Robert blinked and looked genuinely confused as he glanced at Selina. “What did you do?”
Selina threw up her hands. “Just trying to be a good sister.”
Robert chuckled as he met Nicholas’s eyes. “Inserting herself in your business, is she?”
Selina tossed her head and got up from the table with great theatrical aplomb. “Well, I never.” Her expression softened as she leaned down to kiss Nicholas’s cheek. “I do adore you, you know. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.” She pivoted and stuck her tongue out at Robert, eliciting the same from the duke. Then she laughed as she flounced off toward the house.
“How is she so utterly frustrating and entirely enchanting all at once?” Nicholas muttered.
“She’s a force of nature,” Robert agreed with a laughing shake of his head. “And Huntington manages the bulk of it.”
“He adores her,” Nicholas said with a sigh. “And so he deserves her, and she him. It’s heartwarming, really.”
“It is,” Robert said slowly, his brow wrinkling. “But you sound less than warmed. Are you that annoyed with her interfering in your life?”
“Yes.” Nicholas bent his head. “No. I’m defensive about all this, I know.”
“I think you earned that right, given what little I’ve gleaned about the situation,” Robert said slowly.
Nicholas let his gaze roll over his brother. Robert looked so much like their late father that it was sometimes startling. And once upon his time, his reputation for being a libertine had also matched their father’s thirst for pleasure. And yet, time had changed him. Love had changed him. That was evident in every way he moved and interacted. In the way he’d quietly reached out to all their half-siblings in the last few years, helping and guiding and welcoming them in one by one.
“I owe you my thanks, it seems,” Nicholas said.
“For what?” Robert asked, as he flopped down in the seat Selina had abandoned. He looked truly confused. “I threw you a ball you hated so much you slipped out not even halfway through.”
Nicholas arched a brow. “You’re going to pretend you don’t know where I went? That all of you didn’t discuss it at length in the family sewing circle?”
“We are terrible gossips,” Robert admitted with a laugh. “Though we have good intentions so that may excuse us.”
“Aurora told me you intervened with Sweeting last night,” he said.
Robert’s face grew stormy, bright anger in his eyes. “I always thought the man a smug know-it-all but I never knew he was such a disgusting arse.”
Nicholas clenched his fists at his sides. “He tried to…touch her.”
“Yes.” Robert’s nostrils flared. “But he didn’t. And he won’t. And I think he’ll find himself far less welcome in good company once he hurries along to London to whine about his treatment. I may be worthless, but my friends have a great deal of power.”
“You are certainly not worthless,” Nicholas said, and extended a hand to him. “And I thank you again for helping her.”
Robert shook the hand offered to him, but there was a look on his face that said volumes. “I appreciate the gratitude, but I wonder why you think you are the one who must express it. Is that your place now, Nicholas?”
He pulled his hand away and stared up at the sky as he tried to calm his suddenly racing heart. “Jesus, Robert, I just did this with Selina. Can we not repeat it?”
“Of course,” Robert said, almost gently. “But may I just say that your family loves you? And we are perhaps a little too protective because we almost lost you, and that realization and memory brings all of us to our knees when we allow it to take over. But you are a grown man, a very smart one. And well capable of making your own decisions. I just hope you take the time to get all the vital information before you do that.”
He patted Nicholas’s shoulder before he got up turned toward the house, calling back, “I know you ate, but the rest are gathering in the breakfast room if you want to make an appearance. Or take a little time to yourself. There is no pressure from me either way.”
Nicholas didn’t respond, but watched Robert disappear into the house. His words resonated in Nicholas’s brain.Get all the vital information.
It was good advice. Something he’d known he needed to do from the first moment he saw Aurora step from the carriage days before. Last night he’d known it too. They had to face the past together. And that was difficult and frightening because he knew that shared past could destroy whatever it was they were rebuilding at present.
But he had to do it. He had to face it. He had to face her and determine what the next step to take was in all this.
He got to his feet, taking his time and stretching out his leg since there was no longer an audience beyond the dog at his feet. Fortescue sat up at attention as he did it, watching him as intently as his siblings had.
“Don’t you start,” he muttered as he caught his cane and flicked his hand toward the house. “Go get your own breakfast.”
The dog’s ears perked up with that, and when they entered the house, Fortescue padded off toward the kitchen where he’d been given his meals each day. As for Nicholas, he pushed his shoulders back and walked down the hallway toward the breakfast room where he heard laughter and talk from the guests.
