My Secret Lover Is His Brother novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Settlement Night
At the harbor's yearly Settlement Night, lobsterwoman Henley Pascoe watches the chairman read her father's debt aloud and offer to burn it for a son at the altar; her secret lover goes white, his brother stands, and she takes the note off the tray.
The first thing Linwood Hallowell did on Settlement Night was read my father's name out loud.
"Pascoe," he said into the microphone. "One million, one hundred thousand dollars."
Two hundred people in the Harbor House ballroom turned their heads.
My father stood on the dais in his one good jacket, with his gimme cap crushed in both hands.
Linwood had called him up there the way he called up every debtor on the first Friday of November.
You stood under the chandelier while he read your number, and the whole harbor ate its dinner and watched.
I was at table nine with a roll I couldn't swallow.
I had been to eight of these nights, never as the family being read.
Linwood tapped his signet ring on the lectern and smiled.
"Walter Pascoe took a note from this Trust eleven years ago to buy a boat and mend a wharf."
"The note comes due at our Centennial Ball on the twentieth of December."
"If it is not paid, the Pascoe wharf belongs to the Trust, as the paper says."
Nobody ate.
"But I am a fair man," Linwood said.
"I have two sons, and my will leaves the Trust to the one who is married by the Centennial."
"Walter has a daughter."
He turned his smile on me.
"Whichever of my boys stands at that altar with Henley Pascoe, I will burn the note in front of this town."
Heat climbed up my neck so fast it hurt.
On the dais, behind their father's shoulder, his two sons stood in black tie.
Rainer, the elder, was six foot four and carved out of grey stone.
He looked at the chandelier and not at me.
Tiernan, the younger, had his hands behind his back.
I had not seen Tiernan in a jacket before.
I had seen him in a cream wool sweater with sawdust on the sleeves.
I had watched him bend over a half-planked hull at two in the morning, laughing at the way I held a plane.
I had been in his bed three months.
I had never told him my last name.
That was my one rule.
The first night at the Lamplighter, I knew exactly whose son he was, and I said only, "Hen."
I had seen what a Hallowell could do to a number, and I would not let one into his bed.
Now Linwood had read my name for me, over a microphone, and Tiernan's face went white as paper.
He looked straight at me for the first time.
Then he looked at the floor.
I thought, Now he knows what I am.
"Well?" Linwood said. "Which of you will have her?"
My father's cap made a small crunching sound in his hands.
Rainer stepped forward before Tiernan could speak.
"I will."
His voice carried to the back of the room without being raised.
"Miss Pascoe, I'll marry you."
It wasn't kindness and it wasn't a question.
He said it.
Two hundred people drew one wet breath.
Tiernan's mouth opened.
I stood up so fast my chair went over behind me.
I do not remember crossing the ballroom.
I remember my boots on the thick red carpet, because I hadn't changed out of them.
I remember my father saying, "Henley, don't," in a voice I had not heard since my mother died.
I climbed the three steps of the dais.
The note lay on a silver tray beside the microphone, and I picked it up.
It was six pages, stapled, with a Hallowell Harbor Trust seal in the corner.
"Go on and tear it," Linwood said pleasantly. "I have copies."
"I'm not going to tear it."
I leaned to the microphone and heard my own voice come back off the walls.
"My father made every payment on this note for nine years."
"He stood up here tonight in his good jacket so you could read his number to people who've known him all his life."
"I'm not going to be handed to one of your sons like a clause."
"I'll give you my answer on December twentieth."
"Until then, nobody touches me or my father."
"And nothing in this paper buys anything of mine but my name, if I decide to sign."
Silence.
Then Linwood laughed.
"Forty-five days," he said. "Agreed. But a bride-to-be who stays in her father's drafty loft gives the harbor the wrong idea."
"You'll stay at the Harbor House until the twentieth, Miss Pascoe, as my guest."
"Both my sons live under this roof until then, and the harbor will see how the Trust treats the people it loves."
I didn't answer.
If I left, the note stayed, and my father stood on that dais again.
My father put his cap back on his head, slowly.
Rainer came down the steps and held out a hand to guide me to the stairs.
I didn't take it.
I walked past him, into the cloakroom behind the ballroom, and pressed my back to a rack of damp coats.
The door opened.
It was Tiernan.
He didn't say anything.
He looked as if I had hit him.
For one second he looked like he wanted to pull me into his arms in front of God and the coat rack.
"Hen," he said, low and rough.
"Don't," I said. "I should have told you."
"Hen."
A shadow filled the doorway behind him.
Rainer stood there with one hand on the frame, steel eyes moving from his brother's face to mine.
"Mind the door, brother," he said evenly.
"Our father counts who goes through it."
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