Free Hadrian by Grace Burrowes

you?” He smiled self-consciously, and Avis let him have a little silence, a little dignity. “I’ve always been the one striking out into the world while Hal stayed here, tending the flock, so to speak.”
    “You tended different flocks. Brothers grow up.”
    “We at least grow older, though Hal never once complained, never shirked, never implied by word or deed that raising his little brother was an imposition.” Harold had been, in short, a good shepherd.
    Avis nudged her horse forward down the path, Hadrian doing likewise. “Your brother has a strong parental streak. I’ve understood why Harold might not want to marry, but I’ve always thought he’d make a wonderful papa.”
    “Why wouldn’t he want to marry?”
    What did Hadrian know, and what would he be comfortable discussing? “Not everyone feels the need to marry. Harold has the gift of appearing content, and he’s been patient enough not to settle. He could well meet somebody on these travels who strikes his fancy.”
    “I doubt he’ll marry,” Hadrian said. Carefully.
    What was a former vicar to do with a beloved older brother bent on thwarting society’s most prosaic conventions?
    Avis patted her horse’s neck and searched for safe conversational ground. “I expect marriage can be as much a prison for men as it is for women, at least once the children start coming.”
    “Prison? I hope my late wife didn’t see it as such.”
    “I think you’d know if she had, and you’d certainly know if you did.”
    “One forgets,” Hadrian said slowly, “how insightful you can be.”
    Or maybe one forgot how little tolerance she had for small talk. “One forgets how hard you’ll work to dodge a moment of sentiment, Hadrian Bothwell. You love your brother, and you’ll miss him terribly.”
    Beside her, Hadrian let his horse amble along on a loose rein. Fenwick had sung rhapsodies about that horse, and Hadrian looked entirely comfortable with the beast.
    “Are you in love with Harold, Avie?”
    Hadrian’s company was not exactly restful. Avis had forgotten that, too, though not even Fenwick called her Avie in that exact, familiar tone of voice.
    “I love your brother, of course, and I owe him much, but he never showed more than a brotherly or avuncular interest in me, and for that, I am grateful.”
    Birds flitted from branch to branch, the soft green leaves stirred in a mild breeze, and the forest was once again pretty rather than sinister. Nonetheless, the past abruptly yawned before Avis, a conversational quagmire in the middle of an otherwise lovely morning.
    “I didn’t mean—” Avis began. “Well, maybe I did mean... Were Harold interested in me in that way, it would have been awkward. I thought for a while he’d offer me a white marriage, but was relieved when he didn’t.”
    “A white marriage might have solved some problems,” Hadrian said in that same neutral voice. “For him.”
    “Relieved him of the perennially hunting mamas and widows?” Avis suggested. “They were no real problem for him. He smiled, flirted, and escorted them on the dance floor, and they made no progress.”
    “What about you?” Hadrian stretched up in the stirrups then settled back into the saddle. For a man of the church, he was quite at home on a horse. “Would a white marriage have solved problems for you?”
    “You’re brave, Hadrian.” He was also still her friend, to ask such a question, and friends were honest with each other. “I would have wanted children, you see, and Harold would have tried to accommodate me, and our white marriage would have awkwardly become something much less than the friendship we shared instead.”
    “Or maybe something more?”
    “We’ll never know. I attribute that to your brother’s great and often underestimated perceptivity. What of you? Have you thought to remarry?”
    He scowled at the bracken bordering the path. “I was not a very good husband.”
    He’d not been a happy husband, then. “Tell me