Page 70 of Forget Me Not

“If he has missed me at all,” she said, “he has done a remarkable job of hiding it.”

“Again,” the General said, “an idiot.”

She tipped her head to one side. “I thought he was the Jester, not the Idiot.”

“We consider the two synonymous,” Mr. Barrington said.

She hated to admit it, even to herself, but she liked this group of gentlemen. She could understand why Lucas enjoyed spending time with them. “What do you actually call him?”

“Lucas,” Mr. Layton said. He pointed to the General. “Aldric.” He pointed to Puppy. “Niles.” Then to Archbishop. “Henri.” To Grumpy Uncle. “Kes. And”—he pressed his hand to his own chest—“Digby.”

“But what amIto call you?”

Archbishop reached over and took her hand in his, patting it kindly. “Lucas, he is our brother. That means you are our sister. You,madame, are one of us now. Call us the same as he does.Comme une famille.”

“And do you mean to call me Julia?”

“If you kill Aldric, we’ll likely start calling you ‘the Executioner,’” Mr. Barrington—Kes—said.

“Never you mind him,” Henri said. “He is forever grumpy.”

She looked at them, an unexpected warmth spreading through her heart. “Do you all truly mean to be brothers to me?”

“If you will allow it,” Digby said.

She smiled. “I would like that very much. I haven’t had siblings—honorary or otherwise—in a long time.”

Perhaps being a sister to the lot of them would make them less likely to be competitors. They might be willing to convince Lucas to see her as something other than a weight, an unwelcome option, a pointless addition to his life.

Henri patted her hand once more. “We all knew Stanley.”

A little lump formed in her throat as she realized what she should have pieced together before. “Was he one of you?”

“He was,” Digby said. “That is another reason we think of you so fondly.”

“What did you call him?”

“Stanley,” Kes said dryly.

A grin—an actual grin—spread across her face. These gentlemen were good for her soul.

Aldric answered directly, as she suspected was common for him. “He was known among us as the Highwayman.”

She laughed. “He was a criminal?”

“He was a risk-taker,” Digby said. “We never wanted for excitement when he was with us.”

“Stanley landed the lot of us into more trouble growing up than anyone ought,” Julia said. The memory didn’t cause her pain. When was the last time that had been true? “Lucas was the only voice of reason he would listen to, though Lucas encouraged their larks more often than not. And, I confess, I was generally the first to join in their misadventures. It is a miracle none of us accidentally burned down either of our family homes.”

The gentlemen wore similar looks of understanding. Stanley, with Lucas’s support, had likely talked them into a few misguided undertakings over the years.

“I miss him,” she said. “He was away for so much of my life, so much of the last years of his.” Four years had only dulled the ache of his passing. “I feel like I missed so much of who he was. And I’m discovering I know less of Lucas than I realized.”

“Ma sœur, we know him well. And we were part of Stanley’s last years before he left for war.”

She looked to them all. “Would you tell me about him?”

They all nodded.

---