“Uncle,” Marcus said finally.
That single word had shifted in tone over the years. From worshipful to rebellious to weary. And today it was raw with emotion.
Blaise cocked a brow. “Yes,Your Grace?”
Marcus grimaced. “Do not start. It is bad enough everyone else insists upon it.”
“You are their duke now. They must insist. I am merely enjoying the novelty of being outranked.”
“That is a lie,” Marcus said quietly.
Blaise’s mouth quirked. “It is. But it was said gallantly, which is what counts.”
Marcus’s hands resembled his father’s; they had long fingers with tendons protruding when emotion surged through him. His hands now flexed, then curled into fists, and finally spread again on his thighs as if uncertain.
“I never properly thanked you,” Marcus said nervously.
“For what? Inflicting responsibility upon you? You may write your complaints to me after I am wed. We will file them in the appropriate wastebasket.”
“Thank you for everything.” Marcus swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and the tight collar pressed against his throat. “For raising me. For telling me the truth. For proving…” His voice grew hoarse. “Proving I am my father’s true son.”
Blaise felt the words land heavily on his heart. He had imagined this conversation a dozen ways, and not once had he found language that did not seem either pompous or inadequate. Now, with Marcus’s gaze on him, he discovered that words were not, in fact, required.
He put a hand on his nephew’s shoulder, the familiar weight grounding them both.
“You have always been your father’s true son,” he said. “Whether anyone proved it to you or not.”
Marcus shook his head sharply. “I know what the world thinks of bastards. Do you know what they said at school when they discovered I had no mother in society columns, no appearance in any ridiculous directory? I pretended not to care. I told them all it was none of their business, that they were fools to worship titles. But I did care.”
His mouth twisted into something that tried and failed to be a smile.
“And you kept saying I was legitimate,” he continued, “that my parents had been married. I thought it was you trying to be kind in that maddening way you have, even when no one asked for it.”
“Aggressive intervention is my vice,” Blaise said proudly. “Leave a man alone, and he might start making his own mistakes. Society could not bear the chaos of another Vale man not taking his duties seriously.”
Marcus huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh. It did not disguise the dampness gathering in his eyes.
“And then you climbed into Daniel’s house like a common burglar. You risked your life and your reputation and everythingyou had built in twenty years of business, just to bring me that damned piece of paper.” His jaw clenched.
“Yes,” Blaise said simply. “And I would do it again. For you and Iris.”
An emotional silence stretched between them.
“There is something I must tell you in return,” Blaise said.
Marcus’s gaze, already bright, sharpened further. “If you say you are actually a viscount in disguise, and that I have been tricked into taking your dukedom, I will leave.”
“Tempting,” Blaise admitted. “But I am afraid this is a less agreeable confession.”
He had not meant to speak of it. The past six months had been a litany of necessary revelations, each one striking its own bruise. Blaise had thought he could carry the last part of that night alone.
What good would it do to hand Marcus another burden?
But he remembered Iris, sitting across from him in the library, telling him in her clear, steady voice that not everything belonged on his shoulders. That he could, now and then, let others choose what they wished to carry.
“On the day of the accident,” Blaise said, and the words, once loosed, could not be called back, “your father and I were hunting. I had dragged him into the country in the hope that fresh air and violent sport might shake him out of his melancholy.”
Marcus’s mouth thinned. “You thought hunting would do what years of fatherhood had not.”
