her tangled feelings, Aurora couldn’t help but laugh. “Ah, the younger brother always wanting to find a way to best the older. That is an old tale.”
“I suppose it is to most,” Morgan said with a smile that was suddenly a little sad. “I often wonder what kind of relationship we would have had if we had all been raised together.”
That comment pushed Aurora’s troubles away. She knew the separation was something each of Roseford’s illegitimate children suffered from. It was actually very warming to see them begin to develop those strong familial bonds after all these years apart. She wanted that for Nicholas.
“His father…er, the man who raised him,” she began with a blush. “Bertrand Gillingham was my father’s man of affairs.”
“Was he?” Morgan said with a genuine look of surprise. “I didn’t know that. I’m Lizzie’s brother’s man of affairs now. It’s an interesting job.”
“It is, and his father was very good at it. He had a difficult subject to manage, though. I think, more difficult than your own.”
Lizzie smiled now. “Sometimes.”
“Oh, your brother is only everything good and decent and you know it,” Morgan said with a broad smile.
“He is that,” Lizzie said.
“Well, my father was…not,” Aurora admitted slowly, for this was revealing a great deal about herself. “He could be cruel. He didn’t look upon anyone else as his equal, even those with similar title. He made Gillingham’s job difficult. I think my mother felt sorry about it, so she offered a boon. Or a balm, perhaps, to keep the man working for my father. Nicholas was allowed to join us in the schoolroom. And he and my brother and I became fast friends.”
It was funny. So often she only thought of those last few months together with Nicholas. The bubbling passion that had never been fulfilled, the desperate love, the broken heart. But talking about the early years put her to mind of far happier times.
“He must have been a good student,” Morgan said. “Smart as a whip, that one.”
“It runs in the family,” Lizzie interjected, and was rewarded by a brief smile from her husband.
“He was an excellent student,” Aurora agreed. “He bested my poor brother Thomas at all the subjects. They had a friendly rivalry, but it never exited the schoolroom. When Thomas went away to Eton, my mother convinced my father to sponsor Nicholas, as well.”
“I would wager our real father might have had something to do with that, too,” Morgan mused. “He did with me.”
“You’re probably right. Though Nicholas didn’t know about the duke until much later—fifteen, I think.” She remembered how devastated he’d been, how hurt and out of place. She’d so desperately wanted to comfort him.
It might have been then that she first fell in love with him without recognizing it.
Lizzie tilted her head. The younger woman almost looked like she was reading her. Seeing something Aurora hadn’t meant to reveal. She smiled. “I can see that Morgan has exactly eleven hundred questions to ask about Nicholas and his childhood.”
“Exactly eleven hundred, yes,” Morgan teased.
“We’ll be here a while then,” Aurora said with a laugh.
“And many of those questions are either very boring or very wicked,” Morgan continued. “I see Selina motioning to you, Elizabeth, if you wish to escape my truly terrible ways.”
Lizzie laughed. “This is his way of saying he wants to talk to you alone. He’s very subtle.”
Aurora continued smiling, it was impossible not to in the face of their playful banter, but her heart thudded in her chest. Morgan wanted to talk to her alone. About Nicholas. Was it to warn her off? She deserved that, likely, but still didn’t look forward to it.
“I’ll join you in a moment,” Morgan said, and leaned forward to kiss his wife’s cheek gently.
Lizzie smiled at him and Aurora, then slipped away. Morgan picked up the tongs and began carefully nudging through the links of sausage on the plate before them. “It’s nice to hear what Nicholas was like as a boy,” he said. “Especially from someone who knew him so well.”
“He was my brother’s best friend and they always included me, which was kind considering I was younger.”
She frowned. Thomas hadn’t spoken to Nicholas since he left for the army. Even when Nicholas was injured, he hadn’t reached out. Because of her. That past they hadn’t yet addressed had destroyed so much.
“And was he always such a serious creature?” Morgan asked, the teasing in his tone making her smile. “Please tell me he at least played pranks or