Chapter 16 #3
“A threat?” Rowan stepped back into Lucy’s line of sight, his eyes narrowing. “Explain yourself before I decide that you have simply lost your mind.”
“She hurt your son!”
Her words hit the room like an axe. The air seemed to leave the space, and even Selina’s excited chatter died instantly.
Lucy took a step toward Rowan, her face flushed with an offense so deep it burned.
“You did not even inquire as to why I did it. You stand here accusing me of sabotage and ‘theatricals’ as if I am some bored socialite playing a game. You speak of her accomplishments as if they make her cruelty acceptable. But while you were focused on the ‘deal’ and the ‘suitability’ of the match, she was showing your son exactly what kind of mother she intended to be.”
Rowan’s posture didn’t change, but his eyes flickered, a momentary confusion breaking through the wall of his fury. “What are you talking about?”
“The day she arrived for dinner,” Lucy said, her voice trembling.
“She was already mentally redecorating your home, speaking as if your late wife’s memory was nothing more than ‘drab’ furniture to be hauled away.
When Brook told her she was getting ahead of herself, when he tried to defend his mother’s home, she slapped him, Rowan. Right across the face.”
Rowan went deathly still. The hand he had been using to gesture at the door dropped to his side.
“She didn’t stop there,” Lucy continued, her eyes locked on his.
“She looked that child in the eye and promised him that once she was the Duchess, she would ‘discipline’ him properly. She threatened him, Rowan. She told him he would learn his place, or he would regret it. That is why he was rude. That is why he was acting out. He was terrified, and he didn’t tell you because he thought you needed her.
He was willing to be hit and threatened just to buy you a little bit of peace. ”
The silence that followed was absolute.
Rowan looked as though he had been turned to stone.
The thunderous anger that had filled his lungs moments ago seemed to evaporate, leaving him hollow.
He turned his gaze toward the door where his sons had just exited, his expression shifting from fury to a raw, staggering realization.
He looked at the shattered glass on the floor before turning to her.
He let out a long, heavy sigh that sounded like a groan of physical pain. He sank into a nearby armchair, his head dropping into his hands, his fingers tangling in his dark hair.
“Why keep this from me, Lucy?”
Lucy braced herself. She watched the way his shoulders hunched, waiting for the secondary explosion, the moment he would turn his anger on her for withholding such vital, painful information.
She expected him to accuse her of being as manipulative as Judith or perhaps to roar that a duke should never be the last to know of an assault in his own household.
Instead, the room went eerily quiet. Rowan didn’t stay seated for long.
He stood up slowly, the exhaustion in his movements making him look far older than his years.
He walked toward her, but the predatory edge was gone.
When he stopped in front of her, his voice was thick with a different kind of hurt.
“Did you truly not trust me enough to tell me?” he asked, his eyes searching hers with a desperate intensity.
“Did you think so little of me that you believed I would proceed with a proposal if I knew the woman had laid a hand on my son? Lucy, if you had told me even a moment before that carriage arrived, I would never have gone forward. I would have sent her away myself.”
Lucy looked up at him, her heart softening at the genuine pained look in his eyes. “I only found out late last night,” she explained, her voice softening. “Brook finally broke down in the library. It was all such a rush, and honestly, Rowan... I saw the way his spirit was flagging. He was sad.”
She took a small step closer, her hand instinctively reaching out toward his arm before she caught herself.
“I knew if I told you immediately, you would have handled it. You would have been the Duke, you would have had a stern talk, cancelled the arrangement, and sent her packing. It would have been efficient, and it would have been over.”
She glanced toward the door where the boys had vanished, a small, defiant smile touching her lips.
“But I wanted Brook to smile again. I wanted him to feel powerful in a house where he had felt like a victim. If I told you, he wouldn’t have gotten his revenge.
He needed to see her be the one who was afraid.
He needed to be the one to chase the ‘monster’ away. “
Rowan stared at her, the silence stretching between them. “Lucy—”
“I know what you’re going to say, but it wasn’t just about Brook’s revenge,” Lucy added.
“If I had simply confronted her, a woman like Judith would have denied everything. She would have called Brook a liar or a difficult child, and it would have been her word against a boy’s.
