The Matter of a Marquess - Jess Michaels Page 0,58
Especially since I’m certain that title, long fallow, will come with a great deal of trial.”
Nicholas had heard all the whispers since the rumors that he might be given a title had begun to spread through Society. Men like Sweeting from the night before, who thought rank was only deserved by those with a bloodline. People who thought he couldn’t rise to the occasion for other reasons. Those who questioned his ability, intelligence and education.
But Northfield was the first person outside of his closest friends and family who had questioned why he might want such a title. If the position was good enough for him, not the other way around.
Nicholas sighed. “You have already said you are one of Roseford’s best friends, and everything I’ve seen of you these past few days and heard of you over the years tells me you are a good and decent man.”
“I try to be,” Graham said softly.
“I will answer you honestly,” Nicholas continued, meeting his eyes. “I want the control that rank will offer me.”
Graham stared at him a moment, and then flashed a grin. “Control? No, that’s an illusion, mate.”
“Says the man who’s always had it,” Nicholas retorted, perhaps with a little more heat than he’d intended. “You can do as you wish, help who you wish, go where you wish and no one can stop you. No one can take away what you have.”
“Ah, then what you want is power,” Graham said. “Power and luck. Because don’t think for a moment that I don’t realize, in a little throb in the back of my head, that the wife I love more than anything in this world, the children back at home who make the future brighter…those things that truly matter could be taken from me in an instant.”
Nicholas heard the slight waver in the man’s voice, saw the seriousness in his eyes. “You’ve lost others.”
Graham nodded slightly. “And trust me, future duke or not, there was no control in what happened. There isn’t much control in the world at all, not for the things that have true meaning. You’ve felt that.” He motioned to Nicholas’s leg. “It changed your life.”
“Yes,” he said softly.
“That’s why we have to appreciate those things every moment we have them. Hold on to them and not let anything foolish stand in the way. Because there lies the path of regret. Regret is all the things left unsaid and undone.”
Nicholas stared down the little rise, found Aurora amongst the revelers in a heartbeat. She was sitting on a blanket, Fortescue’s big, tawny head in her lap. She leaned back on her arms, bonnet discarded, face lifted to the sun. And she was so utterly glorious. So much the same as she’d ever been and so much more than he’d ever dreamed.
“Lady Lovell is a beautiful woman,” Graham said.
“Mmmm.” Nicholas hoped he sounded noncommittal.
“I mean, I assume it isn’t my wife or Katherine who you are looking at like that. You don’t seem the kind of man to covet. Are you going to fight so hard for control that you instead give up on whatever it is between you?”
Those words hit home, but Nicholas forced a wry smile. “You all have your opinions, don’t you?”
That elicited a chuckle from Graham, and his intensity faded. “That’s what families do.”
Nicholas jerked toward him. “Family?”
“You are the brother of a man I consider my brother,” Graham said with a shake of his head. “You’re family.”
Nicholas blinked. Family. It had been a long time since he’d had one of those. His mother had died while he was in the army. He only saw his adoptive father rarely. Perhaps because of guilt on both sides.
He bent his head. “My father…the one who raised me…he served hers, you know.”
“I’ve heard. She speaks in glowing terms of the elder Gillingham, you know. Far more of him than her own father.” Graham shook his head. “Fathers of birth don’t have to be fathers. Mine was a cruel monster. I wish I’d had a man like yours to guide me.”
Nicholas nodded slowly. “He is the best of men. He raised me to fight whatever nature the last Roseford’s blood put in me. He raised me to be decent.”
“And what does he think of the title?”
Nicholas flinched. That was part of why they saw each other so rarely. “He thinks he has served terrible men and good men over the years. Title never mattered as much to him as heart.”