Page 2 of Brave New Earl (The Way to a Lord's Heart 1)

“You have something in common,” he went on. “Wedo.” He looked around the table. “Death.”

Astonishment, rejection crossed the others’ faces.

The older man nodded at Benjamin. “My nephew’s wife died in childbirth several years ago. He mourns her still.”

In one queasy instant Benjamin was flooded with rage and despair. The food roiled dangerously in his stomach. How dared his uncle speak of this before strangers? Or anyone? All Benjamin asked was that people let him be. Little enough, surely? His eyes burned into his uncle’s quite similar blue-gray gaze. Benjamin saw sympathy there, and something more. Determination? He gritted his teeth and looked away. What did it matter? The pall of sadness that had enveloped him since Alice’s death fell back into place. He made a dismissive gesture. No doubt his tablemates cared as little for his history as he did for theirs.

Uncle Arthur turned to the man on his left. “Frith’s parents were killed in a shipwreck eight months ago on their way back from India,” he continued.

The stocky viscount looked startled, then impatient. “Quite so. A dreadful accident. Storm drove them onto a reef.” He looked around the table and shrugged. “What can one do? These things happen.”

Benjamin dismissed him as an unfeeling clod, even as his attention was transfixed by his uncle’s next bit of information.

“Chatton lost his wife to a virulent fever a year ago.”

“I didn’tloseher,” this gentleman exclaimed, his thin face reddening with anger. “She was dashed wellkilledby an incompetent physician and my neighbor who insisted they ride out into a downpour.”

He looked furious. Benjamin searched for sadness in his expression and couldn’t find it. Rather, he looked like a man who’d suffered an intolerable insult.

“And Compton’s sister died while she was visiting a friend, just six months ago,” his uncle finished.

The youngest man at the table flinched as if he’d taken a blow. “She was barely seventeen,” he murmured. “My ward as well as my sister.” He put his head in his hands. “I ought to have gone with her. I was invited. If only I’d gone. I wouldn’t have allowed her to take that cliff path. I would have—”

“I’ve been widowed for ten years,” interrupted their host gently. “I know what it’s like to lose a beloved person quite suddenly. And I know there must be a period of adjustment afterward. People don’t talk about the time it takes—different for everyone, I imagine—and how one copes.” He looked around the table again. “I was aware of Benjamin’s bereavement, naturally, since he is my nephew.”

Benjamin cringed. He could simply rise and walk out, he thought. No one could stop him. Uncle Arthur might be offended, but he deserved it for arranging this…intolerable intrusion.

“Then, seemingly at random, I heard of your cases, and it occurred to me that I might be able to help.”

Benjamin noted his companions’ varying reactions—angry, puzzled, dismissive. No one, not even his formidable uncle, could make him speak if he didn’t wish to, and he didn’t.

“What help is there for death?” said the marquess. “And which of us asked for your aid?Icertainly didn’t.” He glared around the table as if searching for someone to blame.

“Waste of time to dwell on such stuff,” said Frith. “No point, eh?”

Compton sighed like a man who despaired of absolution.

“Grief is insidious, almost palpable, and as variable as humankind,” said their host. “No one can understand who hasn’t experienced a sudden loss. A black coat and a few platitudes are nothing.”

“Are you accusing us of insincerity, sir?” demanded Chatton. He was flushed with anger, clearly a short-tempered fellow.

“Not at all. I’m offering you the fruits of experience and years of contemplation.”

“Thrusting them on us, whether we will or no,” replied Chatton. “Tantamount to an ambush, this so-called dinner.”

“Nothing wrong with the food,” said Frith, his tone placating. He earned a ferocious scowl from the choleric marquess, which he ignored. “Best claret I’ve had this year.”

Benjamin grew conscious of a tiny, barely perceptible, desire to laugh. The impulse startled him.

“Well, well,” said his uncle. “Who knows? If I’ve made a mistake, I’ll gladly apologize. Indeed, I beg your pardon for springing my idea on you with no preparation. Will you, nonetheless, allow me to tell the story of my grieving, as I had hoped to do?”

Such was the power of his personality that none of the younger men refused. Even Chatton merely glared at his half-eaten meal.

“And afterward, should you wish to do the same, I’ll gladly hear it,” said Benjamin’s uncle. He smiled.

Uncle Arthur had always had the most engaging smile, Benjamin thought. He suddenly recalled a day twenty years past, when his young uncle had caught him slipping a frog between a bullying cousin’s bedsheets. That day, Uncle Arthur’s grin had quirked with shared mischief. Tonight, his expression showed kindness and sympathy and the focus of a keen intellect. Impossible to resist, really.

In the end, Benjamin found the talk that evening surprisingly gripping. Grief had more guises than he’d realized, and there was a crumb of comfort in knowing that other men labored under its yoke. Not that it made the least difference after the goodbyes had been said and the reality of his solitary life descended upon him once more. Reality remained, as it had these last years, bleak.

---