Matilda nodded. “I suspected you were not… close to your father.”
“How so?”
“Gentlemen who become wild youths have a tendency to be in conflict with their fathers,” she replied.
He sighed. “I wasn’tthatwild. Too wayward for my father’s tastes, that’s all, because he couldn’t control me. Still, I believe he’d have preferred it if I’d become a rake instead of captain.”
“What did Isaac think of your vocation?” Matilda proceeded tentatively.
Albion’s throat bobbed. “He was happy if I was happy. He was proud of what I became. Was always telling his friends and anyone who’d listen that his little brother was a big hero on the Continent.” His voice cracked. “He wrote to me every week, and I wish I’d been as dedicated. I wish… he’d received just one more letter from me where I’d written just how proudIwas ofhimand how much I missed him.”
“I am certain he knew,” Matilda said, weaving her arm through his.
He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t regret not being a good son, but I’ll always regret not being a better brother.”
She leaned into him, eager to keep him talking. As she peered up at him, watching sorrow and regret and determination wash across his handsome face, altering the course of some of his scars as he frowned and strained, she could feel his defenses coming down, brick by brick. To have them go back up would have been a travesty, for this was what she had hoped for—to see the whole of him, beneath the stoic façade. To understand him better.
“What happened to him?” She could hardly breathe as she asked the question.
He closed his eyes, drawing in a deep, uneasy breath. “He died.”
She said nothing in reply, allowing the silence to stretch between them, hoping it would compel him to fill it with his story.
“Isaac lived his entire life trying to get some—any—validation from that miserable bastard. He wanted to be a good son and an heir that our father could be proud of,” he began, a short while later. “But he also understood that our father’s fairytale of what it meant to be a duke wasn’t sustainable. When he inherited, after our father died, he began to make changes that our father wouldn’t have been too pleased about.
“I was shocked, but I was so very proud of him for carving his own path. He’d sent me a letter, and even through his writing, I could tell he was excited—he told me that he had an important meeting with a potential business associate coming up, and that it would change everyone’s lives. He was going to make our legacy secure, he said, for at least a few generations.” He gulped loudly. “But he said he wasn’t going to mention it to our mother. She’d upheld her husband’s staunch values for all those years, and even with my father in the ground, she wasn’t about to relinquish them. She’d have stopped Isaac, and he loved her enough that he’d have let her.”
Matilda slid her hand down Albion’s arm, finding his hand. Her fingers interlaced with his, squeezing reassurance. He squeezed back, a sad smile on his face.
“The next letter I received was from her,” he continued haltingly. “Isaac left the estate without notifying anyone of where he was going or when he would return. He made it to London and had that exciting meeting that, by all accounts, went very well, but on his way back… he got caught in a terrible storm. Winds strong enough to knock down trees and thrashing rain that floods villages—that kind.”
Matilda nodded.
“For some reason, he thought that taking a path through the woods would be safer—at least, that’s what we have to assume. Safer or quicker, who knows for sure.” Albion licked his dry lips. “He was knocked from his horse. He struck his head. There was no one around to help him, and no one would’ve heard his calls for help in a storm like that, anyway. He died alone, so close to home that it is almost ridiculous. Twenty minutes more, and he would have been at the gates.”
“I am sorry,” was all that Matilda could say.
Albion lowered his head, brow creasing. “As Isaac longed to make my father proud, I suppose I’m just trying to make my brother proud.” He laughed stiffly. “Not sure I’m doing so well at it.”
“You are doing better than you think,” she told him as realization dawned like a slow summer morning. “Is that why you asked me never to leave without saying anything?”
He squeezed her hand. “Even before I… knew you more, I wanted to keep you safe.”
“It is fortunate, then, that your manor is so distant to everyone I know,” she said, putting on a smile. “I have nowhere to go, nowhere I wish to go, unless you are with me.”
He looked at her then, his mask and regimental façade crumbling away, leaving behind the man she had only glimpsed beneath. Someone warm and vulnerable, someone with his heart wide open, someone who had decided to show who he was, his pains laid bare, so they could proceed with a future together.
“I think we could both use that tonic now,” he said softly, breaking the quiet. “My heart is a bit sore.”
She lifted her hand to his face, brushing her fingertips across the silvery scars, intrigued by their silky smoothness. “I prescribe dancing instead.”
“What about your foot?”
She smiled. “It feels much better. So, what do you say?”
She stood and offered her hand to him, reversing their roles with a glint in her eye.
He mustered a dry laugh and got to his feet, ignoring her hand as he, instead, slid his arm around her waist. “Shall I carry you in?”
