He hadn’t seen it coming. Might not even believe that it had happened, if his heart, the one beating inside his chest right now, didn’t feel as if it was broken beyond repair.
The exact moment when that break had happened was foremost in his mind. It had been when he’d said that they would get married. That hadn’t been a slip of the tongue, he’d meant it, and the spark he’d seen in her eyes had thrilled him. But it had only lasted for a split second, because the shine in her eyes had faded and tears had fallen onto her cheeks.
That was when his heart had split in two. When she’d refused to marry him. Refused to let her family win.
He couldn’t argue against that, because he knew the feeling. Knew what it was like not to have any control over his own life.
The pain he’d felt walking out of the door, leaving her standing there, crying, had been excruciating, and now he knew why. He’d found what he’d been searching for his entire life.
Love.
Pure, undeniable love.
And then he’d lost it.
Maybe he just didn’t deserve it.
He trudged up the rest of the stairs and into his bedroom, where sleep eluded him, until dreams consumed him.
When the morning light woke him, he knew what he had to do.
Later that morning, Drake didn’t have high expectations of easily getting the truth out of his cousin as he entered Archibald’s study, but he wasn’t leaving until that happened.
Closing the door behind him, he said, ‘I’ve instructed my solicitor to pay any outstanding bills owed by the dukedom.’
Archibald stiffened in his seat, but for the next several moments, nothing could be heard except for the steady ticking of the mantel clock above the fireplace, where Uncle Donald used to tell tales of sailing the ocean when he’d been a captain. Stories that had filled Drake with rapture.
‘Do you want me to grovel at your feet?’ Archibald asked, breaking the silence. ‘Thank you for not letting my family starve?’
‘I would never let your family starve,’ Drake replied, sitting in the chair across the desk from his cousin.
‘No, you’ll just toss some money our way and then smile and walk away,’ Archibald said. ‘That’s what you’ve always done. Smiled and walked away.’
Drake had to nod, because that was what he’d always done. Even to Meridith. He’d just walked away. He finally understood why. ‘I wasn’t walking away. I was running. As fast as I could. And as far away as I could get.’
‘Why? You’ve had everything you ever wanted.’
‘No, you had everything I ever wanted,’ Drake admitted. ‘I was the orphan.’ A feeling of vulnerability arose inside him, because he was exposing himself in a way he never had before—to Archibald of all people. But it was what had to happen. ‘Yourparents were good to me. They gave me a good life, and I loved them, but I always knew that they weren’t mine. And that’s all I wanted. Something that was truly mine.’
‘You have it now. You own Coastal Shipping.’
‘I made that same mistake. Thinking that possessions or adventures, or hell, I don’t know what, would fill that void. But nothing did.’ Drake shook his head. ‘Until I found it. You want to know the ridiculous part? What I found, what exposed that void was a damn elephant. He needed me, and I needed him. He loves me and I love him.’
Archibald looked at him as if he had two heads.
‘I know it’s absurd,’ Drake said. ‘I didn’t understand it all until last night, when I read a letter and realised that all my life, I wanted to be loved.’
‘My parents loved you. My sisters love you.’
Drake nodded, because that was true. ‘You didn’t. You hated me.’
Archibald averted his gaze, looked everywhere except at him. ‘I didn’t hate you, but I was jealous of you. You were this cute little boy that everyone felt sorry for, and I was a half-grown lug, who had a penchant for finding trouble.’
They both sat quiet for several moments, until Drake said, ‘I left as soon as I could, searching for something that I didn’t understand, merely knew that I didn’t have. Now I realise that I had it all along, but was too blind to see it. Too caught up in myself to feel it. Until I found an elephant.’
Archibald shook his head, shrugged. ‘I didn’t know I’d been jealous of you until my wife pointed it out to me. Quite recently, I might add.’
Drake nodded, understanding that it would have taken someone else to make Archibald see that. ‘What is it about women? They make us face ourselves, our fears, our desires,everything we try to hide from the world, and in doing so, they make us better, happier.’
