Chapter 7
Damian Avonby, Duke of Drake, strode through the snow, determined not to devolve into trudging or self-woe.
Perhaps Christmas with his friend and compatriot, the Duke of Blackstone, had been a mistake this year. But he had come every year for some time. Each visit in the past had been the highlight of his year, offering a family. Something he had never truly had.
He adored his friend’s happiness. For Damian was not a believer in continued or prolonged suffering and he was delighted beyond measure that his friend had shed the pain of the past. In fact, Rob seemed happier than he’d ever been.
Damian certainly didn’t begrudge him that. If anything, Damian had shoved his friend towards it. . . as he was attempting to do to all the men who had pulled him out of a lonely hell and included him in their brethren. Whether they knew it or not, he was bloody determined that nothing should stand in their way to happiness.
Even so, it did now seem to provide a stark and unavoidable contrast to his own state.
Damian knew one thing and knew it well. He would never be happy. The most he could hope for was a lack of pain and, perhaps, one day a sort of contentment. The condition had been with him for so long that he no longer gave it much thought. He’d simply accepted it.
Now, it was. . . both wonderful and wearing to see the happiness about him that he’d had such a distinct part in.
He gazed up at the soft grey-white sky, crystal flakes floating softly to the blanket of snow unrolling before them.
He, Rob, and Heath cut through the white-hued meadow hunting for oak trees.
Well, not hunting. Oak trees could not leap about, hide, or suddenly take up root and choose a new location as humans did. No, the oak trees on this estate had been here since Henry Tudor had unfurled his banners in Wales and England and had bid a final adieu to the great Lancasters.
The roots of the trees ran as deep into the ground as did Rob’s ancestors into the tapestry of England.
Damian clenched his jaw, then immediately forced himself to relax. He dared not tense. He dared not think of how he did not belong here and never truly would. For if he did, the stutter he had worked so very hard to conquer would claim him and then he’d never hear the end of it from Rob until he confessed what ailed him.
There were curses to having friends.
A friend’s concern could be one of them.
“There!” Rob shouted happily pointing to the west.
Rob’s good humor was so bright, so full, that a different man would have found it rather annoying. Damian certainly would have before he’d had the good fortune to make Rob’s acquaintance.
Now, he took it without cynicism. Some people were happy without being foolish. One was not synonymous with the other.
He followed Rob and Heath as they came upon the great oak, its branches wild and bare. Like gnarled arms, they twisted into the air, home to birds and. . . mistletoe.
The three men leaned back, their great coats flying slightly in the winter wind, and stared up at the twisting branches. The green leaves that grew in the otherwise naked tree were quite visible and high.
“Right then,” Heath said. “Who’s climbing?”
“Surely you, Heath,” Damian drawled.
Heath eyed the tree as though it might attack him.
Damian studied Heath then observed, “You’ve never climbed a tree.”
“There aren’t trees in East London,” Heath countered. “So, the opportunity never presented itself. Some of us weren’t born to romp through bucolic, green fields.”
“Point taken,” Damian replied, though he could have added that he could not recall a single moment of frolic in his childhood though there had been many, many green hills. Most of them rugged and unforgiving in the northernmost corner of England.
Still, self-pity was for idiots, and Damian didn’t suffer idiocy. So, he turned to Rob and quipped, “And you are a newly-married man. I won’t face Harry if you break your leg.”
Rob scoffed. “Break my—”
“I won’t risk vexing Harry. Or your mother.” Damian gave a dramatic shiver. “I like my person the way it is.”
Quickly, Damian assessed the tree then with little ado, he grabbed the best handholds and footholds and vaulted up the tree. He balanced easily over the damp branches and made his way to the clusters of green leaves.
Allowing nothing to distract him from his precarious position, he whipped out a knife and began cutting.
The two men below shouted cheers of encouragement with each set of falling greenery until there was quite a pile on the snow-covered ground.
“Is that enough?” he called down.
“I’ll kiss my wife in every corner,” returned Rob.
“You already do that,” Damian drawled.
Rob merely grinned. “Wait until you’ve a wife, old boy. You’ll see. Any excuse to kiss her will do.”
Damian clasped a final bunch of the plant which had been part of the Yuletide season for as long as could be remembered on this isle and fought a wince. Marriage? Would he ever dare? What chance had he of such happiness?
For one moment, he felt a flame of hope light in his chest. Perhaps, one day, he could be loved, could he not?
But then, he shook the thought away and allowed the mistletoe to fall to the ground.