It had been a good thing the duke had not discovered Hart at that moment because he had been squirming in a way that would have earned him ten hits from the cane.
But the thing in his arms was too tiny to be hit—not without Hart breaking it.
He had tried cursing at it as the duke did when he was most displeased with Hart or his staff. That hadn’t worked either.
But the boy, his half-brother, was an odd sort. The babe hadn’t quit its hullabaloo. It only raised a bigger racket.
In a moment of crisis, the duke would have never forgiven, Hart had even looked, for the first and only time, to the mother who had given him life for help. Butshehad proved as useless to him then and kept on sleeping.
As the babe’s caterwauling climbed to a crescendo that would not quit, Hart finally looked at the hated thing.
It had a face scrunched up so tight and wrinkled like an old beggar, and it was brighter than the Tremaine rubies; Hart thought the thing was born without eyes or a mouth.
Then he had thought maybe that’s why the duke hated the thing with such venom.
Either way, for reasons Hart did not know, maybe because one addressed one when speaking, he spoke the child’s name. “Jeremy,” the exotic,romanticname the duchess saddled the child with.
That was it.
And just like that, the babe stopped its blubbering. His scrunched-up monster’s face unfurled to reveal glassy blue-grey eyes. And Hart discovered that, for all the things that were different between the slight bundle in his arms and himself, they had a like curiosity in one another.
The babe, like a blind man who had just had his sight restored, roved his sightless stare over Hart’s face. With the fascinated way the child looked athim, Hart had wanted to look around, find a mirror, and see if he was, in fact, the faceless one.
But he had been too fascinated to glance away. More fascinated than he had ever been when his favorite botany instructor revealed the Rosa chinensis ‘Viridiflora’ during one of his lessons.
The longer Hart and the babe examined one another, the more the thing Hart held came to feel likesomeone.
Hart had not wanted to take a chance that the child would resume its squawking, so he had said it again, this time quieter and gentler. “Jeremy.”
Andthistime, the babe’s mouth did another strange thing—it had formed a smile from which little bubbles spilled. Hart had been equally repulsed and intrigued. Well, more intrigued, but he would continue to deny it were he ever to share the story.
Of which he had no intention of doing.
Hart and the babe might have stared at one another for hours or minutes. Eventually, the babe’s—Jeremy’s—unfocused eyes became heavy, closed, and he slept.
At that instant, Hart discovered the most important lesson in his then edification: in being the one to stop the babe from crying, he was stronger, more capable, and more responsible than the duchess, who was unable to properly care for her own child, the only child she wanted.
But it wasn’t just Hart’s mother who was weak.
His sire was too. With all the duke’s blathering about his “whore wife,” and rage-induced fits whenever anyone mentioned the lady—him, it was always the duke mentioning her—he possessed the same overly passionate spirit.
The late duke had gotten himself stuck. He couldn’t send the duchess away. Nor could he reject the child. Not without being labeled a cuckhold.
Yes, Hart was stronger than both people who had given him life.
The babe had slept in Hart’s arms the entire night. Only when the sun started to rise, and the duchess stirred, did Hart (reluctantly) return him to his crib. If the duke had regard for his horses and hounds, then surely there wasn’t too much harm in Hart having some regard for a human who didn’t have all, butsome, of his blood?
As of that day, Lord Jeremy Tremaine belonged to neither parent. Hart’s bastard-born half-brother became his full brother in every way. They even became friends.
Through the years, Jeremy remained sensitive. Pityingly so. He had been sensitive to the duke’s outbursts, tempers, and unveiled hate.
Everything in Hart knew he was supposed to scorn such weakness. Alas, the damage had been done that quiet night in the nursery while their mother slept. Jeremy wasHart’spitiful brother.
It was why he had sent the lad away, to protect him from what would have eventually broken him—the duke.
He had convinced the duke that the boy was better off at Eton. Then Oxford. Then, even better, voyaging the high seas. The late duke favored that decision most. The duke’s logic had been clear. The bastard-born was sure to die, either by tempest or battle.
Hart knew better. Jeremy couldn’t be killed. After all, Hart, through gentler delivered lessons and eventually schooling, gave his brother every skill needed to survive. Jeremy became Lord Tremaine and then Captain Tremaine.
