Page 25 of If the Duke Demands

Sebastian grimaced at his entendre.

Leaning forward, elbows on knees, Robert grew sober. “I’m serious. Enjoy yourself.” Concern darkened his face. “You’ve been working hard since you inherited. Too hard. No one can say you haven’t made the title and your family your first concern in everything. Or not done Father proud.”

Sebastian looked down at his cigar, studying the red tip as he rolled it in his fingers, his jaw clenched tight and saying nothing.Damnation.He didn’t need to be lectured on his life by his little brother, who had no idea of how heavy his burdens were, no idea of the depth of the promises he’d made to their father. Or the stranglehold those promises still had on his life.

“So let yourself have a little fun this season, all right? You’ve earned it.” Robert pushed off the settee, then helped himself to a cigar, tucking it inside his breast pocket as he headed for the door. “I’m going out to find Quinn. Join up with us later, all right? It’ll be just like old times. Except without the belly dancers.” He grinned as he disappeared out the door. “Maybe.”

Staring daggers after him, Sebastian clenched the cigar between his teeth. Robert was wrong. He wasn’t behaving like a curmudgeon. He was behaving like a responsible peer, one with his family’s reputation and new title to worry about. One who would never let them down again.

Robert didn’t understand the pressure he was under—no oneunderstood. He was a new duke whom most claimed was an upstart who didn’t deserve to be granted the title in the first place, whom every member of the quality would be watching like a hawk this season to see if he had the mettle to be a leader in the Lords and the presence to be socially acceptable. He could never take a single step nor make any decision without considering the ramifications of its outcome on his family, the tenants, all the estate workers and villagers…and most importantly, on his father’s legacy. He could no longer be carefree and blithely happy the way his brothers could.

No matter how much he longed to be.

CHAPTERFIVE

Two Busy Weeks Later

Don’t you think the palace is simply grand?” Miranda couldn’t help but beam an excited smile as she sat on the corner of the picnic blanket spread over the lawn in Hyde Park and tried to engage Robert in conversation as he lay stretched out across the blanket next to her. Sebastian lay in the same pose on the other end of the blanket, watching and listening, and inexplicably making her nervous, even when saying nothing at all. “So many colors and gold leaf, such a beautiful gallery filled with paintings and portraits— Oh! And luxurious silks and brocades everywhere.”

“I’d love to have gone to the palace mews.” Robert plucked a blade of grass and focused his attention on folding it between his fingers. “Did you have a chance to visit them? Rumors say King George has the finest four-in-hand team in England.”

Miranda’s chest sank with a dull thud. She’d hoped she could impress him with her visit to court, even just a little, and convince him that she was just as fine as Diana Morgan because of it. Apparently, she would have been better off by taking her tea in the royal stables.

“No,” she mumbled, “I didn’t see any horses.”

“Miranda had other things to worry about,” Sebastian reminded Robert quietly as he lay on the opposite side of the blanket, the two men resembling golden bookends. “It was her first time at court, remember.”

“And my last,” she sighed with a touch of bittersweet appreciation now that it was over. Yet her spirits weren’t dampened at all by knowing that her only visit to court was for an unofficial presentation to the queen with a dozen other young ladies and their sponsors, because it would be a day she’d never forget. “But it was truly marvelous.”

The whole affair was wonderfully special for her, and she couldn’t stop smiling. She’d been introduced like a real lady—to the queen! Elizabeth Carlisle had been so very kind to her, and Miranda couldn’t help but wonder if this was what it was like to have a mother. Someone to fuss over her and look at her with pride and affection. She liked it, a great deal.

None of the Carlisle men had accompanied the women yesterday, not even Sebastian, as no men were allowed into the queen’s drawing room. So when this afternoon proved unusually mild for March, Elizabeth Carlisle had insisted on a family outing to the park to celebrate. On the wide lawn stretching between the tree plantations and the Serpentine, Josie played with her toddler son and her six-year-old adopted daughter, and Thomas Matteson hovered nearby, as always an attentive father and husband. Quinn and Elizabeth Carlisle strolled a turn about the park to stretch their legs after the family picnic, the remnants of which still lay scattered on china dishes across the blanket in front of them.

Sebastian returned her smile. “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.Myfirst visit to court was rather disastrous.”

“Oh?” Her curiosity pricked, she leaned toward him, mindful of the skirt of her yellow afternoon dress spread around her. “What happened?”

“My father had been summoned to see the king, so Mother and I waited in one of the drawing rooms. I was just four at the time.” His eyes crinkled at the memory. “Somehow, I managed to sneak away from the nanny and wandered off.”

“We were always sneaking away from Nanny,” Robert put in with an impish grin at his older brother. “Sebastian was the ringleaderandthe one who got us out of trouble whenever we got caught.”

“Which was all the time,” Sebastian admitted when Miranda laughed lightly at that perfect description of the young man he’d been, long before she came to know him. “But Robert and Quinton weren’t born yet, so I was on my own to cause trouble that day.”

Miranda had never heard this story before, and she found herself seeing a whole new side to him. And, surprisingly, liking it. “And did you?”

“Heaps worth.” His eyes sparkled at her as he reached toward the fruit plate to pluck off a grape. “I made my way into the formal dining room, where I fell asleep beneath the table. By the time the footmen found me two hours later, the entire palace was in an uproar.” He laughed at the memory. “I cried inconsolably because I thought they would rescind Father’s barony because I’d misbehaved.”

A soft smile played at her lips. Sebastian as a little boy…she could barely fathom it. Always before, whenever she thought of Sebastian as a small child, she’d imagined him the same. Only shorter.

During these past two weeks in London, though, she’d come to see a different side of him, and it wasn’t so hard to imagine him as a little boy now. Or see how much the title and all its obligations weighed on him. Did that little boy—for that matter, the carefree young man he’d been only a few years before—have any idea of the staid, responsible man waiting for him? And would he like the man he’d become?

And then, there was Robert. The more time she spent together with the two men, the more she began to realize how very different they were. Oh, they looked alike, with the same golden hair and blue eyes, the same tall and broad build, and especially right now, with the two of them lying on the blanket like matching statues. But their personalities were completely different, especially since Sebastian had inherited. Robert had sobered since Richard Carlisle’s death; so had Quinton, to a lesser extent. But not like Sebastian. Sebastian had changed completely beneath the burden of the title, and despite the frustration and annoyance he often stirred inside her, in this aspect of his life at least, her heart ached for him. She wanted him to be happy, and she wasn’t certain he was.

“And you, Robert?” She initiated another attempt to engage him in conversation. She refused to wave the white flag of surrender just yet—shewouldn’t. “Have you been to court?”

“A few times. Not often.” He shrugged his shoulders. “The royals don’t usually want my sort anywhere near them.”

“Your sort?” She frowned.