The Matter of a Marquess - Jess Michaels Page 0,77
sounded surprised at the idea. “The new duke seems to be making such an effort lately.”
“No,” Nicholas said with a quick shake of his head. “Roseford is nothing like our…his father. He wasn’t unwelcoming, I assure you. Oh, how do I explain it?”
“Take your time,” Gillingham said gently.
Nicholas leaned back in his chair a moment, staring up at the ceiling as he tried to gather the swirling thoughts that had been tormenting him since the moment he saw Aurora step from her carriage and onto his brother’s drive. That moment had changed everything, even if he hadn’t wanted to see it.
“Men like Robert, like his friend Northfield, men like Thomas…they’ve always known their destiny. It was pressed into their flesh from birth what they would be. They were practically trained from the cradle. You know, you’ve served men like that your whole life.”
His father nodded. “Yes. That is a blessing and a curse, you know. To always know your path, to never be able to choose it.”
“Of course. I’ve seen the damage it does,” Nicholas agreed. “But being with these men who have always known their path, I also came to realize that I won’t ever be fully on the inside. I’ll always be what I always was, Father. Half-blood, half accepted, half in one world, half in the other.”
“You fear you won’t belong?” Gillingham said.
“I won’t belong as marquess,” Nicholas said. “But when I was at Roseford with my brothers and my sisters, their spouses and their friends and…and Aurora…I did feel like I belonged. For the first time I was just me and that was enough.” He shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Father.”
His father leaned even closer and his gaze locked with Nicholas’s. “Sorry? Why are you sorry, my boy?”
“Because it’s a betrayal of you. It’s a betrayal of the fact that you raised me, that you treated me like your son when you never had to do that.”
Gillingham’s face softened, and he reached out and squeezed Nicholas’s hand. It was a surprising gesture, as his father had never been overly physically affectionate. His love was always shown in other ways. But now it was like all his strength poured into Nicholas.
“You must never be sorry about who you are,” his father said softly. “I treated you like a son because you are my son. In every way that has ever mattered, you are mine. But you are also their brother. The fact that you’ve all found each other in the last few years warms my heart. Those two worlds never had to be separate. It was never a betrayal of me to want to connect to them.”
Nicholas stared at him, this man who had raised him, nurtured him, loved him. “You’re saying I don’t have to be one world or another.”
“No,” his father said. “If they are intelligent enough to accept you as you are, then you have always belonged in both. Always. Title or no title.”
A strange weight lifted from Nicholas’s shoulders at those words. “Perhaps,” he said softly.
His father let go of his hand and smiled. “And as for Lady Lovell…Aurora…”
Nicholas held his breath. Gillingham had disapproved of their connection when he was younger. He had feared the very reprisal that had ultimately come.
But now he smiled. “I have always liked her. And I am far too old and you have lived through far too much for me to tell you what to do with your heart. Except to be happy.”
Nicholas reached out, touching that face that looked nothing like his own, but was still so very beloved. His father in every way that had ever and would ever matter.
“Thank you, Papa,” he said softly.
Gillingham gave a half smile at the endearment Nicholas hadn’t used since he was fifteen. The old man’s eyes were sparkling with tears. The same ones stinging Nicholas’s eyes as he dropped his hand away.
“Enough of this nonsense,” Gillingham said with a choked chuckle. “Are you joining us for supper, then? I’ve heard on good authority that Mrs. Bright is making lamb.”
Nicholas grinned as his father offered him an arm for support as he stood. “There is nothing quite so good as her lamb.”
He followed his father from the room, his mind more at peace, but with no further answers than he’d had when he entered. In fact, he only questioned everything all the more.
Chapter 19
Aurora paced the floor in her small parlor, the latest letter from Imogen dangling from her fingertips. She had already reached out to everyone involved