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"I've been getting to know them," I say.

"Blaire asked me for time before anyone else knew, and I gave it to her."

"You met your sons," my mother says slowly, "and you didn't tell me."

It's the closest she comes to an accusation, and it lands harder than anything anyone has said to me in the last forty-eight hours. "I'm sorry," I say.

"I made a promise, and I kept it for as long as I could."

She absorbs that. Then she sets the photograph back on the table, gently, as though it might break.

"If you're bracing for me to worry about the inheritance, don't," she says.

"I don't care about the Charter tonight, and I don't care about Richard's statements. I care that I have grandchildren I've never met." She pauses, and something softer crosses her face.

"And I'm not surprised it's Blaire. I've known what she was to you since the first week she spent in our library. I simply didn't think you knew it yet."

I don't have an answer for that, so I don't try to give one.

Across the room, Sebastian finally speaks.

"She kept them from you?" His voice is tight with anger.

"She let you walk around not knowing you had sons, Ross. She let all of us—"

"Sebastian," Jane says quietly.

"No, I'm allowed to be angry about this," Sebastian says.

"He's my brother. He missed their whole lives because she decided he didn't deserve to know."

"I know what she did," I tell him.

"I've spent weeks being angry about it. It doesn't change anything now."

Sebastian drags a hand through his hair and looks away, and I watch his expression change. It happens in less than a second. His eyes drop to Jane, to the hand resting on her stomach, and I see him do the arithmetic we were both raised to do. The firstborn son of either of us. His son was supposed to come first. Now he won't.

The shame reaches him almost immediately. I see the color rise up his neck and watch him close his eyes, as though he can erase the thought by refusing to look at it.

"God," he says, his voice rough.

"I'm sorry. For one second, I thought about the succession. About him." He gestures toward Jane without looking at her.

"That's a terrible thing to think right now."

"It's an honest thing to think," I tell him.

"We were raised to think it."

"That doesn't make it right." He looks at me, and the anger has gone out of him, replaced by something steadier.

"They're my nephews. I don't care about the order of anything. I want to meet them, Ross. When they're ready and when Blaire's ready, I want to know them."

"You will," I say, and I mean it.

Jane has been silent through all of it. She shifts forward on the sofa now, and the three of us turn toward her without quite meaning to. She spends her days caring for children who can't always tell her what's wrong, and she has the steadiest voice of anyone I know.

"Can I say something?" Jane asks.