"I'm glad I wasn't." Giles put his hand on his brother's shoulder for a moment "You've had a long journey. Would you like to rest and refresh yourself before dinner?"

Robin nodded. Trying to keep his voice casual, he said, "It's good to be back."

They talked through dinner and into the night while silent snowdrifts rose outside. As the level in the brandy decanter declined steadily, the marquess studied his brother. The signs of strain that had concerned him three years earlier had intensified to the point where he suspected that Robin was on the edge of mental and physical collapse.

Giles wished there was something he could do or say, but realized that he did not even know what questions to ask. He settled for saying at the next conversational lull, "I know this is premature, but do you have any plans for the future?"

"Trying to get rid of me already?" Robin said with a faint smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"Not at all, but I think you'll find Yorkshire rather flat after all your adventures."

The younger man tilted his gilt head back into a corner of me wing chair. In the flickering light he seemed fragile, not quite of the mundane world. "I found adventures to be deucedly tiring. Not to mention dangerous and uncomfortable."

"Are you sorry for what you have done?"

"No, it was needful." Robin's fingers drummed an irregular tattoo on the arm of his chair. "But I don't want to spend the second half of my life the same way I spent the first half."

"You are in a position to do anything you wish- scholar, sportsman, politician, man about town. That's more freedom than most people ever have."

"Yes." His brother sighed and his eyes closed. "The problem is not freedom, but desire."

After an uneasy silence, Giles said, "Since you were occupied on the Continent and communications were chancy, I didn't notify you at the time, but Father left you Ruxton."