“I didn’t know anything about it until I came into the tide.”

“Until you married, is what I heard.”

Geoffrey smiled. “Yes, from Ariel. She ran her father’s estate for years.”

Charles blinked. “Ariel?” He tried to reconcile that image with the laughing, seemingly carefree woman Geoffrey had married. “That comes as a surprise.”

“To me, too, at first. She saw things at Oakhurst I might otherwise have missed.” His grin was wry. “Of course, she noted everything down.”

“Is there anything left there for me to do?” Charles burst out.

“Yes,” Geoffrey said seriously. “It needs a master’s touch. All properties do. And you”—he took a deep breath—“need it.”

Charles looked at him sharply. “Charity, Geoffrey?”

“No,” he said quietly. “Concern and affection.” Affection. It was a long time since someone had offered him that It was something he couldn’t fight. “Oh, very well,” he said, his capitulation obviously something that came sooner than Geoffrey anticipated. He nearly laughed at the look of ludicrous surprise on his brother’s face. “It will give me something to do, any roads.” Geoffrey nodded. “You’re not made for London.”

“Not now,” Charles agreed promptly. “Perhaps once, a long time ago.”

Again Geoffrey nodded, as if he understood, and then rose. “I’ll see to it that all the necessary papers are sent to you.”

“Thank you.” Charles looked at his brother across that abyss again, and then impulsively held out his hand. It wasn’t just a handshake, but a bond between brothers that Charles hadn’t even known was there. “’Twill be good to have something to do, at least. Perhaps I should visit my tailor.” He looked down at his buff pantaloons and his jacket of dark green merino. Why had he chosen green, of all colors? “I haven’t the ensembles for a stay in the country, and one must be prepared for all eventualities,” he said, in the languid tones of a bored dandy.

Geoffrey grinned. “One must,” he agreed.

“Then I’d best get started, curse it. I feel like a man- milliner already.

Geoffrey walked to the door with him, his hand upon Charles’s good shoulder. “Oakhurst is worthy of a well-dressed manager.”

“We must see to it that it has one, then,” he said, grinning.

“You’ll do,” Geoffrey said, opening the door, his voice relieved. “You’ll do, indeed.”

“I believe I will,” he said, as they went into the hall.

“Yes.” Geoffrey stayed back a few paces, waving off the footman who stepped forward to close the library door. He spoke so softly that Charles was never quite certain he’d heard him aright “And perhaps it might heal you.”

Thus it was that a few days later, Charles’s horse picked its way along the narrow lane which branched off the main road from Mayfield, under a spread of leaves that let through the occasional ray of sun, past a wild- flower meadow to his left, past a green, green field stretching to his right. It all still felt a little unreal to Charles. Two years on the Peninsula had accustomed him to a different landscape, a different view, of merciless sun and dusty plains, of ruined towns and wary, frightened people. Not so here.