Gideon’s gaze snapped back.
“You cannot mean to take responsibility for the whole bloody catastrophe.” Dash winced and pressed a hand to his temple. “That is arrogant even for you.”
“This is not arrogance.”
“Isn’t it?” Dash looked at him through bloodshot eyes. “It has always been your particular talent, Hawk. We got into trouble as boys, and you stepped forward first. Took the blame first. As though the rest of us had no wills of our own.”
Gideon’s jaw tightened. “This was different.”
“No. The consequences were far worse.” Dash’s voice roughened. “But everything else was the same.”
Gideon said nothing.
Dash shifted, grimacing at the movement. “Your father died while you were away. Somehow you took the blame for that. As though a son could hold back death by remaining obediently under his father’s roof.”
“Do not.”
“I will, actually.” Dash’s gaze sharpened despite the ruin of him. “Because you are doing it again. With Sebastian. With me. With God knows who else.” He exhaled hard. “If you had not brought spirits, someone else would have. If not that night, another. We were idiots—reckless, stupid, desperate to prove ourselves men.”
“Do not absolve me.”
“I am not absolving you,” Dash said. “What you did mattered. Of course it did.”
His gaze held Gideon’s.
“But you were not the only one there making foolish choices.”
Gideon looked away.
“You cannot take responsibility for everyone, mon ami,” Dash said, quieter now. “Nor for everything. You never could.”
Beatrice’s voice moved through Gideon’s mind before he could stop it.
“Just because of what happened between us, does not give you the right to take over everything in my life…Can you not see how stifling that is? How insulting?”
Bile rose in the back of his throat.
Dash sank back against the sofa, exhausted by the effort of coherence. “We all chose badly. Sebastian too. That is the worst of it, I think. Not that one of us controlled everything. That none of us did.”
Gideon turned toward the window.
He did not want wisdom from a hungover duke who had spent the past several days drinking himself half-dead over a widow.
Especially not when the man was right.
He had thought himself careful. Vigilant.
Honorable, damnit!
Perhaps he had simply been gripping tighter and tighter until she had no choice but to tear herself free.
Behind him, Dash shifted.
Then went still.
Gideon glanced back.
Dash was staring at the ring on his finger.
