The Taming of the Duke

"It seems I have two brothers," Rafe said a bit sharply.

Gabe ignored that. "I would guess that your brother Peter would no more have asked an illegitimate brother to address him by his Christian name than he would have walked on water."

Rafe shrugged. "You likely know more about occurrences of the latter than I do."

After a moment, Gabe said, "I have seen no need to inform you of my existence. Your father was more than generous in his bequest."

"If there is any help that I can offer," Rafe said, "you must never hesitate to ask. You are my brother, for all you keep calling our father mine."

"Don't you wish to confirm my parentage with your solicitor?" There was a twist to Gabe's mouth that Rafe recognized with a drop of his stomach, because it wasn't his but Peter's. It seemed this new brother was a mixture of the two of them.

"There's no need." Rafe met his brother's eyes squarely. "I am only sorry that Peter did not see fit to share your existence earlier." Peter wouldn't have even thought of it, of course. His dearest brother had seen the world as a maze of distinct compartments, and illegitimate brothers did not belong in the same room—or compartment—with legitimate ones.

Then it was Gabe's turn to lunge from his chair and stare out the window. Only a faint stiffness about his shoulders betrayed tension. "It is a small thing that I ask," he said finally.

"Anything," Rafe said, wondering how many pounds he could raise in the next day or so without traveling to London.

"I need you to put on a play."

"What?"

"A play," Gabe repeated. "In the Holbrook Court the-ater." He swung about, those level eyebrows lowered now, tensed like a bull about to charge.

But Rafe couldn't help grinning. Just so would he have asked such an absurd question: hunched against the stupidity of it. "For God's sake. Never tell me you, a Cambridge doctor of divinity, have an ambition to tread the boards?"

He could feel laughter growing in the very edges of his soul. In fact, he hadn't felt this cheerful since—

"No!" Gabe said, looking disgusted.

"Damn," Rafe said. "I had a notion I could watch you tantalize the ladies while wearing my skin, so to speak."

"No such luck."

"It would have raised my countenance no end," Rafe said pensively. "Just think: the brother of the Duke of Holbrook as the ladies' favorite in Romeo and Juliet."

"I'm too old for the role. And that would be illegitimate brother, hardly a compliment to the family."

"I don't give a damn about your status. That's one thing you have yet to learn about me. I am not Peter. What about Antony and Cleopatra? Antony was over forty, wasn't he?"

"I'm too young for that. More to the point, I've no ambition to play a part."

"Then what do you want to use the theater for?" Rafe suddenly remembered his forgotten whiskey and took a mouthful.

"How can you drink that rotgut at nine in the morning?" Gabe asked, his eyebrows lowering again.

"It's the finest Scotch whiskey, not rotgut. It's been through an aging process," Rafe said, regarding his glass fondly. "This is from the Ardbeg stills, and not available in England yet. I had to send a man all the way to Aberdeen to fetch me some. It tastes…" Rafe paused and rolled the golden liquor on his tongue, "It tastes like burnt honey and kisses your throat like a strumpet."

Now that was Peter's look of disapproval. Just so had Rafe's elder brother signaled his ducal displeasure.

"It's not every day that one gains a brother," Rafe added. "You can remind me daily what I would look like if I were slimmer and more jovial and altogether a better person." He threw back the rest of the whiskey and then put down the glass with a click. It didn't taste very good, not with those eyes narrowed on him.

"I need you to put on an amateur theatrical," Gabe said. "Using a mixture of professional and amateur actors. I believe that is quite in fashion these days."

"You'll have to open up the theater," Gabe continued. "By all accounts, the place hasn't been used since a performance of Hamlet in 1800. Unless you've been putting on private theatricals?"

Rafe shook his head.

"If you're not a drama enthusiast yourself," Gabe continued, "there appear to be any number of gentry about who are taken with the idea of amateur theatricals. Perhaps you could import one of them to do the business."

"I haven't even been to a theater in a year," Rafe said, "perhaps three or four years."

His brother scowled. "You'll have to find someone then."

His eyes were remarkably compelling under those eyebrows. Rafe felt as if he were expected to leap from his chair and begin ripping a copy of King Lear into players' parts. "Why?"

"Because if you can't get together a theatrical, we need someone who can."

"No, why am I putting on a play? And why here? I'd be happy to back the play of your choice in a London theater. But what possible value can there be to having such a performance here?"

Gabe paused.

"I'm waiting for an explanation," Rafe said, getting up and wandering over to pour himself another drink. The day would clearly have nothing productive about it. He might as well celebrate.

His brother appeared at his shoulder. "One glass," Gabe said, "may be attributed to the enthusiasm of dis-covering a sibling. Another smacks of something alto-gether different."

Rafe put down the decanter without pouring a drink. "How quickly one forgets the joys of living with family," he stated. "Now, do you care to tell me what this play business is all about?"

He could tell precisely how unpleasant the revelation, whatever it was, felt for his brother: by the rigidity of his jaw and the glower in his brows.

"I have a daughter," Gabe said abruptly.

"What!"

"Out of wedlock," he clarified. "Like father, like son, it appears." That was no smile; more a widening of his lips.

"I have a niece," Rafe said to himself, knowing he was grinning like a fool. "Is she a very good actress?"

"God's sakes, no!" Gabe bellowed. "She's only two months old."

Rafe was thoroughly enjoying himself. He leaned against the sideboard, and crossed his arms. It was precisely the kind of pleasure he used to feel on the rare occasions when Peter betrayed some emotion unfitting to his dukedom. "And here I thought I'd gained myself a respectable biblical scholar as a brother. Perhaps I should check you for a cloven hoof."

"My daughter's mother is an actress."

Not a lady, then. Rafe sobered and tried to put the question delicately but it came out with all the finesse of a blunt weapon: "They say marriage is pressing to death, but sometimes it's acceptable."

"She's refused me. Several times."

"That's odd," Rafe said. In his experience, women used pregnancy as a battering ram to make their way into marriage. And that went equally for the kind of woman labeled lady and for her counterparts, those labeled by profession as actresses, singers and other less salubrious occupations.