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“You’re in a band,” Benedict repeated, looking at his youngest brother.
“Yes, with some of my friends,” Greg nodded.
“You’re in a band with some of your friends, and you want to leave school to pursue music full-time?” Colin asked.
“Yes.”
“You want to drop out of Cambridge only one term shy of graduation to pursue music full time,” Anthony clarified.
Greg nodded again. “I just think that this would be a better use of my time than finishing a degree that I’m never going to use.”
“How long ago did you start this band?”
“Only in October, but we’ve had a couple of gigs. People seem to like us.”
“Tell me, Gregory, how do you plan to finance your life? How are you going to pay your bills after you leave school?”
The youngest Bridgerton brother gulped. “Well, I…”
Across the room, Phillip Crane turned to Simon Basset. “Aren’t you going to intervene?”
With an impish grin, Simon took a sip from the whisky tumbler in his hand. “Are you kidding me?”
“Someone ought to help the poor boy.”
Lips pressed together, Basset shook his head. “We’ve all had to take our turns under the eyes of Anthony Bridgerton. It’s just Greg’s turn.”
“You took a turn?”
“Oh, yes, you’ve never heard the story?”
Crane turned his attention on his wife’s older sister’s husband. “I knew that you’ve been Anthony’s best friend since Eton. I assumed that he was fine with you two…”
Simon’s laugh cut Phillip off. “You think that Anthony was fine with me dating his sister? Oh, hell, no. He threatened to kill me. In another era, he would have had me with pistols at dawn before you could blink. The idea of his sweet little sister dating me of all people horrified him.”
“But he came around.”
“In the end, but I definitely had my share of moments in that chair with him and Benedict yelling at me about my dating history and how I could dare look at their baby princess sister.”
“Baby princess sister?” Phillip repeated.
“That’s a direct quote. The woman who gave her nineteen-year-old brother a black eye when she was thirteen was a baby princess.”
“Wait…which brother?”
“Ben,” Simon replied with a smile. “They were playing croquet in the back garden.”
“Daphne doesn’t seem the type.”
“Oh, she can be aggressive, and she’s extremely competitive especially with her brothers. Remember that she’s only about two years younger than Colin but more than four years older than Eloise. She grew up with the boys.”
Phillip nodded. “So, you’re just going to leave Greg to them?”
Simon shrugged, taking another sip of whisky. “I don’t disagree with them. He wants to drop out of Cambridge a term shy of graduation and try to pursue a career in music. And he wants to Anthony to continue to fund his life. Anthony’s right. It’s absurd. If he wants to do this, he needs to fund his own way.”
“I see.”
“I want to pursue my dreams,” Greg persisted. “You’ve all pursued your dreams. Colin and traveling…Ben and art…Anthony, do you have dreams?”
“I dream of sleeping soundly at night,” the eldest Bridgerton replied. “Unfortunately, I have seven younger siblings and I run a large corporation and I have a wife and three children. Sleep doesn’t come easily to me.”
Greg shook his head. “I just don’t understand you. Didn’t you ever have dreams of doing something amazing?”
“Are you saying that being Kate’s husband and the father of three pretty great children isn’t amazing?”
“No, but didn’t you ever want more than just being…running Dad’s business?”
Anthony sighed.
“Like Ben has always wanted to be an artist and Colin has always wanted to travel and I’ve always wanted to be in a band.”
“I’ve never heard you say a word about it until last week. You hated piano lessons when you were young. Trust me,” Ben said. “I remember how much you complained about practicing. And you quit as soon as Mum and Ant would let you.”
“I even offered to let you try other instruments,” Anthony added. “And you wanted none of that.”
“You didn’t even want to try the drums,” Ben continued. “So, why do you want to be in a band now?’
“And what instrument are you going to play?” Colin threw in. “It had better not be keyboards. No one will listen to you if it is.”
Greg paled under his brothers’ interrogation. “I sing. Everyone else plays an instrument, but I sing.”
“You’re not a terrible singer, but why do you want to be in a band?”
“Guys in bands get girlfriends, and I want a girlfriend.”
“Oh, good lord,” Simon interjected from across the room. “That is absurd. You don’t have to be in a band to get girls.”
“He would know,” Ben remarked. “He had plenty of female attention as an undergrad, and he was a math nerd.”
“A serious math nerd,” Colin agreed.
“But he was never lonely,” Ben added.
Anthony held up a hand. “Let’s please leave Simon’s history out of this.”
“Please,” repeated the man who had been married to the eldest Bridgerton sister for more than a decade. “The point is that you don’t have to be in a band to get girls, but if you are in a band, you should probably try to be good at what you’re doing.”
“To get a girlfriend, you need to be someone who is interesting to girls. Pen was interested in my traveling and my writing.”
“And she’d had a crush on you since she was a teenager,” Ben muttered. “Not that you’d ever noticed.”
Colin ignored his brother. “Sophie was interested in the fact that Ben saw her when no one else did. Kate…well, I think that Kate was drawn in by the fact that Anthony is the first person she’d ever met who is at least as competitive as she is.”
“And Eloise was drawn to how passionate Phillip is about plants,” Simon continued. “Some women really like men who are passionate about things and just follow that passion wherever it takes them.”
“And Daphne was drawn to the fact that Simon was the first man she’d met outside of our family who could keep up with her intellectually,” Colin said. “Apparently, if you’re working on a doctorate in literature and your brother’s friend who works in finance sits and asks you all sorts of questions to learn about a thing that he knows nothing about and you know almost everything about, that is pretty attractive.”
“It helped that I read the books that she was writing about. I only cared about those things because that was what she cared about.”
Greg nodded. “I see.”
“So, are you still going to leave Cambridge to start a band?” Anthony queried.
His youngest brother shook his head. “No, I think I’ll finish the term out, and then I need to figure out what I’m good at.”
“Figure that out, find something that you’re really passionate about, and I promise that I’ll support you in pursuing it. But in the meantime, finish your degree, and there will be a job waiting for you at B.E. if you want it.”
Greg smiled at his brothers. “Thanks. Thanks for helping me.”
“Anytime, that’s what we’re here for.”