Page 4 of Love in a Mist
“Anyone who has met Lord Mowbary understands why you wouldn’t be interested in that.”
Aldric shrugged. “Benicks ruin families. It is the one thing we are actually good at.”
“Would you be willing to try being part of the Gents’ family?” Stanley asked.
“You don’t want me in your family.”
“We do though.”
“You’ve met Mowbary. Is that the sort of brother you’re looking for?”
Stanley laughed. “You’ll notice we didn’t ask him.”
Aldric studied the man. He was in earnest. Odd.
“Ours is a family that’s not easily ruined,” Stanley said.
“Are you issuing a challenge?”
A contemplative look crossed his features. “Actually, I think I am. You say that Benicks ruin families. I am saying you can’t ruin this one. Let’s find out who is right.”
It was tempting, but accepting would be foolish. He’d not managed to save his own family. Destroying theirs would be unforgivable.
“At least try being one of us,” Stanley said. “You might discover that you like it.”
“If I decide, after a time, that I don’t, you won’t quarrel with me about it? I can just walk away?”
“We’ll cry a great deal, but after writing a few odes to what might have been, we’ll stop pining under your window day and night.”
Aldric nearly smiled. “I have sufficiently warned you about the dangers of accepting me?”
“Benicks ruin families,” Stanley repeated. “I’ve been warned.”
These brothers-by-choice were offering him a chance to have family. He wanted that. He’d wished for it ever since Mother died. But family never went well for him. For any Benick.
“I suppose I could try for a time,” he said. “But don’t expect miracles.”
Stanley slapped a hand on his shoulder. “That’s something you’ll soon enough learn about me: I always expect miracles.”
Chapter Two
Gaulby House, Leicestershire, spring 1789
All the Gents, aside fromStanley, were gathered at the Benick family’s primary estate to be with Aldric through the funeral and burial of his father. Stanley would have been there if they’d not lost him eight years earlier. He’d taken up the foolish notion of fighting in the war with the former colonies, despite not being a soldier in any way. Aldric’s efforts to prevent him from following through with the unwise idea—his role among the Gents had always been to stop them from undertaking foolish notions—hadn’t changed Stanley’s mind.
Aldric had failed, and Stanley was gone.
Father’s passing had been wholly unexpected, but Aldric didn’t think anyone viewed it as truly tragic. The duke, as Aldric had taken to calling his late father in recent years, hadn’t precisely endeared himself to anyone. Aldric doubted he’d had any real friends.
Crofton hadn’t seemed overly sad during their father’s funeral services. He’d seemed absolutely gleeful during the reading of the will. For his part, Aldric wouldn’t miss being insulted and belittled by his father.
“I appreciate all of you being here,” he said to his friends as they sat in the drawing room the night after the funeral.
They weren’t likely to be there much longer, having homes and families of their own to return to.
“Where else would we be?” Kes asked in his familiar tones of mock-grumpiness. “Funerals and weddings seem to be our most frequent reasons for gathering now.”
That was truer than Aldric wished it were. Though they did have a Gents’ gathering each autumn, outside of that, the most recent reason for being together had been the funeral of Lucas’s father nearly eighteen months earlier. That had been a truly heartbreaking occasion. The late Earl of Lampton had been a remarkably good and caring man, and Lucas loved him deeply. Not since Stanley’s death had Lucas been so entirely devastated. Julia, his wife, had been tremendously worried for him, and with good reason. Six months after that solemn occasion, when together for another Gents’gathering, Lucas had still not returned to his usual self. He’d been heavy and quiet. Only now had he regained some of his equilibrium.
