Quentin was there, as Braden had promised. He was seated at the piano, idly plunking the keys and lost in his own thoughts. She paused in the doorway to study his face. It was so completely unlike Braden’s in every way that she might never have guessed they were brothers.
Strange enough to think that Rowena was Quentin’s twin sister. He’d popped out of the boiling London throng, just as Rowena was following Cassidy and Isabelle into the carriage at the end of their shopping expedition, and swept Rowena off her feet. Rowena’s expression had gone in an instant from severe to radiant, and Cassidy watched in amazement as the two heads bent together with evident delight.
Introductions had been rapid and informal. The Honorable Quentin Forster had been born in the same hour as Rowena, but the resemblance between them ended with their devotion to each other. Where Rowena’s hair was golden, Quentin’s was a rich chestnut; Rowena’s eyes were the palest brown, and Quentin’s were almost the russet of his hair. Where she was slender and graceful, he was lean and broad-shouldered.
Although Rowena had quickly regained her dignity, he’d kept the brash mischievousness of a little boy who’d just run off with the pie left cooling on the windowsill. He hadn’t stopped teasing and telling jokes all the way back to the house in Belgrave Square.
Yet he had played a deliberate trick on his brother in the library…
The piano gave a loud, discordant protest as Quentin slapped his hand down on the keys.
“There you are!” he said, pushing to his feet. “I see you’ve emerged from the lion’s den unscathed. I suppose he has the delightful Mrs. Smith in his clutches now?” He strolled across the room and offered his arm. “I’d rescue her myself, but I’m afraid I’d only make matters worse.”
Cassidy sat in the chair he offered and met his lazy, good-natured gaze. “If you thought he would be angry because you played a trick on him,” she said, “why did you do it?”
He blinked and gave a bark of laughter. “Ah, that astonishing American frankness. It hits you right between the eyes.” He staggered back several steps and collapsed into his chair. “What a refreshing breath of desert air you are, Cousin.”
If he was making fun other, she didn’t really mind. He was easy to laugh with, and she liked to laugh. But she kept remembering the uneasiness that hung in the library, when Braden was caught in his brother’s trap, and Quentin was afraid.
He was serious now, and the look sat as uneasily on his face as a smile did on Braden’s. He lost his pose of indolence and shifted restlessly in his chair.
“You didn’t know Braden was blind,” he said, statement rather than question. “He’s become very good at hiding it. Maybe you were a test, being one of us. But it won’t work at the Convocation.”
Convocation. Braden, too, had used that word. But she wouldn’t be distracted from what she’d come to learn. “Did you want to hurt him?” she asked.
“Hurt him?” He sprang up and paced halfway across the room. “Hurt my brother? It isn’t possible, I assure you.” He turned to her again. “No, Cassidy. Nothing of the kind. I thought he intended to deceive you, and I didn’t think it was fair. You had a right to know. You’re one of the family now, aren’t you?”
“I want to be.”
“Then there shouldn’t be secrets among us.” He came back to stand before her chair. “Braden is proud. He doesn’t like to believe he has any weaknesses. He won’t accept that he needs anyone for any reason, and that is his downfall.”
She shivered at the unexpected intensity in Quentin’s eyes. Wasn’t that what she admired about Braden: his strength, his confidence, his certainty of who he was? Why, then, did it make her heart ache to hear that he didn’t need anyone?
“But you wouldn’t understand, would you?” Quentin murmured. “My brother deceives himself. I won’t help him do it.”
“Then you care about him.”
The sharpness left Quentin’s gaze, and he looked slightly bored. “He is my brother.”