He crooked his finger, and Nicholas followed because he felt he had no choice. He was too numb to fight against a man with such power. They wound through the halls of this home he knew so well and out a parlor onto the wide terrace that stretched across the expanse of the back of the manor. It overlooked the garden. The place he’d first dared to kiss Aurora. In the orange and pink colors of sunset, he looked down over the green and found a woman not so far down the path from the house.
Aurora. Even from a distance, he could make her out. He knew her gait, he knew her posture, her knew the way she tilted her head as she paused at what she always called her favorite rosebush. She was the kind of woman with a favorite rosebush and he loved her for it.
Only today, she wasn’t with him as she strolled those lovely paths. But she wasn’t alone, either. No, in the romantic glow of the sunset, she was with a gentleman. Nicholas’s heart sank.
“Lovell,” Bramwell said, with a pleasure to his voice that said he enjoyed being cruel. “They look well together, don’t they?”
Nicholas couldn’t respond to the jab. He was too busy staring at the couple. Aurora’s hand was in the crook of this man’s elbow. He was speaking to her and she turned her face toward him. Even from the distance, Nicholas recognized she was smiling. When she smiled, she did so with her entire body. He’d made a study of how her shoulders lifted and her hands fluttered in those moments.
She looked…happy now. The kernel of doubt became far more.
“Now, you might wish to go confront her,” Bramwell said softly. “Or exact some kind of revenge and break up this engagement.”
Nicholas set his jaw. “I would never hurt her,” he whispered.
Bramwell appeared confused at the concept, but he continued, “If you do so, if you attempt to talk to her or convince her to back out of this, I will destroy you. Do you understand that?”
“I am already destroyed,” Nicholas said, unable to keep his eyes from the couple. His voice no longer sounded like his own.
Bramwell chuckled. “Ah, the romance of youth. Well, if you don’t care about yourself, then think of your family. I could sack the man who raised you, give him no reference.”
At that, Nicholas pivoted away from the image of Aurora and her future husband. “My father has served you well for many years, my lord.”
“Your father is the Duke of Roseford and you’re nothing but a bastard he abandoned, along with all the others,” Bramwell hissed. “My man of affairs lowered himself to marry your mother and legitimize you in the eyes of the law, but you know what you are. Do you want to make him regret helping you?”
Nicholas set his jaw. His father—the man who’d raised him—had always treated him as his own. Bertrand Gillingham had never been anything but an honorable man. A man Nicholas desperately wanted to be like, not the awful duke who had taken advantage of his mother when she was a servant in his home.
“I’ve heard the Duke of Roseford has taken an interest in you,” Bramwell said when Nicholas didn’t answer. “That the army is being bandied about as a future. I would consider taking that option, young man.”
Nicholas had rebuffed that idea when he had thought himself about to marry Aurora, but now it didn’t seem so very outlandish. She would marry someone else. At least if he was gone, he wouldn’t have to see that. Wouldn’t have to hear rumor of her happiness. Wouldn’t have to see her increase with that other man’s children, pass her in the park on Lord Lovell’s arm and have her look at him like he was a pathetic stranger.
“It doesn’t really matter what I do, does it?” Nicholas said as he turned on his heel and walked away. “I have no leverage over a man like you. It’s over. I understand that.”
“Gillingham?” Bramwell called out when Nicholas had reached the doors leading back into the house.
Nicholas froze there and slowly turned. Bramwell was smiling at him. Smiling as if stripping Nicholas of all his hopes and dreams was some kind of jolly pastime for him. “Yes?”
“Say thank you to your betters, boy,” Bramwell said.
Nicholas fisted his hands at his sides. He wanted nothing more than to walk back across the long terrace and punch the earl. An action his birth father would certainly approve of. But he had to think of more than himself and his worst impulses now.
“Thank you, my lord,” he said through clenched teeth.
“You’re welcome. You are dismissed.”
Nicholas left then without another word. He staggered through this house he would never return to, blind to all its familiar halls and out into the drive where his horse awaited him. He rode away just as blindly, tears stinging his eyes and broken heart throbbing madly. And in those horrible, pain-tinged moments, he made a promise to himself.
He would make a life that never left him beholden to men like the Earl of Bramwell again. Nor would he ever let something so foolish as love leave him open to pain.
Chapter 1
Nine Years Later
Nicholas walked alongside his half-brother Robert through Hyde Park. It was slow going. In the cool of the morning, his leg hurt all the more. He limped while Robert strolled and Nicholas’s bullmastiff, Fortescue, trotted at his side, always watchful of anyone who came near his master. Thanks to Fortescue’s large and rather fearsome demeanor, very few did.
“I appreciate you coming out with me this morning,” Robert said.
Nicholas thought it was to fill the silence between them. It had never been a comfortable one. After all, Robert was the Duke of Roseford’s only legitimate son. He’d taken on their father’s title years before and run it just as ragged and wrong as the man who’d sired them both.
That he had recently come to heel was something Nicholas didn’t wholly trust.
He shrugged. “I needed the exercise, as did Fortescue.”
Hearing his name, the dog tilted his head up toward Nicholas, watching. Nicholas fought the urge to smile like a fool at the animal and kept his attention on Robert.
“I suppose being seen with a duke also doesn’t hurt your current plans,” Robert drawled.
His brother was baiting him and Nicholas took a long breath so he wouldn’t automatically take that bait. “Depends on the duke,” he said.
If he had been trying to insult Robert, his brother didn’t get angry. Instead, he laughed. “Truer words have never been spoken. There are definitely levels of respectability, even amongst those with titles. I suppose my marriage to Katherine has raised me in the ranks, but certainly I am not at the best advantage to help you in your quest to earn a title.”
“Is that why you asked me to walk with you, to talk to me about the title?” Nicholas asked softly.
“It is a rare thing for titles to be bestowed for bravery and sacrifice, though I suppose more common as of late for war heroes like yourself and Wellington.”
Nicholas sighed. This was a topic he didn’t really like to discuss. He didn’t want anyone to know how much it meant to him. Most especially Robert. His brother hardly respected his own title—he would certainly tease Nicholas about desiring his own.
“I’m no Wellington,” Nicholas said. “I have never claimed to be.”