Chapter 29
Something is wrong.
The carriage groaned, but it could not ease the silence between them. Nancy kept her hands folded tightly in her lap, while Oscar sat across from her, eyes half-shuttered, his posture so correct it might have been a mockery of ease. She wanted to throw something at him, just to see if he’d flinch.
She counted the passing streetlamps, tried to gauge the rhythm of the horses’ hooves, and tried to distract herself. It was no use. The air in the carriage was dense, as if it had been packed with wool and left to rot.
Oscar still did not speak. He did not even look at her. This was nothing new, but tonight the silence seemed to have teeth.
Nancy tried to reconstruct the evening. Had she done something? Yes, obviously. Had she said something? Absolutely, and probably more than once.
She replayed every conversation, every laugh, every glance she’d cast in Oscar’s direction, searching for the exact moment she’d gone astray. The only clear memory was of him, rigid in his tailcoat, watching her with the cold intensity of a man appraising a weapon.
When the carriage jerked to a halt in front of the manor, Oscar was first to move.
He opened the door, descended, then extended his hand to her with a perfect, wordless courtesy.
She took it because there was no dignified way to leap from the carriage unaided, and because some part of her wanted to feel his skin, even if only for the fraction of a second it took to steady her.
They walked up the steps together, but not together. Wilks, the butler, bowed as they entered. Oscar did not break stride. Instead, he veered left—away from the staircase, away from her—and paused at the study door. “A word, Duchess,” he said.
She followed, her pulse drumming in her ears. The study was cavernous and dark, lit only by the embers in the fireplace and the slim gold of the moon through the windows. Oscar shut the door behind her, the sound precise, final.
He stayed with his back to her for a long moment, gloved hands folded behind him, shoulders squared.
She waited. Then he turned at last. “Did you enjoy yourself this evening?”
Nancy frowned. “I did, for a time. Until you stopped pretending to enjoy yourself.”
Oscar ignored the barb. “It was a remarkable display.”
“I’m sure it was,” Nancy said, voice sharper than she meant. “You know how I loathe to disappoint.”
He did not sit. He paced the carpet, each step measured. “You were very—lively—with Eastmere.”
“Ah,” said Nancy, realization landing with a dull shock. “So that is what this is about.”
He stopped. “You were aware of the eyes on you.”
“It was a dance, Oscar. Not a duel. Do you mean to tell me you have never smiled at a partner?”
Oscar’s gaze darkened. “You know it is not the same. You know what people will say.”
“Oh, I see. Now you care what people say?” She could hear her own voice rising, but did not stop. “You—Scarfield, the man who treats society’s rules as if they’re the world’s most tedious joke?”
“Rules exist for a reason, Nancy. You flaunt them—”
“Because they’re absurd!”
Oscar’s lips went white at the edges. “You do not understand what it is to be—”
“Try me,” she snapped. “Try me, Oscar. I have spent my whole life being told what I am allowed to say, and do, and think. The only reason I can endure it is that I refuse to let those rules become my bones. And now you would have me submit to them, for your comfort?”
He ignored that, or pretended to. “You were too familiar with Eastmere. People will talk.”
Nancy laughed—a single, sharp note. “You do not care about gossip. You care that I was happy. That I looked as if I belonged in my own skin for once.”
Oscar’s jaw worked, but he said nothing.
Nancy stepped closer. “Is that what troubles you, Duke? That I might find joy in something other than your approval?”
He did not look at her. “You are being childish.”
“Am I?” She pressed on, unable to stop herself. “You want control over every variable in your life, Oscar. Even me. Especially me. You want me quiet and clever, and a credit to your household, but you will not stand to see me content. Because you cannot even begin to imagine what that looks like.”
“It is not a desire for control—”
“It is exactly that.”
He finally met her eyes. The force of it nearly buckled her knees. “I am trying to protect you.”
“From what? The thrill of being admired? The danger of feeling something?”
“From Eastmere, and men like him. They do not always announce their intentions.”
“And neither do women,” she snapped. “If you fear for my virtue, let me remind you that it is already in shreds, courtesy of our arrangement.”
He stiffened at that, but did not rise to the bait. “This marriage was meant to provide you freedom, not—”
Nancy stepped forward, voice trembling now.
“It gives me a cage, Oscar. A gilded one, yes, but a cage all the same. You make a show of liberality, but in truth, you cannot bear to see me act outside your control. You want me here—” she pressed her palm to her own chest, as if she could force the words through bone—“but you do not want me, not really.”
He was silent.
She tried again, voice softer. “Do you?”
The question hung, too fragile to be touched.
He said nothing.
She pressed on. “You think I am reckless. You think I do not see the consequences of my actions. But I do. I see them every time you look at me like this, as if I’ve let you down.
I see them in the way the children watch us, desperate for a sign that we are a family and not just two strangers sharing a roof. ”
Oscar’s face was a mask.
“I will not live like this, Oscar,” Nancy said. “I am only human. I feel things. I want things. And I refuse to pretend I do not care, just to make you more comfortable.”
He looked at her, and for the first time, the mask slipped. Only a little, but enough.
She saw pain there. And loneliness. And something that looked like terror.
“I am not made for these games, Nancy.”
“Neither am I.”
He shook his head. “You are too much for me.”
“And you are not enough for yourself,” she replied, surprised at her own cruelty.
He turned away, staring into the hearth.
She watched him, arms wrapped around herself, as if to keep from shattering.
She thought of her mother, of the words whispered to her on the morning of the wedding: Don’t let anyone extinguish your fire, my darling.
She remembered the way Oscar had touched her hand, back in the carriage, and how she had craved that touch even as she despised herself for it. She wanted to say: I wish you could love me. To say: I think I already love you, in spite of everything.
Instead, she said, “I will not let you turn my fire to silence, Oscar.”
He flinched, as if she’d struck him. He looked at her again, as if to speak, but the words were lost.
Clenching his jaw, he turned and left the study, the door closing with the finality of a tomb.
Nancy stood, shaking, in the center of the room.
She was drained and wrung dry. Hope had been a beautiful, stupid thing, and now it guttered at the edge of her consciousness. She thought, for a moment, of going after him. Of trying to explain that her anger was only the other side of longing.
But she knew, with a cold clarity, that it would not matter.
Oscar did not want her.