That it still moved him to his soul.

He hadn’t expected that, any more than he’d expected to be returning like this-alone, in a tearing rush, without even his longtime groom, Henry, another Wolverstone outcast, for company through the empty miles.

On Monday, while tidying the last of Dalziel’s files from his desk, he’d been planning his return to Wolverstone. He’d imagined driving up from London by easy stages, arriving at the castle fresh and rested-in suitable state to walk into his father’s presence…and see what came next.

He’d imagined an apology from his father might, just might, have featured in that scene; he’d been curious to see, yet hadn’t been holding his breath.

But now he’d never know.

His father had died on Sunday.

Leaving the rift between them-vicious and deep, naturally enough given they were both Variseys-unhealed. Unaddressed. Unlaid to rest.

He hadn’t known whether to curse his father or fate for leaving him to cauterize the wound.

Regardless, dealing with his past was no longer the most urgent matter on his plate. Picking up the reins of a far-flung and extensive dukedom after a sixteen-year absence was going to demand all his attention, command all of his abilities to the exclusion of all else. He would succeed-there was neither question nor option in that regard-but how long it would take, and what it would cost him…how the devil he was to do it, he didn’t know.

It wasn’t supposed to have been like this.

His father had been hale and healthy enough for a man in his sixties. He hadn’t been ailing; Royce trusted that if he had, someone would have broken his father’s prohibition and sent him word. Instead, he’d been blindsided.

In his version of his return, his father and he would have made their peace, their truce, whatever arrangement they would have made, then he would have started refreshing his knowledge of the estate, filling in the gap between when he’d been twenty-one, and last at Wolverstone, to his present thirty-seven.