Page 46 of A Rogue to Resist
“You look as though someone’s just informed you of your imminent execution,” Harrison observed, dropping into the chair opposite Drake’s. “Though I suppose impending matrimony might feel similar to a confirmed bachelor.”
Drake shot his friend a withering glance. “How did you know?”
“Your expression, for one,” Harrison replied, signalling to a passing footman for his own drink. “And Lord Carrington mentioned something about your solicitor making inquiries about eligible young ladies this Season. It wasn’t difficult todeduce the reason, given the peculiarities of the Greythorne entail.”
“You know about that?” Drake’s laugh held no humour. “How was I the last to find out? My solicitor informs me that I must secure a bride within months or lose everything I’ve begun to build at Greythorne, and you think I ought to be delighted?”
Harrison studied him thoughtfully. “When I’ve seen you face business setbacks in the past, you typically respond with strategic planning, not brooding in corners of gentlemen’s clubs. This seems to have affected you differently.”
Drake drained his glass and set it down with more force than necessary. “Because this isn’t business. This is my life.”
“Is it the marriage itself you object to, or the timeframe?” Harrison asked as a footman delivered his brandy. “You surely realized that an earl must marry eventually.”
Drake considered the question.
“Both. Neither.” He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve never been opposed to marriage in principle. But I’ve always assumed it would happen when I met a woman I couldn’t imagine living without, not because some long-dead relative decided the Halston line must continue according to his timetable.”
“A romantic notion for a businessman,” Harrison observed with a raised eyebrow.
“I saw the alternative up close,” Drake replied, his voice dropping. “My parents’ marriage was a carefully negotiated alliance between families of similar standing. Appropriate in every way Society would measure. And utterly devoid of affection.”
Harrison nodded, familiar with the broad strokes of Drake’s family history but perhaps not the details that suddenly seemed important to share.
“My father treated my mother as an ornament,” Drake continued, the words flowing more freely than he’d intended. “Beautiful, expensive, and ultimately meaningless beyond her ability to enhance his standing. When I was twelve, I found her crying in the conservatory. Not sobbing—my mother was too well-bred for that—but silent tears while she arranged flowers as though nothing was amiss.”
“What happened?” Harrison asked quietly when Drake paused.
“She told me never to marry unless I found someone I respected as much as I desired. Someone whose mind engaged mine as thoroughly as her beauty pleased my eye.” Drake’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “The next day, she was back to playing the perfect lady of the manor, and my father never noticed anything amiss. But I couldn’t forget.”
“Is that why you left for America? To escape that legacy?”
Drake nodded slowly. “Partly. After Oxford, my father expected me to take up the appropriate duties of a gentleman’s son—a military commission, perhaps, or a position secured through his influence. The thought of following that predestined path, ending in a marriage exactly like his, was suffocating.”
“So, you forged your own way instead,” Harrison said with approval.
“America offered possibilities England couldn’t,” Drake agreed, memories of his early days across the Atlantic surfacing vividly. “No one cared about my family connections or titles. Success depended entirely on one’s own efforts and intelligence.”
“And you found that liberating.”
“Completely.” Drake signalled for another brandy. “I started with almost nothing—a small allowance my mother had secretly saved for me, against my father’s wishes. I worked on thedocks in Boston at first, learning the shipping business from the ground up.”
Harrison’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “I knew you’d built your fortune in shipping and trade, but I hadn’t realized you began quite so... practically.”
Drake smiled at his friend’s diplomatic phrasing.
“You mean you didn’t think I’d actually worked with my hands? Calluses and all?” He held up his palms, where the softness of aristocratic privilege had long ago been replaced by the evidence of real labour. “Best education I ever received.”
“And now you face the prospect of returning to exactly the life you escaped,” Harrison observed. “A title, an estate, a marriage of convenience.”
“Precisely.” Drake accepted his fresh brandy from the footman with a nod of thanks. “Though Greythorne itself has proven unexpectedly compelling.”
“The land, you mean?”
“The land, the people, the sense of... continuity.” Drake struggled to articulate the connection he’d begun to feel with the estate. “It’s different from my business ventures. Those were about proving myself, building something from nothing. Greythorne is about preserving something that already exists, something with its own history and purpose.”
Harrison studied him over the rim of his glass. “And does Lady Katherine factor into this unexpected attachment to your inheritance?”
Drake’s head snapped up. “What do you mean?”
