion of Peace.'

She nodded, her arms aching to embrace him. The tune was everything the title promised; and nothing like his house tonight.

"I wish I could sing it so well as to close a rift betwixt your brother and you," she whispered.

He gave her a glance echoing what some instinct told her as well: she was the last person capable of mending this quarrel.

She gave it a try anyway. As she sang, the dream of a place where every wayward soul found peace overtook her. Where Everett never sneered. Where Radcliffe was hale. Where her heart wasn't torn in twine.

The room faded in her consciousness, leaving only her, music, Radcliffe and this radiant sentiment. This, this was the refuge, the haven away from the vagaries of the turbulent world.

"You were too modest," she told him in a quivering voice after the song had ended, and the silence that was necessary to feel afterwards also ended. "But then I suspect you never do anything that you are not perfect at."

"Never in public." Radcliffe's eyes held hers, when he brought her hands to his lips. He smiled. "That takes bravery I do not possess, Miss Walton."

He did it every time he walked into a room full of people, but Mabel did her best to not let this thought reflect on her face. She'd rather he thought her a simpering fool than cruel.

Above all, she wanted for him to think of her as... to just think of her and look upon her.