Nicholas was accepting his cane and hat from a liveried footman, palming him a shilling for his service, when a voice said, "Well, well, if it isn't the new Earl of Mountjoy, the sixth, I believe, in the flesh. Hello, brother."

Nicholas fancied he remembered that voice from his boyhood, but it took a moment for him to recognize that the young man facing him was his eldest half brother, Richard Vail. It occurred to him in that moment, staring at the young man, that he minded very much sharing his name. He looked into Richard's brilliant eyes, dark as his own, nearly black, and they glittered-with anger? No, it was more than simple anger, it was impotent rage. Richard Vail was not happy. Nicholas smiled at the young man. "It's a pity your memory has failed you, and here you are so very young-I am the seventh Earl of Mountjoy, not the sixth, and the eighth Viscount Ashborough."

"Damn you, you shouldn't be either!"

"And you, Richard, should consider growing up."

The rage smoldered as Richard's hands clenched, unclenched. A knife to the gullet? Surely a possibility. Richard was a handsome young man, nearly Nicholas's size, big enough to look down on many of his peers. Richard said, "I am a man, more of a man than you will ever be. I am welcome in London. You are not. You do not belong here. Go back to your savage life. I heard you came from China. That is where you have lived, isn't it?'

Nicholas smiled and turned to look at another young man standing at Richard's elbow. "I recognize you. You are Lancelot, are you not?"

They could not have looked less like brothers. Unlike either Richard or Nicholas, this young man was slight, fair, and pale, the image of a delicate poet. Nicholas looked at his artist's hands, with their long fingers and beautiful shape. He wondered what his father had thought of this pretty son, who resembled his mother, Miranda, if Nicholas remembered aright.