Chapter 23
“Here.”
Matthew thrust papers at Hector and tried to escape, but Hector wasn’t about to fall for that trick twice.
“Stop,” he snapped, halfway surprised when his brother actually listened. “What in the hell is this?” he asked his brother, who had turned his back.
Hector was in no mood for whatever shite his brother was up to now.
It had been an agonizing few days since returning from Godwin Estate, and, almost as though London itself was the problem, things had become icy once more between Hector and his wife.
Only it was worse now, because he had the gnawing feeling in his chest that he suspected might be despair. He blamed Xander Lightholder for taunting him with the things he could never have.
Clio was little more than a ghost, and Hector couldn’t decide if he wanted to see her more or not. On one hand, seeing her and knowing that there was still such a cavernous distance between them hurt.
On the other hand, not seeing her also hurt.
Matthew turned, a sneer on his face. God, he looked ever so much like their father when he did that.
It made the little boy inside Hector want to flinch, but he wasn’t a child any longer.
He was a man and a husband and a duke, and he wouldn’t give way just because someone else looked at him slantwise.
His fingers clenched around the walking stick at his side.
“I’ve been consulting my solicitors about Father’s will, and it appears there is a codicil,” Matthew said, voice oily with smugness. “And they have made a case that the marriage clause is actually about perpetuation of the line, not matrimony itself.”
“Perpetuation of the…” Hector’s brain caught up. “Oh, damn you,” he snapped. “You’re going to claim that because I don’t have an heir—even though I’ve been married for less than three bloody weeks—that I’m not suitable for the duties of the title?”
Matthew’s expression grew uglier.
“Of course not, brother,” he said, the name coming out like an insult.
“It would be one thing, of course, if you were even trying to do your duty. But servants gossip, naturally. And the word is that you haven’t even consummated your relationship with the soiled dove you took to wife.
Perhaps you are afflicted by unnatural desires?
Pity, but really quite the risk for the family name. ”
Matthew didn’t sound like it was a pity at all, though he did sound genuinely disdainful of so-called unnatural desires. Hector wasn’t surprised. Matthew hated anyone who wasn’t exactly like him, and therefore, he no doubt judged men who preferred other men with gleeful rage.
Hector himself held that two people who cared for one another were inherently better than Matthew—who seemed to barely tolerate his own wife and took every opportunity to make her miserable—no matter their gender or manner of being together.
“You will not make comments about my wife’s person,” Hector said tightly, his hands clenching against his desk. “I will not have her disrespected.”
Matthew was not as afraid of Hector as he ought to have been, given how seriously Hector was considering rearranging his little brother’s face. He rolled his eyes at Hector.
“Yes, you’ve shown how very respectful you were of the chit when you tumbled her at a party,” he said dismissively.
Hector might have argued that Matthew could argue that either Hector was bedding Clio or he wasn’t, but not both, but he refused to be drawn into such a sordid argument.
“What transpires between myself and my duchess—” He leaned emphatically on the word just to irritate his brother and was gratified when Matthew went puce with rage. “—is none of your business.”
Except maybe it had been less than clever to provoke Matthew, who raised his chin.
“It will be a matter for the courts,” he informed Hector down his nose.
“They will demand an inspection by a physician to discover if she has been properly wedded and bedded or if she is just some bit of skirts you’ve found to prop up your feeble claim to the title.
It will be ever so humiliating for her, but perhaps you don’t care about such things.
It takes a gentleman to care for the sensibilities of a lady. ”
Hector was on his feet before he even realized he was moving. He should like to see Matthew try to steal Hector’s birthright after having his neck bloody broken. God knew he would deserve it for speaking that way about Clio, who had never done anything to hurt anyone.
Matthew skittered out of reach, actual fear crossing his expression. Ironically, this was the thing that stopped Hector from committing any intended violence.
Matthew was a peer, and no doubt the toffs of the ton would love to see Hector goaled for any abuse against him. Wouldn’t that fit their story so nicely? The brute of a duke, with his coarse manners and grotesque, twisted limb, proven to be the monster they’d always assumed him to be?
