And he’d made a promise to his mother all those years ago. Even though she’d left him and never looked back, he would honor the promise and stay true to himself.
Great wealth warped the minds of those who held it. It made strong men weak and great women greedy and conniving. It made those in high positions think whatever they wanted was theirs for the buying. The untitled may not be rich, but they were happy. He was happy. Or at least he had been before Sophie had re-entered his life and thrown it into chaos.
Blake shook his head. He didn’t need a dukedom. He didn’t need wealth or an estate atop a hill. He simply needed to remember who he was and who he wanted to be. Sophie was right when she spouted off about choices and decisions. His wasn’t even a hard one to make.
“No.”
“No, you won’t think about it, or no, you won’t do it?”
He sighed and looked directly into Daemon’s unwavering sea-green gaze. “I will never be a duke. Not ever. Burn the remaining documents and forget what you know. Forget that I should have been Duke of Blakiston and wait for Charles to go to hell so you can find a new successor. If you can’t do that, forge some new documentation and thrust it on another man, because I don’t want it.”
“Do you understand what you’re giving up? You could have it all. A wife with an entrée into society, children, a fortune.”
“I do understand. I don’t want any of that. I have never wanted that kind of power or responsibility.”
This time it was Daemon who shook his head as he stood to leave. “You’re making a mistake here, brother.”
“A mistake is something you grow to regret,” Blake muttered. This was one decision regret would never sink its claws into.
* * *
A duke? Blake was the rightful Duke of Blakiston? Sophie couldn’t have heard right. She couldn’t have. But that wasn’t even the worst revelation of her eavesdropping. Daemon and Blake were half brothers? Why hadn’t she ever known that? Daemon had asked her questions only hours earlier and hadn’t let on one little bit that the two were related.
She turned from Blake’s office door with a hand pressed to her suddenly fluttery stomach. No wonder Blake never wanted to talk about his sire. No wonder he’d gotten so angry when she’d asked him why he didn’t want to be a duke. But he’d told her bastards don’t inherit. He’d said it over and over. She thought for a moment that she would cast up her accounts right there on the floor. Everyone had their secrets, but this? This was a flat-out lie. A betrayal of everyone whose life depended on work from the estate, on the duke, on the word of a man who had apparently been born on the right side of the blanket after all.
This was it. This was the moment she could either confess to what she’d heard and confront the two men who claimed to care something for her. Or she could take the new information away and think on what she could and would do with it. She felt her head would explode from the pressure.
She fisted one hand in the skirts of her gown, and with the other, pushed the door to Blake’s office open. Daemon saw her first and began to rise, but Sophie stopped him with a curt gesture. Blake was slower to her presence and didn’t make to stand, didn’t make a move at all.
“Sophia.” Daemon addressed her warily. “Is it luncheon already?”
She drew breath, opened her mouth and asked, “Blake would you fetch more wood for the fire in the common room? That rain is still falling and it’s bringing a chill with it.”
Both men stared at her for a moment too long, and she wondered if one would call her on her hesitation or her flimsy lie. Blake rose without a word and Daemon picked his glass up and drained the amber contents in one swallow before addressing her.
“You heard all of that, didn’t you?”
She gave a shake of her head, another curl breaking loose from the knot she tried to tame them into. “Heard what?”
Daemon smiled then. It was a lifting of lips that for as long as Sophie had known Daemon, he reserved just for her. Only today there was something else there—a weariness he didn’t normally let show.
She did have so many questions. How did they find out they