Chapter 33
Oscar carried the bundle of letters he’d written Peter as he hurried through the halls, looking for Nancy.
The last forty minutes had been a sort of exquisite torture: he’d all but confessed the contents of his soul to Nancy, and she—unlike every other person in his life—had not laughed, nor recoiled, nor written him off as beyond repair.
She’d listened. She’d even made a joke about his penmanship, which, coming from her, felt as intimate as any touch.
He could not decide if this had broken him or remade him.
He paused outside the drawing room, composed himself, and opened the door. Nancy was at the writing table, the very image of a woman lost in thought: elbow propped, chin balanced in her palm, green eyes narrowed at a sheaf of account papers as if by focus alone she might will the numbers to obey.
She did not look up. “If you are here to ask for biscuits, the kitchen is closed.”
Oscar crossed the room in three strides. “I have something better than biscuits.”
Nancy’s head tipped a fraction, enough to signal interest. “The entire kingdom trembles with anticipation, I’m sure.”
He laid the bundle on the table. She regarded it like an artifact, then, slowly, undid the ribbon.
Oscar waited, arms crossed, unable to breathe.
Nancy scanned the first page. She read fast, lips moving, her gaze darting as she chased meaning. At the second letter, her composure faltered. A sharp intake of breath—then another. By the third, her eyes filled with tears. She did not wipe them away.
“You wrote these,” she said, not a question. “All of them?”
He nodded. “Over the last year. They were meant for Peter. Or for no one.”
Nancy put down the letter. “They are beautiful.”
“They are unfinished,” Oscar said. He tried to sound dismissive, but the words came out thin.
She looked at him, really looked, and he felt it like the first beam of sun after a month of fog. “You loved your brother.”
Oscar flinched. “Not enough.”
“Too much, I think,” she replied, voice raw. “You loved him so much you let it ruin you.”
He tried to reply, but the words—always his tool, always his shield—evaporated.
Nancy dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, then laughed. “Congratulations. You have reduced me to a puddle. Is this revenge for my many torments?”
He managed a crooked smile. “You are impossible to torment.”
“Not today,” she whispered.
She drew in a breath, steadied herself, and started reading again.
Oscar watched her, his own chest tight. He could not recall the last time he had shown anyone his unfinished self.
With Nancy, it felt almost bearable. He watched as she devoured the words, sometimes going back to reread a line, sometimes shaking her head as if to clear it.
When she finished, she laid the last letter atop the stack with ceremonial precision.
“I am proud of you, Oscar.”
The world stopped. “Why?”
She gestured at the papers. “For this. For saying the things that hurt.”
He had never understood how praise could be so painful. He wanted to retreat, to find solace in sarcasm, but her sincerity pinned him in place.
She stood, closing the distance between them.
“You are not your father,” Nancy said. “You are not even the man you were yesterday. You are the only man I have ever met who could put a piece of his heart in an envelope and leave it for someone else to find.”
Oscar stared at her, stunned.
“I don’t know if I can ever do the same,” she continued. “But if you want me to try, I will.”
She reached for his hand. He let her take it.
They stood like that, joined and wordless. Time, for once, did not matter.
He wanted to say everything—how she was the storm and the harbor, how he had not known what love was until it arrived, unbidden and unstoppable, in the shape of a red-haired bluestocking who did not care for Society’s rules.
He wanted to say he was sorry for every day he’d wasted pretending he could live without her.
Instead, he said, “Thank you.”
It was the most honest thing he had ever said.
She smiled, watery and bright. “You’re welcome, Duke.”
He grinned. “You are the only person who can make that word sound like a dare.”
“Perhaps it is,” Nancy replied.
They stood a moment longer, joined by the fragile thread of mutual undoing.
Then a memory surfaced—Adrian, at the ball, the warning in his eyes, the certainty that someone would try to steal Nancy away. The world’s old anxieties returned, angry and sharp.
He tightened his grip on Nancy’s hand. “There is something I must do,” he said abruptly.
She looked startled, then nodded. “Will you come back?”
“I always do,” he replied.
But he lingered at the door, memorizing the way she stood in the light, the letters gathered at her chest like a shield. He wanted to kiss her again, but it was too much. He settled for a last, long look.
Oscar strode from the room, his step lighter than it had been in years.
He passed through the entrance hall and out onto the drive. The afternoon sun was fierce, the air heavy with the scent of late roses. He climbed onto his horse, not even pausing for the groom, and urged it toward London.
He did not know if Adrian would be at White’s or the gambling house. He did not care. He would find Adrian. And he would ensure, once and for all, that nothing—not scandal, not envy, not even the endless malice of the ton—would ever threaten what he had found with Nancy.
She was his, and he would never let her go.
Oscar found White’s surprisingly empty for a Tuesday. He took a table near the window, where he could survey the entrance. Adrian would arrive soon; the man never missed his afternoon rounds.
Oscar rehearsed, silently, the words he would use to eviscerate his rival, but his mind kept wandering back to Nancy: her hands wrapped around the letters, her eyes red from reading, the way she’d said I am proud of you, Oscar with a conviction that would have floored a lesser man.
He nearly missed the approach of a waiter. He approached the table with a tray, set down a cup and saucer, and presented it with a bow of flawless geometry.
“Your coffee, Your Grace,” he said.
The coffee steamed in its cup. Oscar allowed himself a brief, savage pleasure at the thought of pouring it down Adrian’s neck.
“May I?” came a voice from his left.
