The Escape (Survivor's Club) Read Free Page A

future
does
hold for me. Or what I want of the future. I have wasted those years yearning for a past that is long gone and will never return. You see? I
am
whining, and you could all be sleeping peacefully in your beds by now.”
    “I would r-rather be here,” Flavian said. “If one of us ever goes away from here unhappy because he c-couldn’t bring himself to confide in the rest of us, then we m-might as well stop coming. George lives at the back of beyond here in Cornwall, after all. Who would want to c-come just for the scenery?”
    “He is right, Ben.” Vincent grinned. “
I
would not come for the scenery.”
    “You are not going home when you leave here, Ben,” George said. It was a statement, not a question.
    “Beatrice—my sister—needs company,” Ben explained with a shrug. “She had a lingering chill through the winter and is only now getting her strength back with the spring. She does not feel up to moving to London when Gramley goes up after Easter for the opening of the parliamentary session. And her boys will be away at school.”
    “The Countess of Gramley is fortunate to have such an agreeable brother,” the duke said.
    “We were always particularly fond of each other,” Ben told him.
    But he had not answered George’s implied question. And since the answer was a large part of the depression his friends had noticed, he felt obliged to give it. Flavian was right. If they could not share themselves with one another here, their friendship and these gatherings would lose meaning.
    “Whenever I go home to Kenelston,” he said, “Calvin is unwilling to let me to do anything. He does not wantme to set foot in the study or talk to my estate agent or visit any of my farms. He insists upon doing everything that needs to be done himself. His manner is always cheerful and hearty. It is as if he believes my brain has been rendered as crooked as my legs. And Julia, my sister-in-law, fusses over me, even to the point of clearing a path before me whenever I emerge from my own apartments. The children are allowed the run of the house, you see, and run they do, strewing objects as they go. She has my meals served in my private apartments so that I will not have to exert myself to go down to the dining room. She—they both go a fair way, in fact, toward smothering me with kindness until I leave again.”
    “Ah,” George said. “Now we get to the heart of the matter.”
    “They really do fear me,” Ben said. “They fairly pulsate with anxiety every moment I am there.”
    “I daresay your younger brother and his wife grew accustomed to thinking of your home as their own during the years you were here as a patient and then as a convalescent,” George said. “But you left here three years ago, Benedict.”
    Why had he not at that time taken possession of his own home and somehow forced his brother to make other provisions for his own family? That was the implied question. The trouble was, Ben did not have an answer, other than procrastination. Or out-and-out cowardice. Or—something else.
    He sighed. “Families are complex.”
    “They are,” Vincent agreed with fervor. “I feel for you, Ben.”
    “My elder brother and Calvin were always very close,” Ben explained. “It was almost as if I, tucked in the middle, did not exist. Not that there was any hostility, just … indifference. I was their brother and theywere mine, and that was that. Wallace was only ever interested in a future in politics and government. He lived in London, both before and after our father’s death. When he succeeded to the baronetcy, he made it very clear that he was not in any way interested in either living at Kenelston or running the estate. Since Calvin was interested in both, and since he also married early and started a family, the two of them came to an arrangement that brought them mutual satisfaction. Calvin would live in the house and administer the estate for a consideration, and Wallace would pay the bills