He looked up, startled. Even after a decade, Bertie rarely called him by his Christian name.
Bertie had taken off his spectacles and begun polishing them with quiet aggression. “What have I done to convince you that my first reaction would be not to welcome you home, but to reproach you for your failures?”
Arthur said nothing in response to the other man’s words—could think of no possible answer. He felt arrested, somehow, his thoughts unable to keep up with the sudden painful acceleration of his heartbeat.
He could not quite seem to make sense of himself. Bertie rarely criticized him, and certainly never for lack of care to the estate.
And yet that had been his first thought. Bertie was here, and upset, and the only thing that Arthur could conceive of was that he was failing, again, as Strathrannoch. That he was not enough. That he would never be enough.
“I suppose I thought so because it is your position,” he said finally. It was an answer—and, somehow, underneath, it was a question he could not find the courage to ask. In the corners of his own foolish lonely heart, it was the same question he had not been able to ask Lydia. “That’s why you are here, you and Huw—for Strathrannoch. For the earldom.”
Is it? Is that the only reason you are here?
If you had the freedom to go anywhere, choose anything—would you still remain?
“Is that all it is, then?” Bertie’s voice was clipped, but his tone could not hide the hurt in his words, and Arthur felt their impact in his chest. “We are your employees and nothing else?”
“No. Of course not. Not to me. But I hired you—I pay your wages. I understand that I should not… that I cannot expect more from you.”
Bertie laid one hand flat against the desk, covering the papers with his deft slender fingers. “Expect more.”
“I—I don’t know—”
“Expect more,” Bertie repeated. “You deserve to expect more. Damn it, Huw and I deserve better than this!”
Arthur pushed back in his chair, away from the words, and looked blindly down at the desk.
Huw and Bertie deserved better. Better than Strathrannoch. Better than him. He had known it was true for a long time now.
Grief seized him, and he tried to push it back, tried not to let Bertie see. If they wanted to go—
He would not force them to stay on with him out of guilt or obligation. Or because they realized how much he needed them.
“If there’s something I can do,” he said hoarsely and then broke off. Jesus. He was tired from the trip on the mail coach, that was all. That was the reason his eyes burned.
He tried again. “If there is some alteration to your positions I can provide, I will do so. I would like—for you to be happy.” His voice had cracked on the words, and he wanted to say,Anything. Don’t go.
But he could not say that.
“If you have decided to move on”—his voice was thick, and itwas so hard, sometimes, to do the right thing—“I will of course provide a character.”
Bertie fixed him with a keen-eyed glare. “Listen to me, Arthur Baird, and listen well, for I do not intend to repeat myself. We do not want to leave Strathrannoch. Not even when you are being very foolish, as you are right now.”
The words took hold inside him, a relief like the quenching of white-hot steel.
They did not want to go. They did not.
“I’m sorry,” he got out. “I’ve—”
“I am not finished.”
He closed his mouth.
“Despite what you seem to believe,” Bertie went on sharply, “we are not here only for the estate. We are here foryou, and you are more than the title. You are more than the earldom. You may have been the heir to a blackguard, but despite his best efforts, you are not one yourself.”
Arthur took a breath, his lungs working in a chest gone tight.
He had spent so much of his life trying not to seek out approval. Telling himself he did not need affirmation or loyalty or love. But the words from this man—who had been more of a father to him than his own—came to him with the gentle devastation of a fresh-sharpened blade.
