Her laughter mingled with that of the children. A hungering to have that bucolic life with her was a heady aphrodisiac more potent than oysters.

As if she felt his stare upon her, Lettie glanced up and offered a smile and a little encouraging wave of her hand.

It proved a dangerous silent interaction to have with the lady’s elder brother’s intent, probing eyes on him. Rhys’ gaze bore all the way through Anthony’s person.

Reluctantly, he slid his attention away from the trio in the distance.

The other man made no attempt to conceal the vitriolic rage burning in his eyes.

Anthony curled his hands. He deserved that. The tense silence marched on, and it proved too much. He needed to end it and have this discussion at last. Lettie had been correct in that.

“Rhys,” he said solemnly. “I—”

Alas, his longtime friend of long ago didn’t allow him to finish that thought.

“It was not enough that you involved yourself with my former betrothed, but you’d involve yourself with my sister?” Rhys hissed.

He flinched. “I deserve that.”

“Damned straight you do!” The other man took an angry step toward him and then stopped. His gaze went beyond Anthony’s shoulder to the place his sister now played with his children, and Rhys’ struggle to compose his features and tame his fury required a visible effort.

Anthony took that hesitation as a moment to make the long-overdue apology that he’d never been permitted to make before now.

“I very much regret my behavior that day, Rhys,” he said quietly. “I believed I was helping.”

“Helping?” Rhys echoed incredulously. “You believed that embracing the woman I’d resolved to wed was somehow helping me?”

“I believed she would betray you,” he said earnestly, his words coming together quickly so that he could at last have it all said. “And I was young and naïve and foolish to believe that I was saving you from making the very worst mistake. I was the one making the worst mistake,” he said, his voice catching. “For that, I was and am and will remain eternally sorry.”

When he finished, stony silence met him.

Unlike the anger of before, however, Rhys favored him with a sad, almost pitying look. “The thing of it is, Anthony,” he began quietly, “I hated you for so long for betraying me as you did.”

Anthony tensed, lifting his gaze just beyond the other man’s shoulder, too much of a coward, even all these years later, to look Rhys in the eyes when speaking about that day.