They made their way slowly through the twilight, the rough marram grass rasping at their boots.
“Besides,” his uncle went on, head down against the wind, “I had another title—one without taint. Refusing to use the Pardloe title meant I also refused to use the income from the title’s estates, but it meant almost nothing in terms of my daily life, bar a bit of eye-rolling from society. My friends largely remained my friends, I was received in most of the places I was accustomed to go, and—the important point—I continued doing what I intended to do: raise and command a regiment. You—” He glanced at William, running an appraising eye over him from slouch hat to clodhopper boots.
“Not to put too fine a point on it, William—it might be easier to ask what it is you want to do, rather than asking how not to do what you don’t.”
William stopped, closed his eyes, and just stood, listening to the water for a few moments of blessed relief from the tick-tock thoughts. Absolutely nothing was happening inside his head.
“Right,” he said at last, taking a deep breath and opening his eyes. “Were you born knowing that’s what you wanted to do?” he asked curiously.
“I suppose so,” his uncle answered slowly, beginning to walk again. “I can’t recall ever thinking of being anything save a soldier. As to wanting it, though … I don’t think that question ever occurred to me.”
“Exactly,” said William, with a certain dryness. “You were born into a family where that’s what the oldest son did, and that happened to suit you. I was raised believing that my sacred duty was to care for my lands and tenants, and it never occurred to me for an instant that what I wanted came into it—no more than it did to you.
“The fact remains,” he went on, taking off his hat and tucking it under his arm to keep it from being carried away by the wind, “that I don’t feel entitled—as it were—to any of the titles I was supposedly born to … Besides—” A thought struck him, and he gave his uncle a narrow look.
“You said you didn’t accept the dukedom’s income. I don’t suppose you also neglected the care of the estates you weren’t profiting from?”
“Of course n—” Hal broke off and gave William a look in which annoyance was tempered by a certain respect. “Who taught you to think, boy? Your father?”
“I imagine Lord John may have had some small influence,” William said politely. His insides had turned over—as they did with monotonous regularity recently—at mention of his erstwhile father. He couldn’t forget the look of fearful eagerness in John Cinnamon’s eyes … oh, bloody hell, of course he could forget. It was a matter of will, that’s all. He shoved it aside, the next best thing.
“But you didn’t in fact renounce your responsibilities, even though you wouldn’t profit by them. You’re telling me, though, that you couldn’t have done so. There are no circumstances in which a peer can stop being a peer?”
“Well, not at his own whim, no. Mind you, a peerage is the gift of a grateful monarch. A monarch who ceases to be grateful can indeed strip a peer of his titles, though I doubt any monarch could do so without support from the House of Lords. Peers don’t like to feel threatened—it so seldom happens to any of them these days, they’re not used to it,” he added sardonically.
“Even so—it isn’t a matter of kingly whim, either. Grounds for revoking a peerage are rather limited, I believe. The only one that comes to mind is engaging in a rebellion against the Crown.”
“You don’t say.”
William had spoken lightly—or meant to—but Hal stopped and turned a piercing look on his nephew.
“If you consider treason and the betrayal of your King, your country, and your family a suitable means of solving your personal difficulties, William, then perhaps John hasn’t taught you as well as I supposed.”
Without waiting for an answer, he turned and stumped off through the beds of rotting waterweed, leaving amorphous footprints in the sand.
WILLIAM STAYED BY the shore for some little while. Not thinking. Not feeling much of anything, either. Just watching the currents move through the river, washing out his tired brain. A squadron of brown pelicans with white heads came floating down the sky, keeping formation as they skimmed two feet above the surface of the water. Evidently seeing nothing interesting, they rose again as one and sailed back over the marshes toward the open sea.