Robert’s brow wrinkled. “In my estimation you are more valuable than Wellington. He won a war—that means something. But you saved men’s lives, at great cost to yourself.” Robert glanced at his leg and Nicholas winced. “Including Selina’s husband. Our sister would not be happy now were it not for your bravery. I think you are owed more than a mere title.”
“A mere title. Easy for you to say,” Nicholas said, casting his glance off into the park, watching the milling crowds that had gathered on this fine summer day. How separate he felt from them all. “You’ve been titled all your life, so you’ve never appreciated its power.”
Robert was quiet for a moment, then cast a glance at Nicholas. Nicholas flinched, because they were his own eyes, their father’s eyes, looking back at him on his brother’s face. Dark brown, guarded, unreadable.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for being power hungry, brother,” Robert said.
Nicholas shrugged again. “There are different kinds of power, you know. Both to destroy and to protect. But all of it requires the command a title can bring.”
And now he’d said too much. Revealed too much to this man he didn’t fully trust, even if their other half siblings, Morgan and Selina, said he was decent. Said he was better. Nicholas wasn’t certain he trusted either of them, even though he was closer to them.
“You really want this,” Robert said softly. “You really want to be named Marquess of Songstrum.”
And there it was, his hope, his dream said out loud. After his injury, everyone had thought he would die. He had few memories of that bleary time except for pain and the worry on the faces of those in his life. But as he healed and grew stronger, whispers had begun. One of the men he’d saved that horrible day in the midst of battle and death was the youngest son of Viscount Ludlow. The viscount was a personal friend of the Prince Regent, himself, and apparently a campaign had been launched to gift Nicholas with a title. The Songstrum line had died out ten years before, returning to the Crown with little fanfare.
But now it could belong to Nicholas, just as Robert said in an incredulous tone. So Nicholas fought for a way to ignore it. To put up a barrier between them.
“Fortescue!” he snapped out.
The dog immediately sat at attention, locking his amber gaze with Nicholas’s. He bent with a wince of faint pain and swept up a stick from alongside the path. He tossed it, not quite as far as he might once have been able to, and the dog’s ears went higher at attention.
“Fetch,” Nicholas said, pointing out at the expanse of grass where the stick had fallen.
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 think I have 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.