Also, if I had come to you privately and you had broken it off based on a ‘rumor,’ she would have left here in a fit of vitriol.
She is a woman of immense influence, Rowan.
She could have poisoned your reputation across every ballroom in London before you even had a chance to court someone else. ”
She looked at the shattered crystal on the floor.
“Believe me, I had thought about all of the options. By doing it this way, she was the one who fled. She is the one telling people the house is haunted. It makes her look flighty and superstitious, not like a woman scorned. It was the only way to protect you and the boys simultaneously.”
Rowan listened, his gaze fixed on her with an intensity that made her breath hitch. He took a long, slow breath, the tension finally leaving his shoulders.
“I understand your logic, Lucy,” he said quietly.
“Perhaps you are right about the fallout. But you should have still come to me first. Regardless of the scandal or the ‘suitability’ of the match, my sons’ safety is my primary responsibility.
I would have rather faced every wagging tongue in the Ton than have you or Brook believe for one second that I would prioritize a title over my own flesh and blood. ”
He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a low, intimate murmur. “We are supposed to be partners in this, aren’t we?”
Lucy felt a pang of genuine guilt. Seeing the raw honesty in his eyes, she realized that in her haste to be the ‘fixer,’ she had underestimated the man standing in front of her. She had treated him like a client to be managed rather than a father who loved his children.
“I am sorry,” she whispered, her gaze dropping to the lapels of his coat. “I apologize, Rowan. I should have trusted you with the truth the moment I heard it. I suppose I’ve spent so much time being the one trying to fix things that I forgot you are more than capable of protecting your own.”
Rowan let out a breath that sounded like a final, weary surrender. He stepped back, the distance between them feeling suddenly vast and cold.
“Well, it’s over, Lucy,” he said. “I know it has been over two weeks, but I won’t hold you to the deal. I won't make you stay, and I certainly won’t make you marry me just to satisfy some desperate deal we made in a moment of madness.”
Lucy blinked, her heart giving a strange, painful tug. “Rowan—”
“No,” he interrupted, raising a hand to silence her.
He walked toward the window, staring out at the sprawling gardens that Judith had so flippantly planned to tear apart.
“This was a hopeless endeavor from the start. I thought I could simply replace a piece of the puzzle, find a woman with the right lineage and the right temperament, slot her into the role of duchess, and everything would be mended. But look at the cost. My son was slapped across the face.”
He turned back to her. “My sons are terrified of the woman I brought into their lives. You are exhausted from playing a part that isn’t yours.
I will not look for a wife anymore. I don’t need one.
If the price of a duchess is the safety and happiness of my children, then I shall remain a widower for the rest of my days. ”
He leaned his weight against the mantle, looking defeated. “You are free, Lucy. Truly free. I’ll have the carriage readied for you and your aunt. You’ve done more for this family than I ever had the right to ask, even if the match ended in a haunting.”
The finality in his tone was like a door slamming shut. He wasn’t angry anymore; he was just... done. He had given up on the idea of a partner, and for some reason, the thought of Rowan facing the silence of that massive house alone made Lucy feel more distressed than his fury ever had.
“You don’t mean that,” she said softly. “You think you can do this all alone?”
“I have to,” he replied, not meeting her eyes. “Because clearly, I am a poor judge of character, and I refuse to put Brook, Daniel, or Anthony through another Lady Judith.”
Lucy watched him, her mind racing. She thought of Brook’s trembling hands in the library, Daniel’s desperate need for an audience, and Anthony’s silent, simmering rage.
Most of all, she thought of how they spoke of their late mother.
How they had wished they knew her. Felt what it was like.
Rowan was trying to be the lungs, the bones, and the skin of this family all at once, and he was suffocating under the weight of it.
He was too proud to admit he was drowning, and he was too scared to let anyone else into the water.
He was ready to give up, to retreat into a life of cold duty and quiet halls.
A strange, reckless heat rose in Lucy’s chest. The logic of the matchmaker, usually so precise and detached, suddenly tangled with something far more primal and protective.
Before her brain could veto the impulse, the words were out.