Susan Spencer Paul by The Heiress Bride

to say that, no, he was not their Uncle Hugo, he was their Uncle Hugh, but his voice still wouldn’t work.
    He shook his head instead.
    Alexander Baldwin, the Lord of Gyer, was hard at work in his private chamber when he heard the commotion in the great hall. He had only just lifted his head from whathe’d been reading when his youngest brother, Justin, walked into the room.
    “You’d best come, Alex,” Justin advised in the terse, serious manner that had defined him for all of his nineteen years.
    Without a word Alexander got up and followed Justin out of the room and into the great hall, where he was greeted by the sight of his castlefolk crowding the many long windows, peering into the courtyard as though some great spectacle were taking place there.
    “Make way for your lord,” Justin demanded as he parted the crowd by the nearest window. “Make way, I said!”
    Alexander pressed his way to the front and looked out.
    He was silent for several long moments and he felt, somewhere behind his eyes, a strange pressure that he’d not felt in many and many a year. He blinked several times against both the feeling and what he was seeing, and then he gave way to both.
    “Dearest God,” he whispered. “Oh, my great and gracious God.”
    “I’ll fetch Lillis,” Justin said, but Alexander didn’t hear him. He was already on his way, running, to the front doors of Castle Gyer.
    Rosaleen had finally come to his rescue.
    “This is your Uncle Hugh,” she was explaining to the boys, patting Hugh’s hand again in a comforting manner. “Your Uncle Hugh,” she repeated to their astonished faces. “You know of him, do you not? He is your Uncle Hugo’s twin, just as the two of you are twins.”
    The boys looked to Hugh for confirmation of this fact, but he seemed to have turned into an idiot. He stood and stared at his nephews helplessly, wondering what hadhappened to him. These were his nephews, for mercy’s sake! If he couldn’t make himself speak to them, how would he manage it when Alex and Lillis came?
    And then the doors to Castle Gyer were flung open, and he had his answer.
    He wasn’t going to be able to manage it at all.
    In all the years that he’d been away from his family, Hugh had never considered that they might age. Always, in his thoughts, they had stayed the way they had been on the day he had left them. It was something of a surprise, then, to see Alex, and to see that he had aged. His eldest brother’s face had matured; a few gray hairs were sprinkled through his thick, dark hair. And he looked.. .smaller. His great, strong, eldest brother looked so much smaller than Hugh remembered, and then he realized with even greater amazement that Alex only looked smaller because he, Hugh, had grown bigger.
    “Hugh,” Alex was saying over and over, staring at him in disbelief. “Hugh. Hugh.”
    And he kept saying it as he moved forward, and then he began to cry it as he crushed Hugh in his powerful arms, and finally, after wetting him with his tears, Alex laughed it, joyously, disbelievingly and with relief.
    “You came home,” he whispered, pulling back from Hugh and taking hold of his shoulders. His eyes moved hungrily over his younger brother’s face. “You came home, Hugh.”
    Hugh still couldn’t speak. All he could do was stand there and stare into Alex’s beloved face and nod.
    Alex lifted one hand and gently touched Hugh’s cheek. His fingers came back wet, which surprised Hugh so much that he lifted his own hand to touch his face and realized that he, too, was crying.
    “Why, I’m crying like a babe,” he announced with some awe, finding his voice at last. He thought to himself, belatedly, that the first words he’d said to his eldest brother after ten years’ absence had been incredibly foolish.
    Alexander laughed and hugged him again, long and tight, before loosing him. “We’re both crying like babes,” he said. “You have unmanned me in front of my people, Hugh, but I swear by