“Listen to me now,” Hector said instead, his voice trembling with barely controlled rage.
“If I ever hear you speak so rudely about my wife again—if I ever hear you so much as imply anything negative about her—I will make you wish you’d never been born, Matthew.
You can test me if you wish, but I swear to you that you will not like how I respond to such pressure. Do you understand me?”
Matthew was shaking, too. His reaction appeared to be caused by both anger and fear. Good. Hector hoped he never got another good night’s sleep in his life, that he spent every hour lying awake, fearing what Hector might do to him.
“You are an animal,” his brother spat in those genteel tones that belied his status as the chosen son.
“You disgust me, and everyone in London will soon see how repulsive you are. They will understand that I am the rightful duke, not some withered, broken creature, and when the courts decide in my favor, you will never be permitted to come anywhere near this family again. I hope your wife enjoys exile, for she has shackled her fate to yours.”
“Get out!” Hector shouted around the roiling, ugly feeling in his gut. Because, for all his flaws, Matthew was right about this, and somehow, in all the mess, Hector had failed to consider it.
He had framed his marriage to Clio as a quid pro quo: she would get the protection of his name, and he would get assistance in supporting his claim to the title.
But he’d never truly considered what might happen to her if he failed to defeat Matthew in a court of law, if he didn’t succeed in defeating his brother on his own home territory.
This was slimy, this last move of Matthew’s, but it was just the kind of thing his brother did, just the kind of thing his father would have done.
They’d taken the rules and tried to bend them to their will.
That’s what their father had done when he’d tried to rid himself of an unwanted son.
No doubt he’d hoped that Hector would die in some sort of accident at the forge.
Then he would be rid of the problem with no dirt on his own hands to show for it.
And now Matthew. Matthew, who wanted to make Hector look bad, and didn’t care at all about using Clio to do so.
Hector wanted to blame this behavior on Matthew being an aristocrat, because that had always been the division, the line that he’d held in his own mind.
It had been the way to categorize them and us in a way that didn’t make him feel quite so rejected for being on the other side of the divide from the rest of his family.
But Clio wouldn’t do such a thing. Her brother would never. Xander Lightholder wouldn’t.
And Hector had shackled all those people—a family full of people who were essentially good and honorable, who loved one another—to his own sinking anchor.
“Enjoy it while you can, Hector,” Matthew said with the smile of someone certain he had won. “It won’t last for long.”
Hector sat quietly at his desk after his brother had left. Matthew had miscalculated, he decided, when he’d threatened Clio.
Because Hector would do whatever it took to protect her. He was determined, determined enough that he didn’t even pause to question when he’d started to feel this way. It didn’t matter, after all.
None of it mattered, except for keeping her safe.
In the end, the tipping point wasn’t that Clio decided one way or another how she felt about Helen’s advice. It was simply that she ran out of patience.
She’d never been very good at waiting.
“So,” she said, letting herself into Hector’s study without knocking, because she feared that, if she did, she would lose her nerve. “Have you made up your mind?”
He looked up from a desk full of papers—she really had never met a man so diligent in her life; the other dukes of the ton could likely learn something from the likes of Hector Ferrars—and she thought he seemed pleased to see her, though he quickly hid the emotion behind a mask of impassivity.
“Made up my mind?” he echoed. “About what?”
He gave her his full attention. She noticed that. He put down his pen in its holder and moved the papers to the side.
He always focused on her so intently. Even when they were arguing. She ignored the flutter in her belly. It was time to stop messing about. If he was going to wound her, better now than later.
“About returning North.” She forced the words through clenched teeth. “You said that you were going to wait until gossip had died down, and then you wanted to return North. We haven’t been in the papers for weeks. You’ve married, which should settle your case. So. When are you going?”
His jaw worked as he thought something over. He gestured to the chair in front of his desk.
“I think you should sit,” he said.
She scoffed. “I’d rather stand.”
“Very well.” He sighed. “I cannot leave until we have conceived an heir.”
Clio sat. She didn’t even decide to do it. Her legs decided for her.