The new Monday was grey but the dour-faced young gentleman could have easily put the weather down as grandly sympathetic to his situation. He ignored the Spring cold that set in misty droves around him with its mist and faint spitting rain in the morning gloom. With no wind to push the grey away barely a newly-budded leaf moved save for the jogging of a constant stream of droplets falling from the gargoyle nearby that made the bough spring steadily this way and that.

The woodpile was not the most comfortable place for the young man to sit. His short legs were pulled up to his chest in an infantile way with the heels of his boots dug firmly in the crevices provided by the logs and his pale fingers digging meaningfully in to his knees. The damp of the logs was working its way through the many layers of clothing – the jacket tails, the untucked shirt and the breeches all unhappily gave way to the mildew and made the wearer decidedly unhappier. Still, he would not budge an inch for he was thoroughly involved in being very sorry for himself.

The tears had only ceased in the last hour. He had savagely denied them for some time, hiding in corners of small cupboards, rooms and saloons before realising that the only place he would get any peace would not be in the confines of a small, lonely passage but in a bigger arena where everything could simultaneously vex and hide him.

His normally light hair was black and plastered against his temples and neck with rain. Dirt and bark encrusted his face from having pushed his way through a hedgerow and wiping his eyes furiously at the same time. His round face would usually have been merrier – in better times the boy was rarely seen without a smile and a laugh following close behind – but now it was fixed in a despairing agony that he now made all too apparent. Had anybody been present to witness it they would have declared him to be direly ill or emotionally unstable.

---

An hour later the sun began to break through the clouds and the low cloud and mist was illuminated a sickly gold. The man’s head hung low over his knees, his eyes shut, in weariness. His emotion had, as always, gotten the better of him and he felt sick with the exhaustion of toiling under it for so long.

The wet hiss of boots trudging through long, soaked grass failed to reach his ear and rouse him from his weary reverie. It was until the approaching man - taller and fairer haired but dressed in a similarly (if not neater) sombre fashion – addressed him that the first looked up.

“How I could have possibly believed I might find you elsewhere than here I do not know.”

Despite lifting his head from his knees the bedraggled young man could not bring himself to meet his older brother’s emotionless blue eyes. “I shan’t come in until they have gone; there is no point in beseeching me Patrick. I cannot face them, I will not.” His voice was edged with a shrillness he couldn’t bring himself to hide.

Patrick crossed his arms with a huff, looking about him at the secluded, damp spot his brother had chosen to retreat to. Finding that the upturned bucket was substantially drier than the woodpile he took a seat there and faced his brother. His expression was a coolly detached as his tone of voice as he said: “That’s hardly the way the new man of the house is supposed to act, is it Alex? They are guests in your new manor house after all...”

Alexander buried his head back into his knees with a wail.

They sat in silence – Alexander overcome with emotion and Patrick for his part feeling guilty for his words. Birdsong echoed cleanly through the receding mist.

“You’re an absolute beast saying that. You know it shouldn’t be mine.” Alex’s words, muffled through his arms and knees, were full of hurt. “Stop tormenting me and appeal against the will already. It’s yours and we all know it. I don’t want it. Leave me in peace, all of you.”

“Olivia won’t let me leave Combe Magna until I’ve written to the solicitor. Unless you distract her for me I shall be forced to slip away in the dead of night.”

Alex sat up, his dark eyes full of confusion and tears. “What?”

“Maybe you could take her riding. In the opposite direction of the London road of course or she’ll catch me as I leave--“

“Are you implying you won’t appeal against the will? Why not?”

Patrick sat in still silence, his elbows resting on his spread knees and his face looking thoughtfully upwards in to the grey sky, before saying simply: “It’s not worth it.”

“A country house, two town houses and a breeding farm full of cavalry class horses ‘isn’t worth it’? It’s a fortune, Patrick...”

“Not my fortune, though,” he quickly rejoined. “Not according to father.”

“Father was angry, everyone knows he’d forgiven you, he understood and he said he was going to change the will back…before..,“

Patrick waved a protesting hand, his eyes closed in denial. “I don’t want it. It’s yours, all yours.”

Alexander’s eyes swam with tears. “No-“ he croaked, taking his brother’s hand imploringly. “Olivia will hate me forever.”

Giving Alex’s hand an affectionate squeeze Patrick stood up with a shake of his head to leave. “Just give me leave to take some books from the library back to town with me and I’ll be happy.”

Detaching his hand from his brother’s pleading grasp Patrick turned to walk back to the house. Alexander sobbed quietly behind him and Patrick felt another stab of guilt, this time for not sharing in his brother’s ability to mourn their father as he did, feeling somewhat emotionally deficient.

“Oh!” Patrick stopped with a start and half turned to look back at his brother. “Mother wants you in the drawing room. I think father left you some personal artefacts or something along those lines. She has the entire household staff looking for you; don’t leave her waiting, will you?”

---

“A journal, not much else.”

Patrick and his mother sat sedately in the drawing room the next morning. Anne Sanderson looked more pale and delicate than usual in her modest mourning gown. She sat by the window in the mourning sun. She cast a small, frail shadow on her eldest son as he watched her carefully.

“Father left him a journal? A recent one?”

“I couldn’t bring myself to look inside. Alexander will treasure it though, I’m sure.” She held a white handkerchief knotted in her fretful fingers. There was an unspoken enjoinder in the air: he was closer to father than you were.

Time passed all too slowly; the clock marked out the seconds at a positively funereal pace. Patrick watched a fly struggle haplessly at the window pane behind his mother’s head.

“I shall leave for London tomorrow, I belie--“

Voices were heard without seconds before the door sprang open and bucked against the wall noisily. A girl, fifteen years at the most, burst in to the room looking furious. Her brown hair was in a loose disarray and her lips were pursed so thin they looked half the size. “Mother, you’ll never believe what that damnable man has done!” she cried, brandishing what seemed to be a letter.

“Language, Olivia,” Patrick chastised absently as he watched his sister press the paper in to Mrs. Sanderson’s hand.
“Oh, impertinent boy!” Mrs. Sanderson cried shortly, the letter – once read – falling to the floor has her handkerchief simultaneously flew to her face. “Must he plague his own family so?”

Olivia scooped up the letter and passed it to Patrick’s eager outstretched hand without needing to be told.

My only family,
The inheritance is to be Patrick’s but the world will shortly be mine!
I travel to the south of the continent to seek a worldly employ more worthy of my father’s faith than I have shown already. When I will return I know not but until then I entrust my personal matters to my beloved family who will know better what to do with them than I.
I leave with you all my love and faith,
Alexander (and Angus)

“Angus?” Patrick echoed the badly scribed words. His heart wasn’t moved to worry for his brother but his normally stoic brow creased in concern for his weeping mother.

“The horse Angus, I think,” Olivia promptly supplied. “Mr. Stephens told me one was missing when I went to check, along with a good deal of tack.”

“Oh Patrick, he will never survive! Alexander can hardly survive the tavern without being robbed blind – you know the Continent, you simply must fetch him back!” Mrs. Sanderson raised her head from her handkerchief to implore her eldest.

Dutifully going to fetch some smelling salts from the parlour for her mother Olivia paused at the door. Her brother was a villain and a rake but – like Patrick did – she felt wretched for her dear mother. She waited to hear Patrick’s response.

“Of course,” He acceded breathlessly, the letter lying listless in his hands. Mrs. Sanderson burst in to fresh sobbing and Olivia ran back to throw her arms around her brother’s neck.

“Slap the villain for me when you see him,” she whispered savagely in to his ear.