Chapter 11
“Your Grace. You are awake early.”
“I am not awake early,” Victor said sharply. “The sun is late.”
His valet froze mid-bow, holding the shaving water as if one wrong angle would end the world.
Victor knew he was being unreasonable. He also knew he could not stop.
“Shall I return in a moment?” the valet asked carefully.
“No. Leave it. I will shave myself.”
The valet hesitated only a second before setting the basin down and retreating.
The moment the door shut, Victor let out a breath he had not realized he had been holding.
It did nothing to ease the tension within him.
Everything felt wrong. Out of step. As if the air itself had shifted mocking degrees in the night.
He dressed himself with hands too precise to be calm. Toggles fastened, collar straightened, boots polished. He looked like the Duke of Greystone, but he did not feel like him.
Downstairs, a footman greeted him. “Your Grace, breakfast is—”
“It is cold.”
The footman blinked. “It was prepared moments ago, Your Grace.”
“Then it should be warmer.” Victor strode past him.
The dining room was immaculate, the fire banked to the proper warmth, the china gleaming. It irritated him profoundly.
Perfection should have soothed him. Today, it scraped along his nerves like gravel.
He sat. He tasted the tea. Bitter. Offensive.
“The roast beef is overcooked,” he remarked.
“It is exactly as you prefer it, Your Grace,” the butler answered.
“It is not,” Victor snapped, though he could not have explained what precisely displeased him. He pushed the plate away and rose.
He should not have been so short; he knew that. But something thrummed inside him, some agitation that would not settle.
By midmorning, the entire house felt it.
Servants scattered like startled birds whenever his footsteps approached.
Every small infraction sharpened in his vision: a tray angled a hair too far to the left, a letter set slightly crooked on his desk, a draft in the corridor he had walked a thousand times without noticing.
“Your Grace,” his steward ventured as Victor reviewed estate accounts, “the tenants’ ledgers are arranged in the manner you requested, however—”
“You missed a miscalculated yield here.” Victor tapped the page with more force than needed. “And here. And here.”
The steward flushed. “I apologize, Your Grace.”
Victor rewrote the entire column himself. The scratch of the quill irritated him, too.
“Bring me the correspondence,” he ordered.
It arrived. He wrote the same line four times before accepting the fifth. He sealed the letter too hard; the wax smearing only caused another spike of annoyance.
“Victor,” came his mother’s voice from the doorway.
He did not turn. “Yes, Mother?”
“Do you intend to attend the Ranleigh dinner this evening?” she asked. “It would be… social.”
“I have engagements.”
Dorothea’s silence held meaning. “Very well,” she said. “But you are unsettled. I can see it.”
“I am fine,” he replied coldly.
Her gentle sigh followed her out.
By afternoon, he attempted to work. Tried to force his attention through the tangle of land negotiations and timber demands waiting in his study. He read the same sentence four times without absorbing any part of it.
He saw the curve of a young woman’s throat as she tipped her head back, breathless beneath his hands. The way her voice had broken. The tremors in her limbs. The way she had looked afterward, soft and trusting and unbearably real.
He shut the folder with a violent snap.
Absurd. Entirely absurd.
He had no business letting her linger in his mind. Whatever had happened last night was the natural consequence of tension, curiosity, and opportunity. He had been indulgent; that was all.
Yet when dusk crept along the walls, tightening every shadow, his mood had soured into something hard and unyielding.
A footman appeared. “Your carriage is ready for Lord Ranleigh’s dinner, Your Grace.”
Victor almost refused.
Mother…
But refusing would require an explanation, and he had no patience for explanations. So he straightened his coat, donned the mask of Greystone, and let himself be driven toward Ranleigh House.
His irritation came with him.
Ranleigh’s drawing rooms glittered with chandeliers and too much perfume. Ladies tittered in corners. Gentlemen boasted about investments they barely understood. The smell of rich sauces permeated the air.
Victor despised it all.
“Greystone,” Lord Ranleigh boomed, clapping him on the shoulder hard enough to make him consider breaking his fingers. “Come and meet a fellow who has questions about your wharf.”
Victor followed, not because he cared, but because leaving would invite questions. The group of men by the fireplace grew louder as they approached.
Among them stood Philip Markham. Half drunk. Entirely vulgar.
“Your Grace,” Markham greeted with a sloppy bow. “A pleasure. A true pleasure. Tell me something.”
“No,” Victor uttered.
Markham laughed as if he had said yes. “You’re a man about the ton. Is it true what they say about that girl?”
Victor turned his head slowly. “What girl?”
“The ruined one,” Markham said cheerfully. “Some claim that you danced with her at the garden party. Others say that she is attempting to entrap someone of rank.”
Victor set down his glass with deliberate care. “You repeat baseless gossip.”
“Well, the ton talks,” Markham replied. “And talk is sometimes truth. They say she is desperate. That she turned up at three houses last Season, trying to catch a husband. Perhaps—”
“Enough,” Victor gritted out.
