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“It’s good to see that you have a wealth of ideas that could help us already,” Mr. Hawthorne said with a smile. “That’s exactly what we need. Yes, we have a mind-blowing offer on the table from a company that could make us all very, very rich, but I know we would all rather find a way to keep everything our family has worked for all these generations.”

Sounds of agreement and approval came from everyone at the table.

Everyone except Robert, Jr., who still stared at Toby as though he were a bogie that someone had snorted onto their shirt without noticing.

“I think the best place for us all to get started is for Robbie to give Toby a tour of the house and grounds and to explain the history,” Mr. Hawthorne went on.

Immediately, both Toby and Robert, Jr. snapped their heads to stare at Mr. Hawthorne.

“I don’t have time to give tours,” Robert, Jr. said, sending Toby an irritated side look. “I have a class in—” he checked his phone, “—forty minutes.”

Toby wanted to come up with an excuse not to be led around by a man who clearly despised him, but he did need to see the entire place.

“You can show him the important things in half an hour,” Mr. Hawthorne said. “And you’re not the only one who has a class to teach. We all do.”

“You’re teaching classes now, are you, Dad?” the youngest one, Ronald who went by Nally, asked with a cheeky grin.

If Toby was going to like any of them, it would be Nally.

“I’ve got other business to take care of,” Mr. Hawthorne said standing. He took the last donut from a box on the table in front of him as he did. “Help yourself to food or tea,” he told Toby, gesturing to the other box of donuts before stepping away from the table.

The rest of the family rose and started to leave the room.

“What kind of a tour am I supposed to give in half an hour?” Robert, Jr. asked his father as the man walked past him.

“Just the basics,” Mr. Hawthorne said. “And if you run out of time, let Mr. Tillman sit in on your class. Give him some clay to play with while you’re at it.”

He shrugged, then winked at Toby, like they’d been friends for decades, instead of only just having met, and in a business capacity. Then he walked out of the room, leaving Toby alone with Robert, Jr.

Toby stood and boldly helped himself to one of the sugar donuts. He stared straight at Robert, Jr. as he did, daring him to tell him it wasn’t his place to take food from his betters, whether it had been offered to him or not.

Robert, Jr. didn’t say anything, he just stared as Toby took a large bite out of the donut and chewed, all while holding his gaze like they were engaged in a tug-o-war. It was war, alright. It was a war he’d been fighting since the first time someone like Robert, Jr. had called him a queer or a shit or sneered at him for having a charity school uniform either two sizes too small or too big for him because he couldn’t afford better. And Toby intended to win.

Toby ate the entire donut while Robert, Jr. watched him. It hit him slightly off-center that the prick couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away, or that his gaze dropped to Toby’s lips as he licked thelast of the sugar away. The bastard was probably thinking posh, put-out thoughts about his lip ring, but fuck him.

“Show me the house,” Toby demanded, stepping around the table and nodding to the doorway. “I saw some of it coming in, but your father didn’t have time to say much about it.”

Robert, Jr. sucked in a breath and jerked around as Toby passed him. For a second, Toby thought the man was sporting a hard-on, but he didn’t dare check again to be sure.

“The original house was built in sixteen-forty-five,” Robert, Jr. said in a confrontational voice, following Toby into the hall, then walking by his side, pointing where he wanted Toby to go. “It was partially destroyed in a fire in the sixteen-seventies, but the second Earl of Felcourt rebuilt and made it twice as big. The third earl added the west wing during the reign of George I.”

They turned a corner and headed down a hallway that looked much more like a mid-twentieth-century school than an early-Georgian manor house.

“The fifth earl built even more after marrying a daughter of the Duke of Marlborough,” Robert, Jr. went on. “But by the end of the eighteenth century, the house as it is now was finished.”

“Came into money, did they?” Toby commented as their footsteps echoed down the long hallway.

“What?” Robert, Jr. asked with a frown.

“Obviously, if they did all that building and this was the finished product,” Toby said, gesturing to a grand staircase that Robert, Jr. led him up, “they came into money around then.”

“I suppose they did,” Robert, Jr. said distractedly. “Nally is the family historian, not me.”

Toby smirked at Robert, Jr.’s rather tasty backside as they climbed the stairs to what proved to be a second hallway of classrooms. “And which brown people who were part of what colony did the earls of the past get their money from?”

“It was nothing like that,” Robert, Jr. said so fast and so tightly that Toby was certain at least part of the Hawthorne family fortune of the past had been profit made off the backs of someone’s slaves.

Then again, the same could be said for the vast majority of the aristocrats of those days.

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