Swallowing hard, he shrugged off the old anger and rush of unworthiness. His birth mother had been born a free woman of mixed heritage. His father, a duke’s spare, had loved and married her and, when she died in childbirth, brought his infant son back to England to be raised in his family home. When Courtland was barely a few months old, his father had remarried—most likely to secure him a mother—but it became apparent by the time he was five that his new stepmother didn’t care to raise another woman’s child.

Who his own mother had been didn’t signify…until it did.

Until Courtland was deemed a hindrance to the new marchioness’s ambition.

His stepmother hadn’t been able to do much while his father was alive, but once his father died, she’d made it her mission to get rid of Courtland. It was obvious she wanted the dukedom for her own son, born shortly after him, though Courtland couldn’t imagine how she intended to accomplish that, short of murder. Primogeniture was a devil of a thing.

She resented that he was heir, as the firstborn male, and despised him for it.

Her son too.

At home, his younger half brother made life intolerable, and when they were away at Harrow, life became unbearable. He fought and was bloodied every day by his so-called peers, including Stinson, whom Courtland suspected was behind a lot of the hostility and certainly relished his older brother’s torture. He’d fought back. Who wouldn’t? Eventually, they’d kicked him out at sixteen, citing rebelliousness and belligerence.

The marchioness—by way of Stinson—offered him passage anywhere he wanted and enough money to live on and support a small retinue. He was young, but he did not return to London or to the ancestral seat in Kettering. He boarded a train to Europe instead. He’d then apprenticed to a Spanish railway industrialist and paid his own way to finish his education at the Central University of Madrid.

Blessed with a keen mind, he invested heavily in shipping and trade, and eventually migrated to the West Indies to see if he could find any of his maternal family. When he had arrived, it’d been a shock to his system. A wonderful life-changing shock—one he’d sensed in the air he’d breathed into his lungs and felt to the marrow of his bones. This was home. The British gentry had welcomed him with open arms, but they’d always been swayed by pretty faces and prettier fortunes. The islanders had taken longer—thirty years of abolition hadn’t shaken the shadows of the past—but he’d been determined to earn their trust. And he had.

Now, Courtland belonged here. He’d built his fortune and reinvested in local infrastructure. The Starlight was his kingdom, and here, he reigned. This bold boy who threatened his rule needed to know his place.