“I could never understand how someone could love a monster,” his cousin went on. “I still don’t.” Dark eyes, black as night, landed on Dare. Eyes Drake had inherited from the late duke. The man cracked his knuckles. “Are you a monster?”
What kind of question was that? “You know my father—”
“I’m not talking about your father,” he cut Dare off. “I’m talking about you.”
“I’m not a monster. My father wasn’t either.” His failures had just led to his mother’s death, but a monster? No. He was a man with tragic flaws.
“If you’re not a monster, then stop being so hesitant and go catch the little bird you set free.”
“I can’t promise I won’t betray us.” He laid his truth bare across the charged air of the warehouse even though the jeers once goading them to fight had subsided. This was his burden—the burden of his past set in the balance against the bright possibility of her future.
A dismissive snort. “Says who?”
“History.”
Drake nodded, walked over to a crate, and sat down. “The sins of the father turn into the flaws of his son.” He leaned back, tilting his chin up, eyes blazing with challenge “Or not.”
“Spit it out if you have something to say.”
“The past repeating itself isn’t up to your father, it’s up to you. If you don’t like it, change it. Forge a new course for your offspring.”
Dare’s brows furrowed.The past repeating itself isn’t up to your father, it’s up to you.What the devil was he supposed to do with those words? Christ, they pressed onto his chest like a thousand red bricks. They gripped him in such a numbing vise that he stood frozen, torn between the familiar, cold comfort of certainty and the blinding, terrifying thought that maybe—just maybe—he could change things.
Could he change things?
Could he make himself a different man? One worthy of something more than just the burden of his bloodline? More than the shadows of his father’s sins? Leonora—beautiful, brilliant, and far beyond his reach—could he be the man she deserved? A man who wouldn’t tear apart everything they could build, but would instead be the one to hold it together?
He clenched his fists, pulse pounding in his temples.
No, he wasn’t like his father. He couldn’t be. And if he was to ever to become the man he could be—a man worthy of her—he had to try.
And try hard.
For her. For himself. For a chance to leave the darkness, to rewrite the future instead of repeating the past.
It was up to him. Yes. But damn it, what if he failed? What if he failed her? His offspring? Himself?
He cursed.Getting ahead of yourself there, Dare?
Who was to say she would still have anything to do with him?
But if, by any chance, she felt for him what he felt for her... He might not be a man worthy of her yet, but he could start becoming that man. He would continue becoming until his very last breath, and hope to God it had been enough, that he had not failed. That he had succeeded.
A certain parrot’s cry flitted through his head.The earl is an idiot. The earl is an idiot.
Christ. Hewasan idiot.
“Actually, mate, it seems you won’t have to go hunting after all.”
Hunting? He swore this mouth of his cousin’s was deuced vexing. Birds. Hunting. Why the hell did it remind him of his parrots and alligators? Toss a monkey in the mix, too. Memories he could do without.
Memories that also all . . . includedher.
Then again, perhaps not so bad at all.
He scowled at Drake. “Why not shut your mouth and prepare to be beaten?”
“Are you sure?” He nodded to a spot behind Dare. “I’d rather not humiliate you.”
