Nicholas clenched his jaw. He and this man had been best friends their entire lives, and then it had just…ended. Because he couldn’t bear to talk to Thomas and know that he couldn’t ever be near Aurora again.
“That was a bad mistake on my part.” He bent his head. “On both accounts.”
Thomas gave a ghost of a smile. “I appreciate that. At any rate, by the time I realized how you’d both been manipulated, she was long married. What good would it have done to tell either of you the truth? Would you have come riding home from war to break up whatever life she had made for herself?”
“I don’t know,” Nicholas admitted. “I can’t even picture what I would have done if I discovered the truth and she wasn’t…free. Perhaps created more of a scandal than she’s dealing with now.”
“Yes.” Thomas’s face was lined with troubles. “Her scandal. If I had any bloody money at all, I could fix some of that. But if my father destroyed your lives in one day, he decided to decimate mine in tiny strokes. I’ve been digging out of his messes for years. And I’m…helpless.”
“I’m sorry,” Nicholas said, and meant it.
Thomas shrugged. “Nothing you can do. I must work it out myself. But I am left with a question because I saw my sister yesterday, and when she said your name I saw what I was blind to all those years ago. You spending time together at Roseford’s reconnected you. I can see how she shines the moment you come up as a topic. So what are you planning to do?”
“I could protect her better if I were marquess.”
He expected this man who had been groomed and readied for a title all his life to immediately agree to that notion. But instead Thomas’s face fell a fraction. “Hmmm,” he murmured, noncommittal.
“What doeshmmmmean?” Nicholas asked.
But before his friend could answer, the door to the study opened and Bertrand Gillingham entered. Nicholas pushed to his feet and faced him. His father still had a straight-as-a-ramrod posture and a serious countenance. But his eyes were kind when they flitted over Nicholas and for a moment reflected joy at seeing his boy.
“Am I interrupting?” his father asked.
Thomas shot Nicholas a side glance. “Not at all, Gillingham. I think your son and I were at an impasse. And I know you are anxious to see each other. I’ll step out for a moment and let you speak. But my mother’s invitation stands, Nicholas—we’d love to have you join us for supper. It willalmostbe like old times.”
He clapped a hand on Nicholas’s arm and smiled at Gillingham before he left the two alone together. His father’s hand fluttered at his side, like he wanted to touch him but didn’t. Then he moved forward and began fiddling with the items on the earl’s desk, organizing them. Of course he would. He was still Thomas’s man of affairs. Old habits died hard, it seemed.
At last he glanced up. “You look well, better than I’ve seen you since—”
His father cut off. He never spoke to Nicholas about the injuries that had nearly killed him. Not even when he came to his bedside over and over as Nicholas fought to live, Gillingham had only read to him then and spoke to him of old stories from his childhood. Of his mother, of Thomas, even of Aurora. Never that horrible day of fire and pain.
“Thank you,” Nicholas said. “The country air, perhaps.”
“Perhaps,” Gillingham said, his gaze coming up from the papers on the desktop briefly. “How were things with your brothers and your sister?”
Now Nicholas shifted, discomfort flooding him. This man had raised him, sacrificed for him, with never a whisper that Nicholas didn’t belong to him. Any time Nicholas spoke of his other family, it felt like a betrayal.
“They are well,” he said. “All happily married in the last few years. It has changed them, I think, and for the better.”
“Love will do that,” Gillingham said with a slight smile. “And now you are back in Town. I hear word you’ll be taking some very important meetings in the next few weeks. About the marquess matter.”
Nicholas nodded. “Yes…that’s the plan. Little steps closer all the time, though who knows when they’ll make their final decision. A month, a year…it could be anything.”
Now his father stopped fiddling with the desk entirely and came around closer to Nicholas. He tilted his head, his gaze taking Nicholas in from head to toe. “You’re troubled by that.”
“I suppose I am,” he admitted, thinking of Aurora. “More now than before.”
“But you’ve always known this process would be drawn out. That you’d have to jump through a dozen hoops and impress a dozen silly men. And yet it bothers you now.”
Nicholas was pulled back to when he was eight years old, twelve years old, sixteen years old and his father had offered calm counsel. That had been one of the greatest comforts of his life, knowing if he turned toward this man, he would always be welcomed with open arms and a kind ear. He didn’t always like the advice, he hadn’t always followed it…but it was there, a forever beacon that helped him to the shore.
“Nicholas, my boy, you still want to be marquess, don’t you?”
There was the question. Simply asked. The answer was becoming far less simple.
He sighed. “I-I’m not sure anymore, Father.”
Gillingham motioned to the two chairs before Thomas’s roaring fire. They took them together, and his father draped his elbows over his knees, completely engaged with Nicholas in that moment. “Tell me.”
