“And,” Sycamore said, ambling over to the ladies’ punchbowl, “she never knows when this ailment will strike. She can be fine for weeks, then from nowhere, her thoughts race, and the dread wells from some mental oubliette. Perhaps this affliction is common to those stuck at the bottom of a huge pile of siblings, though I know Daisy is free of it.”
A quarter hour remained until the tournament resumed, and people would doubtless start taking their seats any minute. Ash took his brother by the arm and steered him through balcony doors that had been opened to admit fresh autumn air.
“Sycamore, explain yourself.”
Sycamore gave him a mulish look appropriate to an intransigent six-year-old. “You taught me how to shave.”
“You had nearly cut your throat, and while one didn’t want to offend your delicate pride, somebody had to show you how to go on.”
Sycamore tossed the last of his sandwich into the garden below and gazed out over the front drive, which the double row of lime trees had carpeted in golden leaves.
“There are books that will show a fellow how to tie his cravat, recipes he can follow for boot polish, but shaving must be demonstrated.”
Sycamore chose the worst possible time to try for subtlety—of course. “I am scheduled to begin figuratively pummeling the local bully in fifteen minutes, and now you recite ancient history?” Though Ash had the sense that whatever point Sycamore was dancing up to mattered.
“Casriel was there one day, he was off to school the next. We still had tutors and nannies on every hand, but Casriel—the best of us—got sent away. He reappeared a few months later, but he wasn’t the same. He had chums besides us. He spoke of things I could not understand. Rugger and lights out and tossing boys in a blanket. I felt like somebody had stolen my best brother.”
I am your best brother. “I missed him too.”
“But you grasped that he’d be back. Nobody told me he was ever coming back. I thought I’d lost him for good.”
And being Sycamore, he’d kept that horrible fear all to himself.
“Mama left the room if I happened to blunder into her parlor,” Sycamore said. “Papa took off for his blighted walking tours and was gone for weeks. He kept threatening to go to South America, and all I knew as a small boy was that South America was full of crocodiles and jungles. I was barely breeched, and my papa would rather wrestle crocodiles than read me a story.”
“He didn’t go.” Not a helpful observation, but Ash hardly knew what to say.
“Nobody told me it was all just idle talk, Ash. Then Will went off to school, Mama began her dramas in earnest, Jacaranda staged her revolt, Papa died, and I know exactly why Lady Della sometimes feels as if she dwells in the middle of a never-ending maelstrom nobody else can see.”
Ash had not explained that aspect of Della’s situation to Sycamore, but Cam had divined it for himself.
Sycamore spoke calmly, while a tear trickled down his cheek. “I am not wild, my family is wild. I just do the best I can, and then my only sensible brother, the only real brother I have, the fellow who notices that some things need explaining, goes off to read law. I’m not smart like you, Ash. I cannot read law by the hour and comprehend any of it. I tried university because you expected it of me, but I failed at that too. It’s as if, having been raised on a steady diet of mayhem, I cannot abide any routine. I sound daft.”
Ash took the place beside Sycamore at the balcony, when he wanted to tackle his brother and start a rousing and completely pointless round of fisticuffs. Gentle fisticuffs, if such a thing existed.
“You are actually making sense for the first time in years, Cam, which ought to be grounds to raise the general alarum. Allow me to hazard a theory, and please do not pitch me into the rosebushes for stating my conjectures.”
“Della would pummel me for raising my hand to you.”
“You long for a good pummeling from a pretty lady. My theory goes as follows: You are outrageous in an effort to ensure I will not lose sight of you. If this is the case, I commend your strategy, because it has worked.” And why had Ash never seen such an obvious connection before?
Sycamore produced a little gold cloisonné box with a dove enameled on the lid, opened it with an elegant flick of his fingers, and offered Ash a mint. “To clear the taste of that punch from your mouth.”
Ash took the mint because Sycamore was buying himself time to regain his composure.
“I don’t set out to be outrageous,” he said. “I am simply myself, and the results are outrageous.”
“A fine dodge, Sycamore, but not fine enough. Horses do not decide to race each other. The riders declare the challenge and decide the course.”
Sycamore put away his pretty little box, which, if Ash guessed correctly, had once belonged to their mother.
“I have wondered,” Sycamore said ever so casually, “if you don’t suffer the mulligrubs simply because you need to get away from me.”
And there it was, the signature Cam Dorning punch to the gut, delivered without warning and carrying an ungodly sting.
“I have little control over my melancholia, Cam. If I had wanted to get away from you, I’d simply have taken an apartment at the Albany, assigned managers to handle my jobs at the Coventry, and reserved my encounters with you for Hyde Park’s bridle paths.”
“But that would be obvious,” Sycamore said, “and you are a subtle sort of fellow.”
Too subtle, apparently. “Melancholia is a disease that trades in dishonesty, Cam. When the beast has me in its grip, it whispers lies to me. It says nobody needs a dreary fellow like me, and I am tempted to agree. The beast tells me that my family would be better off without me, and again, the words sound so true.”
“They are not true,” Sycamore said, rounding on him. “The truth is…” He blinked, stared at the denuded limes, blinked again.
“I know the beast lies, Cam, because I can say to it, ‘Cam needs me. Cam would be sad to lose me. Cam would miss me and be properly angry that I yielded to such mendacity.’ Those are truths no beast can wrest from my grasp. The rest of our siblings have spouses and children and lives, but you see an Ash Dorning beyond this rotten disease, and you would grieve the loss of him. ‘If that is true of Cam,’ I say to the mendacious beast, ‘it’s doubtless true of my whole family,’ and thus, the wretched affliction loses another round.”
Della also saw and valued her husband—another uncorruptible truth—and from that foundation, a brother and a wife, Ash could thwart the beast’s false words and false world. He knew that now and let the truth of it fortify him against all devils, whether blue or wearing gentleman’s finery.
“I hate your melancholia,” Sycamore said. “I want to call it out and shoot it dead, then slice off its balls and feed them to rabid dogs.”
I love you too. Ash whacked Sycamore on the back, hard enough to convey affection, not hard enough to send him stumbling against the railing.
“Let’s geld Chastain figuratively instead, shall we? Della and I will manage the melancholia, assisted by you and anybody else who cares to join the affray, but Chastain remains to be dealt with.”
“And Della’s panics?” Sycamore said. “Is family allowed to join in that melee as well?”