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I t turned out it was possible to see a man falling in love.

Frederick Dashworth, Freddie to those who knew him, had never believed in the phenomenon before now and he had certainly never expected to see all three of his brothers do it at the same time.

His own heart constricted and he knew he had suffered from the same fate as the rest of them.

For so long, Freddie had avoided commitment of any kind, and would have carried on avoiding it if he’d had the choice, but now that he was here, ties were already forming around his heart; ties that would bind him forever.

The object of their combined adoration looked up at them from impossibly large, brown eyes.

Golden ringlets framed a round face and a thumb was rammed between pink lips.

Freddie couldn’t take his gaze off this tiny, adorable miracle.

Only moments ago, an hour at the most, he’d been grumbling to himself about an unavoidable summons to Glanmore House, the duke’s London residence.

Freddie loathed his oldest brother’s home—the place where he and his siblings had grown up; he hated the way weighty silences, more obnoxious than a thousand heated words, filled the air.

Every nook and cranny evoked memories of a time he desperately wanted to forget.

So as he stared at his newly arrived niece, a fierce protectiveness filled his chest. This little girl would not have the childhood that Freddie had endured; hers would be perfect.

A three-year-old arriving on the duke’s doorstep, albeit with a lawyer from a reputable law firm, was a cause for suspicion.

There had been many attempts to ensnare Freddie’s older brother in marriage, some of them incredibly elaborate but often involving hairpins for an inexplicable reason.

Gazing down at the little girl, Freddie was sure this wasn’t one of them.

She was definitely a Dashworth.

Her hair might not be the same colour—the four brothers had the same midnight-black hair—but his niece’s brown eyes were identical to the ones that looked back at Freddie from the mirror every morning and the shape of her chin was distinctively Dashworth.

His niece closed her eyes and swayed on her feet.

Freddie stepped forward to catch her before she fell, but his movement startled her awake and she shrank against the lawyer’s legs.

Used to being adored by almost all who interacted with him, Freddie knew, for a brief moment, what it must be like to be a monster from a Gothic horror.

‘The will,’ growled Freddie’s oldest brother, Tobias Dashworth, the Duke of Glanmore, who didn’t seem to think he needed to speak like ordinary mortals and so never did.

For the first time in many years, Freddie didn’t begrudge him his brusque tone.

The content of their late brother’s will was surprising in many ways, not least the fact he’d written one or that he’d had a daughter who needed guardians.

The five brothers had never been close, but not to write to at least one of them to say he had a daughter seemed extreme even for Sebastian; not that Freddie could question him on his motives, being as he had been dead for over a year.

The lawyer shifted on his feet, his elaborate moustache drooping as his confidence ebbed.

He’d arrived with such aplomb, no doubt bolstered by the knowledge he was about to change the lives of the infamous Dashworth brothers forever.

Now faced with the four of them towering over him, all of them in various degrees of shock, he looked a little less sprightly.

The lawyer cleared his throat, glanced down at the paper in front of him and then back up.

‘Would you like the exact wording or a summary?’

As Freddie had only understood a handful of words from the flowery language, he was grateful when the duke bit out, ‘The summary.’

‘Your brother, Sebastian Dashworth’—why the lawyer felt the need to clarify who Sebastian was, Freddie wasn’t sure.

After the duke, Sebastian was the next oldest brother, the boy who had rejected his stuffy upbringing and fled England to live out the rest of his life in America.

Or at least he had been. Word of his death had reached them six months ago, along with the astounding revelation that he’d had a wife who’d perished alongside him.

There had been no mention of a daughter, which made her appearance in the duke’s Blue Lounge even more surprising—’made this will three months prior to his and his wife’s death, giving guardianship of his legitimate daughter, Charlotte Dashworth, to his surviving brothers.

He requested that the four of you live under one roof for the period of two years.

After that—’ the lawyer’s moustache quivered, some of his pride returning ‘—custody will be granted to the brother who is able to provide the most stable home, as decided by myself. Although any future decisions that impact her substantially, such as her marriage contract, must be agreed on by the four of you. If one of you is unable or unwilling to provide this, guardianship will revert to your aunt, Miss Dunn.’

All four of them recoiled, no less dramatically than the first time they had heard that wording.

‘Never,’ growled the duke. And the rest of them nodded in agreement—possibly the only time the four of them had been in complete accord for years.

Freddie and his brothers may not get along most of the time, but they were united in their extreme antipathy towards the woman who had raised them, or who, more accurately, had barely tolerated their presence while they tried to raise themselves.

Miss Dunn was the cause of all of Freddie’s worst nightmares.

It didn’t take a genius, and he was definitely not one of those, to deduce that his reluctance to let anyone know the true him was all down to the woman who thought his very existence was, at best, a great inconvenience or, at worst, something she needed to control to a painful degree.

She hadn’t loved any of her charges, had delighted in causing them all suffering, although she’d had a special well of hatred for Freddie.

Coming in the middle of five brothers, with nothing to distinguish him from the rest and a lack of any sort of academic ability, he had been her bête noire .

In the early years, her special treatment for him had involved locking him in his room in order for him to learn some sort of lesson.

When he’d grown too big to be pushed around, she knew him well enough to use her words to try to destroy his soul.

Freddie had developed a devil-may-care attitude in response.

Everyone knew him as the joker, the man who could be relied upon to have a good time and not worry about the consequences.

He had been that man for so long, he had no idea who he really was, and he would be damned if anyone else had to live like that.

Miss Dunn would never get anywhere near his precious niece.

Sebastian had known what he was doing when he had written that will; not one of the brothers would ever allow an innocent child into the hands of that woman.

Although why Sebastian wanted his brothers to raise his daughter when he hadn’t spoken to them in ten years was anyone’s guess.

Freddie took another look at Charlotte Elizabeth Jane Dashworth and decided it didn’t matter.

He’d only known of her existence a little longer than it would normally take for him to eat a meal, but he already knew he would give his life to save hers.

He glanced across at his brothers and knew they were all thinking the same thing.

Come hell or high water, the four of them would raise Charlotte Dashworth.

Charlotte continued to suck her thumb, oblivious to the fact that her world had just changed forever. For the rest of their lives, the four Dashworth brothers would protect her with everything they had.