Free Tempting the Heiress by Barbara Pierce Page B

surprised by the question. “It is too early to tell if the poultice Drake suggested will ease the animal’s swelling.”
    The casual reference to the duke produced a strained silence between them. Keanan Milroy and the Duke of Reckester were half brothers. For years, it had been a public secret, although the Reckester family had denied the connection. Brock did not know the particulars, but he assumed the men had reconciled their differences when their father had perished by the hand of a footpad.
    Milroy murmured a farewell to his stallion, and headed for the open side door. Brock easily matched his stride.
    “There is little resemblance between you.”
    To his credit, the man did not profess confusion about the change of topic. “Aye. Each day before the shaving mirror, I imagine we both say a prayer or two for that small boon.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “How long have you known?”
    “From the start.” Brock had first encountered the nineyear-old Drake, then bearing the title Lord Nevin, at Eton. A friendship had sprung up which continued even after university. There was a time when he had hoped the heir to a dukedom would marry one of his sisters. “I thought Drake would marry Wynne.” He had not realized he had spoken the words aloud until Milroy suddenly halted.

    “Her heart took another direction.” Something akin to guilt shadowed his visage. “How long will you punish her for loving the wrong brother?”
    “I am not—” Brock was taken aback by the cutting truth of the accusation. Rallying his thoughts, he acknowledged, “It has not been my intention to hurt her. I love Wynne. True, I feel Drake would have been a sensible choice for a husband. However, my bias is measured by years of friendship with one man and frightful rumors of another. Can you say you would have chosen a different course?”
    “Perhaps not,” Milroy conceded. He stared past Brock, surveying the changes the renovation over the past year had wrought. “I doubt any man fits a brother’s expectation. I was told you and Tipton milled once or twice before he married his lady.”
    An undignified snort erupted from Brock. He had despised Tipton from the outset. His youngest sister had been too naïve and gentle to believe that the gossip about the notorious surgeon was quite factual. Quarrelsome and full of conceit, he had challenged the viscount on several occasions, but the cunning man had always managed to gain the upper hand. It had been humiliating at the time.
    “Tipton can be persuasive.”
    A past encounter with the viscount had the blond bruiser nodding. “And he wields a rather nasty walking stick.”
    Brock made a concurring noise in his throat. It was rather comforting to learn that he was not the only one in the family acquainted with the lethal point of the surgeon’s hidden blade. Even more interesting was what Milroy might have done to provoke Tipton to action.
    They had reached the center of the garden. The heart of the design was a diamond-shaped brick pool lined with
an impermeable render of pozzolana. Several buckets placed at its base suggested that the center not only provided sustenance for the eye, but was also a source of water for the multitude of flowers, trees, and hedges.
    Milroy dipped his bare hands into the water. Scrubbing the grime from his hands and arms, he looked in Brock’s direction, his eyes squinting against the sun. “Wynne is visiting your aunt Moll. It appears her dear friend Mr. Keel has worked up the courage to propose and she has accepted.”
    It grated a little that his brother-in-law knew more about the private details of his family than he did. He had yet to pay a visit to his elderly aunt, the widow of his father’s older brother. This current news only reminded him how distracted he had become.
    “Who is Mr. Keel?” He despised asking, but Wynne’s husband was the only one who would not lecture him for his shameful neglect of his