There was a scrape of wood against tile as Emelia pulled out a chair and sat down at the table with a glass of water and the rest of her snack. Victor looked over his shoulder, expecting to see Peter coming through the doorway. Nothing. Weird.
“So what are you going to do about him when you get married?” He nodded toward Reepicheep, whose hair now stood on end as he bristled at both of them.
Emelia rolled her eyes. “I keep hoping he’ll find a magical doorway to cat heaven, but I’m pretty sure he’s going to live to a hundred just to spite me.”
“Probably.”
She glanced sideways at him. “You don’t want him, do you? He’d make an excellent guard cat.”
Victor burst out laughing. There weren’t many things he wanted less in life than his brother’s antisocial some-might-say-possessed pet. “Not on your nelly.”
Emelia bit her remaining ginger snap in half and stared at the cat glumly. “Then hopefully, your parents will agree to keep him. They’ve been asking what we want as a wedding present. Maybe it will work if I tell them their chances of grandchildren will be greatly enhanced without a scary spawn feline in residence.”
“How are the wedding plans going?” Victor clung to the most neutral thing he could find in her sentence. The wedding was just over a month away, but he knew nothing about it beyond what was on his invitation.
Emelia threw the last of her biscuit in her mouth. “I’m still working the elopement angle. Turns out getting married to even minor nobility is a massive pain in the behind.” Her glance darted his way. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“I even tried to lose Harry and Meghan’s invitation, but the wedding planner noticed it was missing.”
“Why?” He had to admit, her admission made him like her even more. Most American women would be falling over themselves at the possibility of coming within a mile of the Duke and Duchess.
Emelia groaned. “Because my stepmother is a royal-obsessed social-climbing harridan who wouldn’t know British etiquette if it bit her on her surgically-enhanced bust.”
“I’m sure she’s not that bad.”
Emelia pitched an eyebrow. “She named my half-siblings Charles, George, Katherine-Elizabeth, William, and Charlotte.”
Note to self. Avoid Emelia’s stepmother at said wedding. “Don’t worry. Sadly for your stepmother, the best she might be able to hope for is a random earl or an accidental viscount.”
“From your lips to God’s ears.” Emelia reached for another biscuit.
“There’s probably not much that makes that journey.” Peter. Finally. He stomped into the room, pulled out a chair, and slumped into it.
“I was wondering where you were. Emelia and I have been unchaperoned for a whole four minutes.” Victor grimaced as the sarcastic quip leapt straight out of his mouth.
Peter opened his mouth, then slapped it shut again as Emelia gave him a look that could ice over the Thames.
Victor’s respect for her ratcheted up another notch. She was probably the last woman in the world he would have chosen for his brother, but he could admit that she was more than his match. She also wasn’t a rowing groupie, which was good for Peter’s ego.
Victor had given up on ever meeting someone. He’d played the field too widely, hurt too many women, for that. He still occasionally woke up in a cold sweat at the possibility he might one day check his phone and find himself plastered over social media tagged to an accusation about a night that he probably didn’t remember.
Emelia got up and closed the door. “You two can save your squabbling for later. We have some things we need to talk about first.”
“I didn’t realize I’d been summoned to a next generation family meeting.” At least Emelia was here to mediate. Except the last time she’d tried to mediate between them had resulted in a brawl that ended up with him in rehab and Peter not speaking to him for a year. The memory hung in the air like an unwelcome ghost.
She ignored him. Smart woman. “What do you want to do first, Peter?”
His brother was tapping into his phone.
“PETER!” Emelia snapped the word, and his brother snapped his head up. “Sorry. Just had to reply to coach.”
“Give me that.” Emelia held out her hand. Peter just looked at her. “For the love, Peter Carlisle. You spend fifty hours a week with your coach. When you’re not with him, you’re on all the stupid training apps. Are you going to whip that thing out at the altar to check your glycemic index?”
Victor smirked. His brother saw and shot him a glare, then dropped his phone face down on the tabletop.
“Sorry, Em.”
Emelia muttered something under her breath about the World Champs and being a widow before she’d even been married. “Okay, Victor. Peter has something he would like to ask you.”
This should be good. Going by his brother’s sagging posture and shuttered expression, it could be anything. And there probably wasn’t anything that Victor wouldn’t give him, up to and including his hereditary title, if that didn’t require his death.
“Peter.” Emelia titled her head at her fiancé and raised her eyebrows.
Peter furrowed his brows and mumbled something under his breath, but Victor couldn’t make out hide nor hair of what it was.
Instead, he tipped himself back on the rear legs of his chair and waited. He wasn’t getting in the middle of whatever this was. Not for all the acreage on the estate.
“Louder, so he can hear you, darling,” Emelia said sweetly, appearing not to notice that her fiancé had about five inches and a good thirty kilos of rowing-hardened muscle on her.
Peter huffed out his breath. “Fine. Do you want to be my best man?”
There was a crash, and Victor found himself flat on his back on the kitchen tiles, staring up at the roof, air shoved out of his lungs.
Peter loomed above him, hand out. Victor clasped it, and his brother hauled him to his feet, then picked up his chair behind him and set it back on the ground with a bang.
Victor stayed on his feet, his gaze running over his brother’s tousled red hair, ginger half-beard, and unsmiling expression. “You don’t want me to be your best man. Why haven’t you asked one of the guys from the team?”
Elite rowing teams were tighter than brothers. That was the legend and the truth. Well, unless you were him and managed to ruin even those hard-forged bonds, but that was a different story for a different day.
And, not that he was a wedding planner or anything, but he was pretty sure the bridal party was supposed to be picked long before now.
“Because you’re family.” That was Emelia. “And when your parents are gone, you’re what’s left of the Carlisles. For better or worse.”
Victor instinctively raised his hand to the jagged scar that zagged down his cheek, a move that wasn’t lost on his brother.
Emelia sighed. “Sit down. Both of you.”
Victor and Peter both pulled out their chairs and sat down, eyeing each other like boxers banished to opposing corners.
“I don’t have any brothers or sisters, and I’m old enough to be the mother of my half-siblings. All I have is my cousin. And I’m not saying you have to be each other’s people—we all know that’s not going to happen anytime soon. But I do think you will both regret it if you don’t try to find some common ground. Plus …” Emelia paused before she threw in the killer blow. “You know it would mean everything to your mom.”