Nicholas heard the slight waver in the man’s voice, saw the seriousness in his eyes. “You’ve lost others.”
Graham nodded slightly. “And trust me, future duke or not, there was no control in what happened. There isn’t much control in the world at all, not for the things that have true meaning. You’ve felt that.” He motioned to Nicholas’s leg. “It changed your life.”
“Yes,” he said softly.
“That’swhy we have to appreciate those things every moment we have them. Hold on to them and not let anything foolish stand in the way. Because there lies the path of regret. Regret is all the things left unsaid and undone.”
Nicholas stared down the little rise, found Aurora amongst the revelers in a heartbeat. She was sitting on a blanket, Fortescue’s big, tawny head in her lap. She leaned back on her arms, bonnet discarded, face lifted to the sun. And she was so utterly glorious. So much the same as she’d ever been and so much more than he’d ever dreamed.
“Lady Lovell is a beautiful woman,” Graham said.
“Mmmm.” Nicholas hoped he sounded noncommittal.
“I mean, I assume it isn’t my wife or Katherine who you are looking at like that. You don’t seem the kind of man to covet. Are you going to fight so hard for control that you instead give up on whatever it is between you?”
Those words hit home, but Nicholas forced a wry smile. “You all have your opinions, don’t you?”
That elicited a chuckle from Graham, and his intensity faded. “That’s what families do.”
Nicholas jerked toward him. “Family?”
“You are the brother of a man I consider my brother,” Graham said with a shake of his head. “You’re family.”
Nicholas blinked. Family. It had been a long time since he’d had one of those. His mother had died while he was in the army. He only saw his adoptive father rarely. Perhaps because of guilt on both sides.
He bent his head. “My father…the one who raised me…he served hers, you know.”
“I’ve heard. She speaks in glowing terms of the elder Gillingham, you know. Far more of him than her own father.” Graham shook his head. “Fathers of birth don’t have to be fathers. Mine was a cruel monster. I wish I’d had a man like yours to guide me.”
Nicholas nodded slowly. “He is the best of men. He raised me to fight whatever nature the last Roseford’s blood put in me. He raised me to be decent.”
“And what does he think of the title?”
Nicholas flinched. That was part of why they saw each other so rarely. “He thinks he has served terrible men and good men over the years. Title never mattered as much to him as heart.”
“But it matters to you.”
“Yes.” Yet as he looked down over the group below, his family of blood, half or not, his friends new and old, Aurora…he was beginning to doubt himself. Doubt everything.
“Come, we’ve jawed enough,” Graham said, clapping a hand on Nicholas’s shoulder. “They’ll start calling for us if we don’t join them.”
They fell into step again down the hill. But as they reached the others, Nicholas turned toward him. “I—thank you, Your Grace. You gave me a great deal to ponder.”
“Of course,” Graham said with another of those friendly smiles. “And for God’s sake, call me by my first name. Brothers only use titles in public or when they’re giving each other endless shit.”
With that, he moved off to the blanket, to his wife, whom he kissed without any seeming care of who was around. And then he fell into a conversation with Aurora with the same seamless, effortless kindness he had exhibited with Nicholas.
Nicholas sighed as he moved off to be closer to Selina and Derrick and settled himself slowly on the blanket, straightening his leg out with relief. As he massaged the muscle, his mind raced. He’d planned his life one way and had it torn apart, planned it another and the same had happened, this time with blood and fire. And now he was on the precipice of the third grand plan of his adult life and he questioned it all.
Questions he’d have to answer eventually. Questions heneeded toask before he could truly move on.
Aurora was laughing as she entered the house with Lizzie and the Duchess of Northfield, who kept insisting on being called Adelaide. The three of them were the last to return from the picnic that afternoon, because they had stopped to examine Roseford’s garden as the rest returned to the house. Lizzie knew everything about a garden. She’d even promised to come to Aurora’s little house in London and help her plant and prune the wilderness currently behind her home.
She felt so welcomed and cared for in this group. Even Selina Huntington, Nicholas’s sister and the one who seemed to have the most hesitation about Aurora, had been kind all day. Aurora hadn’t felt so relaxed and uninhibited since…
Well, since before her marriage, that was certain. Back when she was planning a life with her best friend and greatest love. A man who had not quite avoided her all day, but certainly hadn’t made an effort to join her, despite saying how much he wanted her there with him.
She had no idea where they stood, even though the distance had allowed her to observe him. Observe the careful ways he adjusted himself for his injuries. Observe the connections he was building with his family. Observe how remarkable he was, even more now that the years had given him experience and strength.
