He’d been speaking in those brusque tones for so long his tongue and throat were incapable of making any other sound.

Sidney gestured once more. “Val, it’s just four o’clock in the morning, and you’re paying me a visit for the first time in four years. Sit.”

Val stiffened, and then crossing over, he claimed a spot on the lone winged chair beside the sofa.

He waited for his brother to join him, then opened his mouth to unleash the words he’d rehearsed on the way here. “I—”

“A brandy?” His brother cut him off.

“No.”

Sidney, however, was already headed to his sideboard. Once there, he proceeded to make not one but two drinks that he carried back. “Here.”

Val frowned. “I don’t—”

“It’s a good bottle of French and was always your favorite. Take the drink, Val,” his brother said gently but firmly.

Val took the drink, then promptly set it down. “I require assistance,” he said the moment his brother had seated himself.

“What do you need?”

“I need use of one of your carriages.”

“It is yours, as well as one of my drivers.”

Val opened his mouth to deliver the practiced speech and then stopped. “That’s it?”

A rueful grin formed on his brother’s face. “Did you think I’d deny you anything?”

“I . . .” He hadn’t known what he’d expected. He’d been a miserable bastard to so many—to everyone—since Dinah’s passing. His brother, once his best friend, had become a stranger, a gulf having grown between them, sown by Val’s need for self-protection.

“You are my brother, Val,” Sidney said simply. “I love you.”

Unnerved by the freeness with which his brother now spoke of his love, Val grunted.

His brother’s grin grew rueful. “Worry not, big brother—I know you love me, too.”

And he did.

It was why he’d shut the other man out. It was why he’d not wanted to see him, and suddenly it seemed very important that his brother know that.

Val cradled his glass tightly, and he forced himself to lighten his grip. “It hurt so very much,” he said hoarsely.

“I know, Val. I know.”

Only, unless one lost one’s wife and child, one could never truly know.

He stared into the amber contents of his drink. “I didn’t want to lose like that again, and so . . . it was easier to just cut those whose loss could hurt me . . . in that same way again . . . from my life.”

The time he’d spent with Myrtle had taught him how to use his voice again, and though he’d never move with any ease around people—his family included—he’d found a way of at least . . . functioning with other people. That would be the gift she left him.

“Thank you for sharing that,” Sidney murmured.