The dog barreled off, onlookers gawking at his sleek focus.
“Do you really want this?” Robert pressed.
Nicholas shifted. So much for putting up a barrier. “Yes,” he admitted at last. “I do. I was injured—I’ll never be the same. I’ve come to accept that. But perhaps this will make it all worthwhile.”
Robert stopped in the path and turned to him. His gaze was lit up, his cheeks flushed slightly. “No, it won’t,” he snapped. “Nothing in the world will make the fact that we almost lost you worthwhile. Or the suffering your family has watched you endure in the last two years. A bloody title won’t pay that debt. And I will tell you that I would trade my own fucking title if that meant none of it had happened.”
Nicholas caught his breath at the passion with which his brother said those words. “You wouldn’t trade being duke,” he said softly.
“Yes I would,” Robert insisted. “It’s not worth that much, I assure you.”
“You’ve never been without it,” Nicholas said.
“So you’ve said.” Robert gave a wan smile. “Twice, in fact. And perhaps you’re right. I can’t truly judge what you desire because I’ve always known it was my… I suppose some foolish fops would say my right. Which is ridiculous. I just happened to be the one son my father sired in the confines of a marriage. That makes me no better than you or Morgan or Selina or any of the vast number of others out there in the world.”
“Perhaps not,” Nicholas agreed. “But you are certainly viewed differently by those around you. People like me, people like Morgan and Selina, we have all…”
He trailed off and shook his head because his mind was trying to take him back to a place he refused to revisit. Even after nearly a decade, this topic always took him to that place, that afternoon at sunset when the consequences of his position in the world had been made perfectly clear.
Robert tilted his head. “Nicholas?” He looked like he would press more, but then he glanced past Nicholas and his eyes widened. “Bloody hell, has your dog brought back an entire tree?”
Nicholas pivoted and let out a long, heavy sigh. Fortescue had, indeed, found a different stick to return with than the one that had been thrown. A log, if one wanted to be more specific about it. As thick around as a strong man’s arm and probably the same height as Nicholas, himself, if stood up vertically.
“Fortescue!” he said, hoping to sound like he was admonishing the dog.
Robert laughed at his side and Nicholas joined in as the bullmastiff plunked the log down beside the path and looked up in pride and expectation that somehow Nicholas would casually toss this former tree for him.
Robert wiped tears of mirth from his eyes and straightened up with a sigh. “I won’t pretend that I know all of your life,” he said. “You are the most closed book of all my siblings.”
“No, that distinction goes to Fitzhugh, I think,” Nicholas said softly.
Robert flinched. “You may be right at that, since Fitzhugh doesn’t speak to me at all. Perhaps it is a judgment on me that I haven’t made more of an effort to read your book…or his. But my job as your older brother is to try to give you what you want, isn’t it? So if it is this title, I will do anything in my power to assist.”
Nicholas couldn’t help but be taken aback at the earnestness with which Robert said those words. He actually seemed like he meant them. But could that be trusted? Trust was not a commodity Nicholas doled out easily, nor came by naturally. Once upon a time, perhaps, but bitter experience had hardened him. Made him more jaded.
And so to avoid the intimacy of the fact that Robert wanted so much to give him this, Nicholas snorted in derision.
The remaining humor on Robert’s face faded and Nicholas thought he saw a flicker of hurt there in its place. But then it was gone. Wiped away by their family’s ability to hide emotion when it was not useful or safe.
“I know you judge my life,” Robert said. “Or what it once was. You think me too much like our father.”
Nicholas set his jaw. “That monster was never my father.”
Robert inclined his head. “Of course. But just because you think so low of me, you shouldn’t think I can’t help you. Being near me is, whether you like it or not, proximity to power, and that matters in these political situations. And if you don’t thinkIhave the influence you desire, then you must know I have a great many friends with far more of it. And far more of the honor you value so highly.”
That gave Nicholas pause. Roseford was talking about his club of dukes, the 1797 Club they were called, though Nicholas wasn’t entirely sure why. Robert and nine of his friends. They were certainly a most powerful force to be reckoned with, filled with some of the most honorable men in the land.
“You think they would help your bastard brother,” Nicholas asked softly. “These men with such honor.”
Robert’s shoulders came back and a protectiveness flitted over his face. “You judge yourself far more harshly then they would do, for they are the best of men. They would help you of your own merit, but more so if I were to ask. Which I would do.”
Nicholas let out a long sigh and reached down to scratch Fortescue’s ears as he said, “Well, what do you have in mind?”
Roseford gave a flash of a wicked smile, the only indication that he felt he’d won in this exchange. “A week-long country party at my estate. With some of my most influential friends attending. And there will be others who have the ear of those deciding who gets a title and who doesn’t. I’ll invite Selina and Derrick, as well. Morgan and Lizzie were already going to attend.”
Nicholas worried his lip. As much as he liked the idea of seeing his siblings and making the best impression he could, Robert wasn’t just asking him to his estate. He was asking Nicholas to theirfather’sestate. Nicholas had never been there. Never seen the place where his father had lorded over the world. The place where he’d take advantage of and later abandoned Nicholas’s mother all those years ago.
Did hewantto see it?
