LITMIR.BIZ

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hold us together,’ Fred’s words were serious and when Oliver smiled the warmth in his green eyes was overlaid by question.

      The cognac was smooth, creamy and strong and unlike any home-brewed liquor Nick had become so adept at dispensing in the cheap bars of the east coast of the Americas. The kick in it took his breath away. The flavour of his youth, he thought, unappreciated and imbibed in copious amounts. Today he savoured it and let it slide off the back of his tongue.

      When Jacob motioned to the others to sit Nick took his place at the head of the table. This was where he had always sat, his initials carved into the dark mahogany of the chair. The first finger of his right hand ran across the marking, the ridges beneath tracing his past.

      ‘We never erased anything of you, Nicholas. We always believed that you would be back. But why so long? Why leave it for so many years before returning?’ Jacob voiced just what he imagined the others were thinking.

      ‘I had amnesia. I could not remember who I was or where I had been. My memory only began to function again in the Americas five weeks ago after encountering a man who wanted me dead.’

      ‘He nearly succeeded by the looks of it.’

      ‘Nearly, but not quite. He came off worse.’

      ‘You killed him.’ The soldier in Fred asked this question and there was no room in his answer for lies.

      ‘I did.’

      ‘We found blood in the alley behind Vitium et Virtus the morning after you disappeared.’ Jacob stood at that and walked over to the mantel to dig into a gilded box. ‘This was found, too.’

      His signet ring surprised him. He had always worn it, but had forgotten that he had. The burnished gold crest caught at the light above. Servire Populo. To serve the people. The irony in such a motto had been humorous to him once given his youthful overarching ability to only serve himself. Reaching out, he took the piece between his fingers, wincing at the dirt under his nails and the scars across his knuckles. He swallowed back the lump that was growing in his throat.

      His old life offered back with such an easy grace.

      ‘I can’t remember what happened in the alley.’

      ‘What was the last thing you remember then? Before you disappeared?’

      ‘Arguing at Bromworth Manor with my uncle. It was hot and I was damnably drunk. It was my birthday, the fifteenth of August.’

      ‘You disappeared the next Saturday night then, a week later. That much at least we have established.’ Fred gave this information.

      ‘Did you know that your uncle has taken over the use of the Bromley title?’ Oliver leant back against the leather in his chair and raised his feet up on an engraved ottoman, his stance belying the tension in his voice. ‘He wants you declared dead legally, given the number of years you have been missing. He has begun the procedure.’

      ‘The bastard has the temerity to call himself your protector,’ Jacob snarled, ‘when all he wants is your inheritance and your estates.’

      Nicholas took in the information with numbed indifference. Aaron Bartlett had never been easy but, as his late father’s only brother, he’d had the credentials to take over the guardianship of an eight-year-old orphan. Nicholas remembered the day his uncle had walked into Bromworth Manor a week after his parents’ death, both avarice and greed in his eyes.

      ‘He’s a charlatan and everyone knows it and I for one would love to be there when you throw him lock, stock and barrel out of your ancestral home.’ As Oliver said this the others nodded. ‘Do you think he had any part in your disappearance?’

      Nicholas had wondered this himself, but without memory or proof he had no basis on which to found an opinion. Shrugging his shoulders, he finished the last of his cognac and was pleased when Jacob refilled the glass again.

      He held the signet ring tight in his right hand, a small token of who he was and of what he had been. He did not want to place it on his finger again just yet because the wearing of it implied a different role and one he didn’t feel up to trying to fill. He had walked under many names in the Americas, but the shadow of his persona here was as foreign to him now as those other identities he had adopted.

      Jacob and Fred each wore a wedding ring. That thought shocked him out of complacency and for the first time he asked his own question.

      ‘You are married?’

      The smiles were broad and genuine, but it was Jacob who answered first.

      ‘You have been gone a long time, Nicholas, and dissoluteness takes some effort in maintaining. There comes a day when you look elsewhere for real happiness and each of us has found that. Oliver may well be wed soon, too.’

      ‘Then I am glad for it.’

      And he was, he thought with relief. He was pleased for their newfound families, pleased that they had managed to move forward even if he had not. ‘Can I meet them? Your women?’

      ‘Tomorrow night.’ Fred said. ‘We have a function at my town house with all the trimmings and a guest list of about eighty. You look as though you could do with a careful introduction, Nick, and such a number would not be too daunting for a first foray back into English society.’

      ‘You will need the services of a barber and a physician before others see you. Fred is about your size so with a tailor to iron out the differences you could get away with wearing his clothes.’ Jacob watched him carefully, his blue eyes sharp on detail. When his glance ran over his face Nick knew he would have to say something, his good hand going up to the ruined cheek as though he might hide it a little.

      ‘If someone still wishes me dead, perhaps it would be better not to involve any of you in this. I should not want...’

      Fred shook his head. ‘We are involved already as your friends. There is no way you could stop any of us helping you.’

      Oliver placed his hand on the table palm up in the way they had since their very first meeting and the others laid theirs on top. It took only a second’s hesitation before he found his own above theirs joined in the flesh and in promise.

      ‘In Vitium et Virtus.’ They all said the words together. In Vice and Virtue. The motto seemed more appropriate at this second than it ever had before.

      ‘We should retire to my town house for a drink. There is more of this cognac there and the occasion calls for further celebration. You can stay with me for as long as you need to, Nick, for I will have a room readied for you.’

      Jacob’s invitation was tempting. ‘The offer is a kind one, but I’m reluctant to place you in danger.’ He needed to say this to allow Jacob the chance of refusal at least.

      ‘I think I can take care of myself and my family. Let’s just worry about getting to the bottom of this mystery, to help you recover the final bits of memory you seem to have lost. If you can start to remember the faces of your assailants in the alley that may lead us to the perpetrator.’

      ‘How does amnesia work, anyway?’ Oliver asked this question and Fred answered.

      ‘In the army many people lost their memories for the short term. A day or two at the most due to trauma, though I knew of a few chaps who never recovered theirs at all.’

      ‘I don’t think Nick wants to hear about those ones, Fred.’ When Jacob said this they all laughed. ‘At least he remembers us and the club.’

      ‘It would be hard to forget.’ Nicholas gestured to the excess and the luxury. ‘But it is the friendships I recall the most.’ His voice cracked on the last words and he swallowed away the emotion. He was not here for pity or sympathy. He knew he looked half the man who had left England, with his filthiness and his wounds but it was the hidden hurts that worried him the most. Could he ever trust anyone again? Was he doomed for ever to hold himself apart from others, all the shadows within him cutting him off from true intimacy?

      He could see

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