His cousin rode on beside him in silence, frowning slightly. After a pause, the Earl said: “You don’t agree?”
“That he would be happier there? No. That doesn’t signify, however. If you wish him to leave Stanyon, so be it! It will mean a breach, for he will not leave without making a deal of noise. Lady St. Erth, too, will not be silent, nor will she remain at Stanyon. What reason will you give for banishing Martin when he and she publish their wrongs to the rest of our relations?”
The Earl let Orthes drop to a walk. “Must I give any?”
“Unless you wish it to be thought that you have acted from caprice, or — which perhaps might be said by those who do not know you well — from rancour.”
There was a pause. “How very longheaded you are, Theo!” Gervase complained. “You are quite right, of course. But what is the boy about? Does he hope to drive me away from Stanyon? He cannot be so big a clodpole!”
Theo shrugged. “There is no saying what he may hope. But you cannot, I believe, shut your doors to him merely because he fenced once with the button off his foil, and did not warn you that a bridge was unsafe.”
“Ah, there is a little more than that!” Gervase said.
“What more?”
Gervase hesitated. “Why, I did not mean to tell you this, but I woke last night to the conviction that someone was in my room.”
Theo turned his head to stare at him under his brows. “In your room? Martin?”