Free Never Lie to a Lady by Liz Carlyle

least interest in English society. Indeed, since letting his mills and plantations go, and moving back to England, he had shown little interest in anything.
    They finished the meal in silence. From time to time, Xanthia eyed him across the table. She was worried. Kieran spent most of his days reading and drinking, and his nights prowling about in the stews and hells of Covent Garden. He feigned no interest in life’s higher purposes or finer virtues, and had thus far refused to join even the most humble of clubs or societies. Kieran kept low company, odd hours, and bad women. His occasional trysts with Mrs. Ambrose were almost a relief to her.
    Xanthia loved her brother desperately. For so long, it had been just the three of them—she, Kieran, and Luke—fighting against the world. They had lived for one another. Sacrificed for one another. She could not count on all her fingers and toes the times when her elder brothers had literally taken the brunt of their uncle’s wrath for something she had done, or later, the times they had hidden her away from his dangerously drunken friends. Kieran, of course, had always taken the worst of it, for even as a young man, he’d been rash, and far too bold. Luke had possessed a degree of diplomacy. Kieran had possessed a soul filled with passion and anger.
    Xanthia was not perfectly sure what was to become of her brother. He is going to drink and whore himself into an early grave , Cousin Pamela had said. Pray God she was wrong. Still, hearing the words spoken aloud had troubled Xanthia. She had been thoroughly unsuccessful in drawing Kieran into the shipping business, for he had claimed—and not wrongly—that she and Gareth did not need him. Xanthia then tried to convince him not to renew the lease on his vast estate in Cheshire. He would not listen, saying he had no wish to live in the country watching the sheep and grass grow.
    And that was that. Xanthia had her hands full with the business, which occupied most of her waking moments in one way or another. Indeed, with dinner all but done, it was time to attend to it. Mentally, she began to recount the papers she had brought home for review. There was a suspiciously high invoice from the victualling yard for six of Neville’s ships which had gone out in January and were not due back in port for another fortnight at best. She was disinclined to pay the bill until she had compared it to the inventory of provisions they had taken on. There was a stack of insurance forms from Lloyd’s, and a proposal from an insolvent competitor to sell them three dilapidated merchantmen—but at a price Xanthia found hard to resist. She needed to do a little arithmetic to make sure the time in dry dock for refurbishment would not eat significantly into Neville’s profit, for the cost of—
    “Ah,” said a quiet voice. “I see I have lost you again.”
    Xanthia looked up to see that Kieran was already pouring his port, which one of the footmen had carried in on a tray.
    “My apologies,” she said mechanically. “My thoughts were elsewhere.”
    Kieran’s mouth turned up at one corner. “Yes, in Wapping, I suspect.”
    Xanthia moved to slide back her chair. “I fear so,” she said, rising as the footman leapt forth to assist her. “Which reminds me, I have a raft of papers I must see to by evening’s end. You will be going out, I collect?”
    He smiled faintly and tossed off a portion of his port. “I daresay I shall.”
    “Then I will bid you good night.”
    “Yes. Good night, Zee.”
    At his elbow, however, Xanthia hesitated, then impulsively, she bent and brushed her lips over his cheek. “Do be careful, Kieran,” she murmured. “Promise that you shall?”
    He tossed a dark, sidelong look up at her as if he might snap at her with one of his ugly retorts, but at the last instant, the expression faltered. “All right, old thing,” he said quietly. “I shall be careful.”
     
    In Park Lane, the evening was drawing to a close.