As the Devil Dares (Capturing the Carlisles #3)(90)

“You should start by telling her that, I think,” Quinn pressed sagely. “I’ve found that it smooths over quite a bit of female anger.”

Knowing Mariah, though, it might just cause her to kill him. Robert asked wryly, “When did you become so wise?”

“The moment I told Belle that I loved her.” Quinn’s grin faded into a solemn expression. “So what’s stopping you from doing the same?”

He bitterly quirked a brow. “The small problem that she hates me.”

He set down his glass of whiskey, no longer having a taste for the stuff. There wasn’t enough drink in the world to dull the desolation aching hollowly in his chest where his heart had been.

Crossing his arms, he leaned back against the wall and grimly shook his head. The only way he could receive the partnership was if he helped Winslow to profit from the destruction of St Katharine’s, and in the process, lose all chances at a future with Mariah. But if he chose Mariah, Winslow would think him too cautious and weak-willed to deserve the partnership…and with that, lose the best opportunity to prove himself worthy of the Carlisle name. Mariah and the partnership—he knew now that he could never have both.

“Love her or not,” he muttered, “either way I’m damned.”

He turned his face away before his brothers saw the emotions burning inside him. The last time he’d felt this frustrated, this powerless, was the night Father died. With Mariah’s help, he thought he’d healed that wound, only for it to return with an intensity so strong that it was nearly blinding.

“When have you ever let anyone stop you from getting what you want?” Seb asked.

Robert sucked in a harsh breath. His brothers were right. He’d never backed down from a fight in his life.

But they didn’t understand the choice he was being forced to make. “It’s a helluva lot more complicated than you realize,” he ground out. Then he succinctly summed up the torment that had been engulfing him since last night when she’d shattered in his arms, “If I marry her, I lose the partnership.”

Quinn shrugged as if that meant nothing. “You’ve a brilliant business mind, Robert. You’ve only been making business ventures for the past two years, since after Father died.” Robert felt Sebastian’s gaze dart to him and pin there, even as Quinn continued, “But it’s only a matter of time until you’re successful. You will become a partner, if not in Winslow Shipping then in some other business.”

“No,” he argued, jabbing a finger at the floor. “It has to be this company. It’s the best opportunity at the best company. The best, damn it! And I will not fail at this. I will not be another disappointment, not in this.”

Struck by the force of his words, Quinn was taken aback. “You’ve never failed at anything in—”

“That’s not it,” Sebastian interrupted. His eyes narrowed as they studied Robert, then flickered knowingly as understanding dawned on his face. “His problem has nothing to do with this partnership, not really.”

Quinn blinked. “Then what is it?”

“It’s about Father.”

Fresh grief spread through Robert as he returned Sebastian’s stare in the sudden silence that fell over all three brothers, unable to deny it. The tension suddenly grew so thick between them that each heartbeat only added to it, each ticking second growing the silence deeper. Robert wasn’t used to such silence when the three of them were together, and it rattled him. So did the implication behind his brother’s quiet accusation.

“You still blame yourself, don’t you?” Sebastian asked somberly.

Robert refused to look away. This conversation had been two years in coming, along with the punishment he deserved. “Don’t you?”

“No,” Sebastian answered honestly. “But there was a time when I did. When the grief was still fresh and I needed someone to blame.”

“I sure as hell did,” Quinn put in, the raw honesty in his brother’s voice tearing through his chest like a knife. “But I stopped eventually.”

“We both did, while Mother and Josie never blamed you in the first place,” Sebastian divulged with a faint shake of his head. “The only person who hasn’t stopped blaming you, Robert, is you.”

His eyes stung as he glanced between his brothers. Because of Mariah, he’d found a way to realize that his father’s death had truly been only an accident. He’d been able to find his way out of that torture.

But he hadn’t been able to let go of everything regarding that night.

“The last moments of his life were spent dragging me out of a gambling hell,” he bit out hoarsely, the self-recrimination inside him so brutal that he flinched. “That’s how low I’d fallen. How much of a mockery I’d made of him and the family.”

“You think you’re the only son he ever had to bring home?” Sebastian slowly shook his head. “He dragged me out of a tavern.”

His heart pounding, Robert looked at Quinton. “You, too?”

“Twice,” Quinn admitted ruefully.

He vehemently shook his head. It hadn’t been the same for them, it hadn’t been! “He lectured me right there in the street, told me that I—”

“Had been raised to be a better man than that?” Quinn interrupted gently.