“Even if I thought I could go along with Father’s scheme to match me to an heiress,” he said, “I’ve found that I don’t give a hang about money. I’ll starve! I’ll—I’ll start trading in stocks, the way you do.”

Quill shuddered visibly at the thought of Peter speculating on the market.

“Oh, stow it!” Peter shouted. “When am I ever consulted about anything? When did you last ask my advice? Never! I can assess quality just as well as you can, Quill. I may have spent my time in a different way, but I am extremely successful at what I do!”

Quill walked across the room and stood next to his brother. It was true that their six years’ difference in age tended to cast Peter’s achievements in the shade.

“Father would be mortified if you began speculating on the market,” he said. “He only allows me to do so because I am lame and so he doesn’t think of me as an able Dewland. And he consults me about the estate because he doesn’t want me to feel like a burden.”

“Who cares if Father thinks you’re lame? He consults you about the smallest thing to do with the estate. He never speaks to me about anything.”

Quill opened his mouth and shut it again. “Father doesn’t mean to disregard your opinion.” God, what an evening. He seemed to have spent the whole night making weak excuses for the behavior of family members. “Stop kicking that log, Peter. Rinsible will go into apoplectic arrest when he sees your boots.”

“Rinsible can go hang!” Peter said, consigning his dearly beloved valet to the dark depths.

But there was something that Quill still needed to know. “I don’t understand, Peter. Why don’t you wish to be married—to another woman, if not to Gabby?”

For a second, he thought his little brother hadn’t heard him. But then Peter turned his head and looked at him, that familiar face white, his curls tossed as if he’d been in a high wind.

Then he knew that Peter had heard his question. And suddenly Quill understood something he had certainly known, without thinking, all along.

Peter acted as if the question had never been posed. He leaned his forehead against the arm he had draped on the mantelpiece. “I’ll go to America,” he said, his voice half stifled.

“I’ll marry her,” Quill said quietly.

But Peter was too absorbed in his own misery to hear him. “I thought perhaps—but I cannot do it, Quill. I’ll kill myself first.”

“I will marry Gabby,” Quill repeated.

Peter dropped his examination of the undoubtedly ruined boot and swung about so quickly that he almost unbalanced. “You! That’s impossible.”

“Actually, it is quite possible.”

“Father said—Father—you said that you were unfit for marriage,” Peter stammered, “that you couldn’t consummate it.”