Oscar looked up, startled. The Duke of Neads—Nancy’s father—stood beside the table, his features arranged in a mask of polite interest. He wore his years well, the silver at his temples only making his eyes more severe.
“Please,” said Oscar, gesturing to the empty seat.
The Duke sat, arranged his gloves with military precision, and regarded Oscar for a long moment. “You seem agitated, Scarfield.”
“I am waiting for a friend.”
The Duke’s mouth twitched. “Is it Eastmere?”
Oscar’s jaw flexed. “It is.”
“Then I shall not detain you long.” The Duke leaned forward, all business. “My daughter visited us yesterday. She seemed well, if a little… strained.”
Oscar found himself bristling. “She manages the household capably. There are always adjustments, but she is—unmatched.”
The Duke nodded, as if he had expected nothing less. “You understand, Scarfield, that Nancy is not like other women. She does not thrive on order or routine. She needs chaos to feel alive.”
Oscar allowed himself a smile. “You raised her well, Duke.”
“I tried. Her mother did most of the work. Nancy is stubborn, but her heart is—” He broke off, searching for a word. “It is not easily healed, once hurt.”
Oscar looked away, the sting of truth sharp. “I know.”
The Duke reached across the table, surprising him. “You are doing well by her, Scarfield. I did not expect it, and I am not ashamed to say I was wrong about you.”
Oscar could not look at him. “I am not sure I deserve her.”
The Duke’s hand withdrew. “No man ever deserves a woman like Nancy. He can only hope to keep pace with her long enough that she does not notice.”
Oscar let out a breath he did not know he’d been holding. “She is extraordinary.”
“She is yours,” the Duke said, voice low. “Guard her well.”
The words caught Oscar off guard. He had always imagined Nancy as a force of nature, untamable, answerable to no one. The idea that he might be the one responsible for her—her joy, her pain, her future—was at once terrifying and intoxicating.
“I will,” he promised.
The Duke nodded, stood, and left without another word.
Oscar sat for a moment, staring at the coffee until it cooled.
He thought of Nancy, the way she loved the twins, the way she had begun to trust him, the way she laughed with her whole body and argued like a lawyer with nothing left to lose. He thought of her heart—not as a thing to be guarded, but as a thing to be cherished.
He drank the coffee in three quick gulps, savoring the bitterness.
You are hers, he thought. For better or for worse.
He rose, settled his coat, and went to find Adrian.
But when he left the club, it was not vengeance that drove him, but the sudden and exhilarating need to see Nancy again.
To tell her—somehow, in whatever clumsy way he could—that she was the beginning and end of every hope he had ever dared entertain.
He did not run. But he very nearly did.
Oscar arrived at Scarfield with the speed of a man who had outrun every other fear but one.
He did not wait for the groom to steady his horse; he dismounted at a leap, tossed the reins to a blur in livery, and stormed the front steps two at a time.
The door was still swinging wide behind him as he entered the foyer.
“Where is the Duchess?” he demanded of the butler, who blinked at him in shock.
“Your Grace, the Duchess is not in the drawing room, but perhaps—”
Oscar was already moving, coat unbuttoned, boots echoing up the marble stairs. He tried the drawing room first, then her office, which was empty except for the scent of ink and the faint warmth left by her body in the chair.
He pressed his palm to the desk, willing it to conjure her out of memory.
He was halfway up the main staircase when he saw her. Nancy was at the far end of the hallway, walking toward her chambers with a slow, measured tread. She carried a book—one of his, he realized, recognizing the worn blue spine—and seemed lost in thought.
He called her name. She turned, and for a moment, the sight of her undid him completely.
“Nancy,” he said, voice hoarse.
She looked at him, an instant of confusion passing over her face before she smiled.
“I was just thinking of you,” she said. “I wanted to—”
Her words cut off as Miss Mercer emerged from a side door, bearing a small bouquet of white chrysanthemums and a sealed note. The governess performed a perfect curtsy.
“These arrived for the Duchess,” said Miss Mercer. “The runner brought them not five minutes ago.”
Oscar’s eyes snapped to the bouquet. “Who sent them?”
“There was no card, Your Grace. Only the note.” She extended it on a silver tray, impeccable as always.
Nancy reached for the envelope, but Oscar got there first. He turned it over in his hand. No seal, only her name—Nancy—in a looping, unfamiliar script.
He looked at Miss Mercer, who seemed the very soul of innocence. “Thank you, Miss Mercer,” he said. “I’ll see that the Duchess receives them myself.”
She bowed and withdrew.
Once alone, Oscar tore open the letter and read:
My Duchess—
I saw you at the ball, radiant and untouchable. I have never known such hunger.
I dream of the moment I will see you again, my dearest Nancy—
When the world is less cruel, when your husband no longer binds you—
Think of me, and I will come.
You are a flame, and I am already burning.
With love,
Your devoted admirer in the darkness
Oscar felt the blood drain from his head, then come rushing back all at once. He crumpled the letter in his fist.
He turned on his heel, stormed into her office, and began ransacking the drawers. Letters, notes, even a slim volume of poems—every page addressed to her, every word a dagger to the chest.
At the bottom of the drawer, he found a book of Wordsworth’s verse, pressed inside with a dried rose. He opened to the inscription:
To N—
The world was not beautiful until you existed in it.
Yours, Always
There was no signature. But he did not need one. Oscar knew only one thing: He would find the man who wrote those words. And when he did, he would make him suffer.