“Is it ambush if you saw it coming?” Evan grinned, entirely unrepentant. “Come now, Sebastian. You are thirty years old. You must marry eventually. Why not approach the matter with an open mind? Some of the candidates may prove surprisingly tolerable.”
“I have examined the candidates—repeatedly. At every ball, dinner, and house party I have attended these past seven years.They are not tolerable; they are tedious. Interchangeable young women saying interchangeable things—laughing at remarks that are not remotely amusing—pretending fascination with subjects they do not in the least care about.”
“Possibly because you insist on discussing drainage improvements.”
“Drainage improvements are important.”
“They are not romantic.”
“I am not attempting to be romantic. I am attempting to manage an estate that employs three hundred people and encompasses fifteen thousand acres. The romance of drainage—”
“—is precisely the sort of sentiment that explains why you remain unmarried.” Evan rose—still grinning—and moved toward the door. “Mother is in the blue drawing room. I suggest you prepare yourself. She has that gleam in her eye—the one that historically precedes announcements of social engagements you did not know you had agreed to attend.”
Sebastian watched his brother depart with the resigned air of a condemned man observing the construction of the gallows. Evan was right, of course. Their mother was nothing if not persistent—and her persistence regarding Sebastian’s matrimonial future had only sharpened with each passing year.
He understood her concern. He was the duke—the title, the estates, the long weight of Harcourt history rested upon his shoulders. His duty was clear: marry, produce an heir, secure the succession. It was what dukes did. What dukes had always done.
And yet—
Sebastian rose from his desk and crossed to the window, looking out over the immaculate grounds of Ashworth Hall. His father had stood at this very window, he thought—had gazed upon these same rolling hills, these same carefully tended lawns—this same view that was beautiful, valuable, and entirely, irrevocably his.
The old duke had been a hard man. Cold. Exacting. Incapable of expressing approval even when it was deserved. Sebastian had spent his childhood striving to earn his father’s regard, and his adolescence learning that he never would. The old duke had wanted an heir, not a son—a vessel for the title, not a person with thoughts and feelings and the audacity to be anything other than what his birth required.
Sebastian had been three-and-twenty when his father died. He had assumed the responsibilities of the dukedom at once because that was what was expected. He had managed the estates, attended Parliament, fulfilled the endless obligations that accompanied his position. He had done everything correctly.
And in doing so, he had discovered that everyone wanted something from him. Everyone. The mothers who thrust their daughters toward him at balls. The gentlemen who sought his political influence. The servants who depended on his generosity. The tenants who looked to him for protection. The entire machinery of society that saw not Sebastian Harcourt, but the Duke of Ashworth—a title laden with expectations he could never quite satisfy and obligations he could never entirely discharge.
He was tired.
Not physically—he was young, healthy, perfectly capable of dancing until dawn if circumstance required. But tired in some deeper sense. Tired of performance. Tired of falseness. Tired of conversations in which nothing true was said and nothing honest was allowed.
His mother wished him to marry. Very well. He would meet the candidates she selected. He would attend the engagements she arranged. He would do his duty—as he always had.
But he could not wholly suppress a hope—small, foolish, almost certainly futile—that somewhere among all the interchangeable young ladies with their interchangeable smiles, there might be one who saw him. Not the title. Not the wealth. Not the influence, nor the connections, nor the thousands of acres of prime English countryside.
Just him.
It was, he knew, an unreasonable hope. Dukes did not marry for love; they married for advantage. And even if love were possible—how would he recognise it? How could he trust it? Every woman who had ever shown interest in him had been interested in what he represented, not who he was.
Over the years, he had learned to sense the falseness—the too-eager laughter, the too-bright smiles, the conversations that revolved endlessly around his preferences while revealing nothing of the speaker’s own. He had grown adept at armouring himself against it, maintaining a polite distance that discouraged intimacy.
It was lonely, being a duke.
Not that he would ever admit as much. Not to Evan, who would make a jest of it. Certainly not to his mother, who would only redouble her matchmaking efforts. Loneliness was weakness; weakness was not permitted. He was the Duke of Ashworth. He had responsibilities.
He turned from the window and straightened his waistcoat.
Time to face his mother.
***
The Dowager Duchess of Ashworth was not a woman who believed in subtlety.
“Darling,” she said, as Sebastian entered the blue drawing room, “you look tired. Have you been sleeping poorly? You musttake better care of yourself. A duke cannot afford to be anything less than vigorous.”
“Mother.” Sebastian bent to kiss her cheek, noting with resignation the stack of papers on the table beside her—the infamous list of eligible young ladies, and, if Evan’s assessment was accurate, of formidable length. “How delightful to see you. And Miss Crane.”
Helena Crane rose from her seat by the window and offered a curtsey that was perfectly correct without being in the least obsequious. A handsome woman in her mid-twenties, she had served as his mother’s companion these past two years, and Sebastian had always appreciated her quiet competence—and her complete lack of matrimonial interest in him.
