“An error in judgment,” Blaise said dryly. “We both made those.”
He felt the familiar flare of heat along his scar, phantom pain and memory married together.
“I told him that day that you had fallen ill. It was not untrue; you had been feverish. Your father had been absent for so long after losing your mother. But news of your illness truly frightened him like no other.”
He saw it again now: the way Benjamin had gone suddenly sharp, as if someone had struck flint against stone within him.
“He wanted to leave at once,” Blaise said. “To return to London without delay. He was no longer thinking about the hunt. I tried to calm him. To talk sense into him, but he would not listen. And then the beast showed up.”
Marcus had closed his eyes. Tears stood on his lashes, catching the faint light from the window and making him look, for a heartbeat, absurdly young again.
“We were careless,” Blaise said quietly. “I had shaken him. Because I had told him you were unwell and that he had failed you. That is when…” His hand tightened unconsciously on Marcus’s shoulder. “That is when he wanted to return to his son, but the boar attacked. And I tried to reach him. I thought if I could pull him clear, if I could get between him and the?—”
“That is how you got the scar?” Marcus cut him off. “You tried to save him?”
“Yes,” Blaise said, and the admission surprised him with its own rawness. “Had I held my tongue that morning, he might have cursed the weather instead of fate, and we would both have returned, damp, sullen, unscarred and alive.”
Marcus cried quietly as he listened.
“Your father,” Blaise continued, the words coming faster now, “lost himself when your mother died. But I saw him return when he wanted to come home to you.”
Blaise’s throat worked as Marcus’s hands lifted, hesitantly, and closed around his upper arms. It was an odd reversal; Blaise had been the one to steady him after every scraped knee and every drunken schoolboy fight. Now the boy was anchoring the man.
“Uncle,” Marcus said, and the word wavered only once. “His death is not your fault.”
The pain that licked along Blaise’s scar then was different. It had no edge. It was a sweet reminder of his brother and the love he had left behind.
He had thought forgiveness, if it ever came, would come from some outside source: the law, absolving him of legal guilt; society, praising his bravery; God, if Blaise had been the kind of man who asked such things of heaven. It had not occurred to him that the forgiveness that would matter most would come from the son of the man he had failed.
Marcus’s grip tightened once, then eased. He blinked hard, fighting the tears on his lashes.
“And as for me, I never asked you to take me in, or to argue with headmasters on my behalf, or to attend prize-givings like an overproud mother hen. I certainly never asked you to risk your damned life stealing my parents’ marriage lines. But you did all of it. So if you are determined to claim responsibility for every wretched thing that happens in this family, you may bloody well accept credit where it is due.”
Blaise’s laugh came out on a breath that was half-sob, which affronted his dignity so thoroughly that he had to cover it with a cough.
“You speak to your uncle like that?” he managed.
Marcus’s mouth curved. “I am your duke. Remember? You made certain of that.”
“Ah.” Blaise let his hands fall to his sides; the air between them felt oddly new, as if some invisible structure had shifted. “Yes. About that.” He drew himself up, attempting solemnity and not quite managing it. “Have you forgiven me?”
“For which particular sin?” Marcus asked, wariness giving way to something like mischief. “There are so many.”
“For making you a duke,” Blaise said. “A terrible fate. All those estates. All that power. All those simpering mothers throwing their daughters at you.”
Marcus sniffed. “It is not as bad as I thought it would be.”
Blaise scoffed and glanced toward the closed door, where the faint stir of the congregation rose and fell like an impatient tide.
“I might forgive you,” Marcus said. “Undercertainconditions.”
“Name them,” Blaise said. “I am in a generous mood. It is my wedding day after all.”
“You may begin,” Marcus said, and now the smile was unmistakable, “by making a proper introduction to Lady Pamela.”
Blaise stared dumbfounded at him. “Iris’s niece? The one who looks at you as if you are something she has found stuck to her shoe?”
Marcus frowned questionably. “I believe that is her.”
