That left the rogue amongst them. “Laurence—”
His father slammed his palm down. “You are my heir.”
Nathaniel kicked back in his seat and dropped his booted foot across his opposite knee. “Ah, yes, and it would be unpardonable to interact in any way with your younger sons.”
Another man might have taken offense and sworn his affection and allegiance to the four spares.
Intractable and unfeeling, the duke proved as indifferent as he’d always been. “You are done, Nathaniel. I will speak to Prinny myself,” his father vowed.
He’d do it, too. Yes, the duke had four sons behind Nathaniel who were just as capable of taking on his responsibilities, but to him, the next heir was the only heir. And as the duke was the best friend of the Mad King, his son, the prince regent, would honor the duke’s connection to the Crown.
His father jabbed a finger Nathaniel’s way. “You are going to marry the Duke of Talbert’s girl.” He cast a glance at his wife. “What is her name?”
“An—”
“It doesn’t matter.” The duke cut off that detail, refocusing his attention on Nathaniel. “It’s your godmother and godfather’s daughter—”
“Of course it doesn’t matter,” Nathaniel interrupted in tight tones. “Why should the name of the woman you’re attempting to force me to wed be of any relevance?”
The duke gave his first approving nod of their meeting. “Exactly. Talbert expects his daughter will marry a duke.”
Only further solidifying their fortune and connections.
“Not on my part,” Nathaniel snapped. After all, he’d solidified his own fortune.
“The gel is getting on in years, boy, and you need to be getting the next duke after you on her.”
“Angela,” the duchess whispered to Nathaniel. “The girl’s name is Angela.”
There was nothing the Duke of Roxburghe couldn’t or, more, wouldn’t do in the name of protecting the Roxburghe title, and that included determining everything that went into continuing that line. Reasoning with the mercenary duke was as impossible as conversing with the now-demented king.
“And if I don’t?” Nathaniel asked quietly. An understanding had existed between Lady Angela and Nathaniel’s late brother. That responsibility had shifted to Nathaniel upon Marcus’s death. “What if I decline to marry the lady?”
“We honor our obligations.” Yes, they did. Perhaps there was something more they had in common, after all. That realization left him chilled.
As if he sensed Nathaniel’s weakening, the duke managed what Nathaniel expected was as close as he could muster to a smile on unforgiving lips that’d known far more scowls in life. “You may have sold your commission and built a fortune, but I am the one with the power and connections to put it all to an end. If you don’t make this match, you will never set foot upon your beloved boat again.”
Nathaniel ground his teeth. “Ship.”
“You’re all done.” His father wagged a fleshy finger at him. “There’ll be no more of your fun until you get yourself married and secure an heir.”
Fun. Red rage, visceral and real, slipped through his heated veins. Even if the duke knew the truth, that the missions Nathaniel ran were about not just growing his fortune but intercepting French ships headed for various battles, it wouldn’t matter. At every turn the duke would diminish what Nathaniel had accomplished. And yet, Nathaniel could not tell him of the work he did in the name of the war effort. If he came right out and informed his father that he’d received directives to intercept a French squadron and gather their war plans in the Adriatic campaign, the duke would ask what that mission had to do with his title.
“You get me an heir on the girl, and you’re free to go on playing pirates,” the duke was saying, bringing Nathaniel back from his musings. He arched a bushy black brow that’d always put Nathaniel in mind of a caterpillar. “That is a ducal order. If not, I go to Prinny.”
With that statement from the duke, the discussion was at an end.
In other words, Nathaniel didn’t have the four days he’d anticipated. It meant he had to round up as many of his crew as he could and cut their leave short.
Nathaniel stood. “Your Grace,” he clipped out, and steeling his jaw, he stalked off.
The delicate tread of a softer football echoed behind him, and Nathaniel made himself slow his steps. Where he had been free to escape and bury himself in his shipping ventures, and to flee aboard his ship, the Flying Dragon, his mother had not been granted that same reprieve from the oppressive hand of her ducal husband.
He made himself stop. “Mother,” he said when she reached him.
She went up on tiptoe, and he leaned down, allowing her to kiss his cheek.
Slipping her arm through his, she joined him on his walk to the foyer. “That went well, did it not?” she chirped in her usual singsong voice.
Nathaniel cast her a sideways glance. Long an optimist and still capable of cheer and smiling, despite the medieval man she’d been betrothed and then bound to, she’d retained her sunny disposition. Nathaniel had never been able to wrap his mind around how. “If you mean ‘well’ in that His Grace will have exactly what he wants”—as always—“and my business shuttered, then . . . yes. It went prodigiously well.”
His mother laughed softly, then lightly gripped his arm. And with that gesture, she silently asked for him to stop.
Nathaniel complied.
Because she was the one and only person for whom he had a hint of weakness. Because he pitied her. Because he felt bad that she should be so trapped when Nathaniel went about freely. Or . . . had gone about freely. A muscle twitched at the corner of his eye. All that freedom of movement was about to end.
“Your father . . . He has not been the same since Marcus.” Tears formed in her eyes, and the sight of her grief ravaged him. His mother never cried, and as such, he was unaccustomed to the emotion.
He removed a kerchief from his jacket, and she accepted it, dabbing at her cheeks. “Losing his son has shown him his own fallibility.”
“It showed him that five sons aren’t enough? That he needs a grandson, too, to shore up the ducal line?” Nathaniel asked flatly.
She nodded. “There is some truth to that.”
There was only truth to that. He’d not debate his mother, however.
“And . . . as for Angela”—he tensed—“she is heartbroken at losing your brother. It was understood they would wed, and after mourning him as she did, she’s far past an age most girls are when they have their first Season.”
Nathaniel’s cravat grew increasingly tight; panic threatened to choke him. Fortunately, his mother steered them away from talks of that expected marriage.
“Your father . . . He cares about you, Nathaniel.”
He snorted. “You cannot possibly believe that.”
A frown formed on her lips and brought her brows dipping down. “He loves you as he is able. Just as he loves me. He can be cantankerous and has a different way of showing it, but there is no doubt about it: he does.”
“Different,” as in “nonexistent.” Not for the first time, Nathaniel felt more than a touch of regret for his mother, who, for some reason, loved the miserable boor of a man she’d married and had convinced herself that he felt some of that same regard for her.