Experiencing Robert as a real person was inconvenient. Lucien remembered far too well what a delicate time the age of fourteen had been for him. How every feeling was new and outsized and confusing. How one could be so easily steered this way and that, given someone to admire.
He looked down at that still-innocent face and wondered how Robert’s expression would change when he learned his brother had opened a gaming hell called the Duchess of Brexford’s Den of Iniquity. What it would do to his innocence.
“Our father has some fine qualities,” Lucien said.
That wasn’t easy to say, either. The need to be magnanimous in this moment, on the heels of the conversation with his father, seemed grossly unfair. But then, life had never concerned itself with fairness.
He did it for the boy, who would need to believe in somebody.
He wasn’t at all certain it ought to be him.
Mordantly, he congratulated himself,Just look at the person I apparently am. That was downright noble. I’m not nearly as horrible as I wish to be.
And suddenly, for the first time in his life, he could picture it. If he’d had a son, Lucien knew of a certainty he wouldn’t ruin him at all. He knew precisely what he’d teach him. He knew precisely how to love him.
“Mother is a bit much, but she can be all right, sometimes,” Robert added, with the touching eagerness of a child to share his own life. Just to see approval, or some other sort of judgment or information, on the face of another. Which was how a young person went about understanding or learning about his world.
Wasshe ever all right? Did she treat this boy decently? Or was every boy inclined to give his mother the benefit of the doubt, because any other truth could not be borne?
Robert was too young to need to bear it.
And Lucien, God help him, wanted to protect him in the way he could not have protected himself.
“Shouldn’t you be in school, Robert?”
“Oh, I’m here just for Mother’s birthday.” He waved an arm. “They talk about you at Eton, you know,” Robert said. “I cannot quite measure up in cricket but I daresay my marks are as good as yours were.”
Lucien struggled not to smile. But he wanted to be alone.
He did not want anyone toneedsomething from him in the moment.
“I told them I don’t care if he’s a bastard because he had naught to do with it,” Robert said fiercely. “Sorry if you don’t like to hear ‘bastard’ but it’s what they say.”
How could two such objectively dreadful people as the duke and the duchess produce this decent one?
Robert had not yet been ruined by wealth and privilege and by the awful people who were his parents. This ruin seemed inevitable.
It made Lucien feel regretful. Even a little despairing.
He was desperate to end the conversation. And yet he found himself saying, because it needed to be said.
“I don’t mind. One should never mind the truth. One should never be afraid to live and face one’s own truth. You’ll find life is unbearable otherwise.”
It was the first bit of wisdom he could recall sharing with a child. It seemed a worthwhile use of his life to date: to be able to produce that sort of wisdom. Robert couldn’t possibly understand that yet. But he could see him absorbing this as if it were gospel.
“Robert, we may not see each other again. Best of luck to you.” He bowed, because he wanted his brother to remember, if nothing else, that his bastard elder sibling possessed grace.
He left him staring after him.
Chapter Eleven
“The sword fight was regrettable. They’re going to want to do it all the time now,” Delilah murmured to Angelique that evening.
“We should have a sword fight every night!” Delacorte enthused from over at the chessboard, where Mr. Cassidy’s hand had hovered over his knight for a good five minutes now. He was staring at Delacorte, trying to gauge whether this would be wise or not.
Delilah gave Angelique a “do you see?” eyebrow raise.
“Maybe just once a year, like waltzing, Mr. Delacorte,” Angelique countered sweetly. “We wouldn’t want it to lose its novelty.”