Page 3 of It's In The Duke's Kiss
“I’d say you do,” Lucian countered, careful to keep his tone neutral to avoid a quarrel.
“And I’d say”—Nathaniel’s voice was distinctly bitter—“that youneedme to have problems so you will continue to feel like the better son.”
Lucian felt a tick start in his jaw. He’d expected resistance, but this nastiness was new. “That’s not true, and you know it. I have never thought I was better than you. This talk today is not aboutme. Your love of gambling and innocent debutantes, whom you somehow persuade to do unwise things,isa problem.”
“I’ve stolen no innocence.” Nathaniel offered a cheeky grin. “Only kisses.”
“This damnable attitude is what keeps getting you into trouble,” Lucian growled.
Nathaniel clamped Lucian on the shoulder. “I do believe you’re simply jealous because I have fun and you never have any,” he finished, blowing his mead-drenched breath at Lucian.
Lucian shrugged his brother off. “When the devil are you going to grow up?”
Hostility flared in Nathaniel’s eyes, and stark relief filled Lucian. Lately, with all the messes Nathaniel had created, Lucian had been wondering if his brother cared about anything. But if he was angry, he must care.
“Why do I need to grow up?” Nathaniel demanded. “You’re mature enough for both of us.”
“Nathaniel—”
“For God’s sake,” he snapped. “You’d think after years of me telling you to call me Nathan you’d damn well do it.”
Lucian clenched his jaw. He couldn’t call his brother Nathan, and he could never explain why. To embrace that casualness again meant he thought he could be anything other than the duke who sorted out the complications his family created, and he knew well he could not. He could never be carefree again as he’d been before Father died. He wasn’t Luc anymore, as his brother had finally quit calling him, and Nathaniel could never be Nathan again. Their mother had seen to that when her actions had inadvertently led to their father’s death. He forced himself to loosen his jaw. Dukes got angry, but they never showed it.
He’d agreed to come here today only because he’d hoped that talking to Nathaniel in a more relaxed setting, would keep him from becoming angry and then maybe he’d listen. Lucian refocused on the matter at hand. He softened his voice, trying to sound casual rather than critical. “What are you going to do now that you’ve been kicked out of Oxford?”
“I’ve not given it much thought,” Nathaniel snapped as he turned and gazed out at the ice. Lucian stared in the direction his brother was looking and tried to determine what had caught his eye. It only took a moment to discern what—or ratherwho—had Nathaniel’s rapt attention. In the distance, Lady Emmaline spun in fast circles, her arms splayed wide, her face turned up to the gleaming sun, and her long black hair—a stark contrast to the snowy cape she wore—billowed around her.
“You’d do well to leave the enchanting snow fairy alone,” Lucian said.
Nathaniel snorted as he took a step toward the ice. “How surprisingly poetic of you, Lucian,” Nathaniel said as he took another step.
Lucian clutched his arm. “Didn’t getting booted from Oxford for dallying with the chancellor’s daughter teach you anything about the complications that enticing innocent debutants can create?”
“The man is a stuffy prig,” Nathaniel retorted without so much as a glance back.
Lucian ground his teeth. The promise he’d made his father to help Nathaniel become a good, honorable man seemed almost impossible to keep at times. “I hardly think being angry at finding his daughter in your arms in his library makes him a stuffy prig.”
Nathaniel finally faced Lucian with the lazy, devil-may-care smile he so often wore. “As I explained, I merely caught her when she fell from the book ladder.”
Lucian cocked his eyebrows. “That was quite some fall to have made her hair come unpinned and her lips swollen.”
Nathaniel raised his hand as if studying his nails in boredom. “Her lips are naturally big. Her poor father refuses to admit she has a flaw, and the ladder was high.”
“Hmm…I was told it was three steps.”
Nathaniel smirked. “Three steps is quite the height for uncoordinated people.”
This was getting them nowhere, and Lucian needed to return home. He had ledgers to go over. “Let’s dispense with this farce, shall we? In the last two years, you’ve managed to get yourself kicked out of Oxford and Cambridge, and all over dallying with women with whom you have no damn right to dally. These girls have reputations, Nathaniel. You risked their futures.” And Lucian could not seem to stop his brother from doing things to purposely bring trouble to himself. It was maddening.
Nathaniel gave him a look of mock horror. “You mean I risked their chances of marrying stuffy, boring dukes such as yourself?”
Lucian ignored the barb and focused on the very real problem that his brother didn’t seem to see what had really been at stake for those young ladies. “I meanthat if any of them were compromised by you, the only choice would’ve been for her to marry you or to likely spend her life as a spinster.”
“I’d marry anyone I compromised,” Nathaniel said with an infuriating shrug.
Lucian inhaled a long steady breath, searching for a sliver of calmness in the sea of turbulence his brother always created. “I’d think you’d have more of a care for whom you’d choose as your wife. Marriage is for life.”
Lucian grinned. “If I don’t like who I end up marrying, I’m sure you’ll see to her welfare while I see to my enjoyment.”
