Memories of his brother flashed on the pool’s surface: holding the reins as he drove his curricle, laughing each time he hit a bump on the rutted road. Making a toast at the head of the dinner table, charming everyone in the room with his wit. Embracing Reese and slapping his shoulders on the morning he’d left for the army, keeping a stiff upper lip as they said goodbye.

But then the water darkened. Edmund was riding his horse toward the woods, a hunting rifle strapped to his hip. Reese tried to call out to him, but the words wouldn’t come. Oblivious, Edmund charged into the forest, and the menacing trees wrapped their gnarled branches around him, sucking him in like a tentacled sea monster. Reese plunged his hand into the pool, reaching for his brother, desperate to pull him out.

But the ground beneath him started to shake, and the sky turned blood red.

A sinister crack, a deafening shot, rang through the air.

And Reese cried out, knowing he was too late.

He’d woken in a panic, the sheets tangled around his waist and his heart thumping with the force of a blacksmith’s hammer.

Groaning, he freed himself from the bedclothes, padded to the window, and shoved open the curtains. The late-afternoon sun slanted across the garden, creating harsh shadows everywhere he looked. It was hard to believe that only the night before, he and Sophie had lain together by the waterfall, as close as two people could be.

But everything had unraveled after that.

Reese couldn’t stop thinking about his brother and what Sophie had said about him. That he’d seduced a maid and gotten her with child. The idea that his honorable, upstanding brother would have done such a thing was inconceivable.

But the sinking, sickening feeling in Reese’s gut wouldn’t go away. And it whispered to him that maybe—just maybe—he hadn’t known his brother as well as he thought he did.

He hastily pulled on trousers and a shirt, then went to the washbasin and splashed cool water on his face. Though he was tempted to ring for Gordon and request a glass of whiskey, he resisted. Instead, he walked to his dresser and picked up the brass key.

The one he’d found on his pillow on the night he’d returned home from Portugal. His valet hadn’t been able to say who had left the key on Reese’s bed or what it might unlock; neither had any of the staff.

But Reese did have an inkling—and he couldn’t ignore it any longer.

Taking a deep breath, he strode out of his bedchamber and down the hall to the master suite that still held Edmund’s things. He slowly swung the door open, bracing himself for an onslaught of memories, emotion, and pain.