Ranleigh waved a dismissive hand. “Philip has had too much wine.”
Markham pushed on. “One rumor even claims that she attempted to blackmail a gentleman. Imagine that, Your Grace. A little thing like her blackmailing—”
Victor stepped forward. “You will hold your tongue before you speak of her again. I’m tired of being polite. Men do not perpetuate gossip.” He said it softly. Dangerously.
Markham blinked, confused. “I meant no offense.”
“You gave it,” Victor said flatly. “Profoundly.”
“Now, Greystone—” Ranleigh sputtered.
Victor turned to him. “Your hospitality disappoints me, Ranleigh. I did not realize your guest list had fallen so low.”
Ranleigh flushed. “He is rarely so unrestrained.”
“Unrestrained is one word for it,” Victor said. “Insufferable is another.” He faced the room. “If Markham remains a guest in this house, I will not. Nor will I attend any future gathering where he is permitted to open his mouth.”
Silence rippled like shock through water.
Victor left.
He did not excuse himself. He did not soften the exit. He walked out into the cold air with the tightness in his chest worsening, not easing.
In the carriage, he braced his hands on his knees, his breathing sharp.
Why did her likeness in that man’s mouth feel like sacrilege?
Why did the thought of her being mocked feel like an insult carved directly into his spine?
Why did his hands still remember the way she trembled beneath them?
He stared out at the lamplight passing in fractured gold. He blamed the lack of sleep. Irritation. The chaos of the day. Anything but the truth.
He thought of her all the way home.
When he reached his study, he dismissed his valet and stood alone in the dim silence until the clock struck two.
Only then did exhaustion drag him to bed.
Victor woke early again, though sleep had given him little rest. The irritation of yesterday had not faded; it had condensed, sharpened, and lodged beneath his breastbone.
He forced himself into routine. A brisk wash. A strong coffee. A short ride on horseback through Hyde Park. The wind did little to clear his head. Every hoofbeat seemed to echo a single, unwelcome refrain.
She would be gone soon.
He returned home, changed, and made his way to the business meeting scheduled with Lord Chadwick and two other minor lords regarding a proposed road expansion between their estates.
Roderick joined him at the entrance, well-dressed as always. His eyebrows arched. “You look murderous. Should I prepare condolences for whoever displeases you today?”
“Save your wit,” Victor muttered. “It is early.”
They entered the meeting room. A map was spread across the table. Figures. Estimates. Projections. All the things Victor normally devoured with precision and pleasure. Today, they irritated him beyond measure.
Lord Chadwick hovered nervously over the papers. “Your Grace, as you see, the cost may exceed the original by ten percent, but the long-term gain—”
“Your surveyor mismeasured the incline,” Victor cut in. “Your figures are already false.”
Chadwick blinked. “I beg your pardon? They—”
“Your pardon is irrelevant,” Victor interrupted again. “Correct your numbers.”
One of the other lords attempted a placating smile. “We can discuss—”
“We will not discuss errors,” Victor snapped. “You will correct them.”
Roderick shot him a look. A pointed one.
The lords grew increasingly uncomfortable as Victor tore apart the flaws in their proposal with a ruthlessness that bordered on cruelty. He called out inconsistencies. He refused excuses. He demanded recalculations.
The meeting, meant to last an hour, was over in twenty minutes.
The lords fled.
Victor remained at the table, his hands braced on the wood, breathing hard.
Roderick finally spoke. “Are you quite finished devouring them?”
“They were incompetent,” Victor bit out.
“Yes,” Roderick agreed lightly. “But you have seen worse. Many times. Without trying to chop their heads off with a quill.”
Victor straightened. “I have not slept well.”
“Lack of sleep has never turned you into this,” Roderick pointed out. “My dear friend, you have become irritable to the point of legend. Yesterday, you left Ranleigh’s dinner like a thunderclap. Today, you have petrified half the peerage. I must ask the obvious.”
“No,” Victor hissed.
Roderick smiled faintly. “You do not know what I was going to ask.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then answer it.”
Victor looked away, his jaw tight. “I have been busy.”
Roderick hummed. “Busy thinking about someone?”
Victor froze. His mask slipped, just a fraction. His eyes gave him away.
Roderick saw it at once.
“I see,” he murmured.
“There is nothing to see,” Victor insisted.
Roderick crossed his arms, studying him. “There is something. You are unsettled. And you are never unsettled. Ever.”
Victor let out a slow breath. “She said she will be leaving sooner than expected.”
“Ah.” Roderick nodded. “And that bothers you?”
“It is an inconvenience,” Victor muttered.
Roderick laughed softly. “Your voice, my friend, is that of a man who realizes he cannot govern as neatly as he governs everything else.”
Victor said nothing.
Roderick lowered his voice. “You care.”
The word hit him like a blow to the chest.
Victor did not deny it. He could not.
He only turned sharply toward the window, his jaw clenched, his hands fisting at his sides as the truth he refused to acknowledge pressed against his ribs with unfamiliar force.
Care.
He despised the word.
He feared it more.