“I had a few things to see to,” Hector said vaguely. Maybe it was his own shameful aristocratic pride, but there was a great deal of pleasure in the fact that Matthew could notforceHector to answer him. He bet it drove Matthewmad,too.
“What could possibly lure you away from your important work playing blacksmith?” Matthew seethed.
Hector gave his brother a feral sort of grin. “I thought I might come to meet my little nephew,” he said. “Before your wretched influence turns him into yet another spoiled lordling, that is.”
Matthew scoffed, looking away. In profile, he looked even more like their father. Or maybe it was just that Hector had almost always been looking at his father from this angle, watching keenly for the late duke’s reaction while his father had completely ignored him.
“Fine,” he said tersely after a moment. “I’ll summon the boy. You can meet him. And then you can go back to … wherever you came from.”
Hector wasn’t sure when he’d decided. Had it been at some point on the long trip south? Had it been when he’d seen that the city was the same decadent, flimsy place he’d remembered from his childhood? Or had it been when he’s seen his brother?
It didn’t matterwhenhe’d decided—justthathe had decided.
“I’m not going back,” he said, then paused to enjoy the sight of his brother’s face going a mottled purple-red.
“Where,” Matthew asked through clenched teeth, “do you plan to live?”
Hector made a show of looking back and forth at the gaudy entryway. It turned out that Hector had greater depths of pettiness in him than he’d realized.
“Here, I suppose,” he said as though the idea was just occurring to him. “Since it is my house, after all.”
“But—butIlive here,” Matthew sputtered. “My family lives here!”
What was it with these aristocrats and repeating themselves when things didn’t go their way? Were they so accustomed to their own power that their minds simply shut down when they were defied?
“Then, I suppose ye will have to acclimate yourself to living on the benevolence of theBroken Duke.”
Matthew’s flinch confirmed what Hector had suspected; his brother wasabsolutelyresponsible for that title.
“If you can make peace with that,” he went on, “then perhaps I will allow you to remain at one of the title’s estates.”
Matthew’s eyes went wide. “Not in London?”
Hector shrugged. “If you have the funds, you are welcome to find your own lodging in Town.”
Matthewdidn’thave the funds, not without the family’s money. They both knew that. And no doubt it was a shock to Matthew to no longer find himself the cherished, cossetted son of the duke but, instead, the younger brother, forced to live on the elder’s charity.
But Hector had found it shocking to suddenly live a stone’s throw from Scotland and to become a blacksmith’s apprentice at eight years old. And he had survived.
Besides, he wasn’t throwing Matthew out on his arse. The man was getting a bloodyestateto live in, for goodness’ sake.
“Right,” he said, when Hector continued gaping at him. “Well, you will find that the ducal chambers belong to me now?—”
“For now,” Matthew interjected darkly, halting Hector as he began to turn away.
“What was that?” Hector growled, glaring at his younger brother. He didn’t need to accept impertinence. He’d been forced to accept insults and denigration his whole life, but he didn’t have to any longer. If Matthew pressed him, Hectorwouldthrow him out on his arse, family loyalty be damned.
But maybe Hector had been too soon to dismiss his brother’s weapons. Because Matthew looked far, far too smug for Hector’s comfort.
“I said,” Matthew repeated, a grim smile crossing his face, “that you own the ducal chambersfor now. Because,brother—” He spat the word, making it an insult. “—before he died, Father set up a board of trustees to manage the ducal properties. He couldn’t undo the entailment—believe me, he tried—but hecouldset up certain … terms for his successor.”
“What terms?” Hector growled. Maybe he should have been more surprised, but he wasn’t, not truly. It wasjustlike his father to find a way to inconvenience Hector, even from beyond the grave.
And it would be a blasted inconvenience, judging by how pleased Matthew looked.
“As it happens,” Matthew went on, clearly enjoying having a captive audience, “Father was able to issue a requirement that his successor take a wife. An appropriate woman, of course,” he added sardonically. “The daughter of an aristocrat.”
Hector growled. Inconvenient, but not impossible. There were plenty of women who would look past the man to the title. He’d find some demure, quiet lass that wouldn’t bother him and make an honest woman out of her.
