Chapter 21
Gwen lay on her side, facing him in the dim light. His voice dropped to something lower, older, worn smooth from being kept hidden for too long.
“My father believed children should be shaped, not raised,” Victor said quietly. “He thought that fear was a better tutor than affection.”
Gwen felt a chill race up her arms, though the fire snapped warm against her back. She swallowed. “That does not surprise me.”
“I was his only son. His heir. His project.” Victor stared at the timbered ceiling as if he could still see the ghost of his father.
“From the time I could stand, he measured me against a line only he could see. Lessons from dawn until supper. Tutors dismissed if I did not excel within a fortnight. Punishments if I faltered.”
A knot formed in her stomach. Gwen hesitated, then whispered, “What sort of punishments?”
“The usual,” he said dryly. “Canes. Isolation. Cold. He liked the cold. He said it sharpened a man.”
Her fingers curled into the coverlet, her nails biting the fabric. A small ache bloomed in her chest for an eight-year-old boy forced to grow up in winter.
“Cold,” she echoed. The word tasted awful.
“When I was eight,” he continued, “I mistranslated a passage from Virgil. I had learned the correct line. I knew I had. But my mind slipped for a single moment, and the wrong word came out. He sent me outside—it was snowing then—and made me stand in the courtyard until I could recite the entire passage perfectly from memory.”
Gwen clapped a hand over her mouth. “Victor…”
She could picture him—a thin, serious boy, his small boots half-buried in snow, his breath coming in frightened clouds, trying to remember Latin verbs while his hands went numb. The image made something inside her twist painfully.
“How long?” she whispered.
“I do not know.” He heaved a long sigh. “Children do not count time the way adults do. Long enough that my fingers turned blue and I could no longer feel my feet. Long enough that the steward defied him and dragged me in. I had a fever. A delirium. I woke up three days later, and he told me I had embarrassed him.”
Her breath quivered. “You might have died.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “And he was very nearly furious about that as well. It would have been an inconvenience.”
Her eyes filled with hot tears. She had expected severity. She had expected tales of hard lessons. She had not expected any of this. She ached for the child he had been, desperate for warmth, desperate for approval, desperate for anything but the cold.
She found herself leaning closer, drawn by instinct, not thought.
“And when he died?” she prompted softly.
“I was nineteen,” Victor said. “He collapsed at White’s. A stroke. Men who had known him for decades said he died immediately and without pain. They called it a mercy.”
“And for you?”
He turned his head toward her, his eyes shadowed. “For me, it was a release. I felt no sorrow. Only an uncoiling inside me, as if someone had finally loosened a rope I had worn around my throat for half my life.”
Gwen pressed her fingers to her lips to hold back a gasp. “I am so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “He had the life he chose. And in time, I inherited the estate he had made impossible but manageable. My mother had peace for the first time in her married life. We all benefited.”
Gwen blinked, surprised. “Your mother… surely she must have found some peace after he died.”
Something shifted in Victor’s expression, subtle at first. Not grief, but something colder. Something wound too tight to name.
“No.” His voice was flat. “Not in the way one hopes.”
Her face fell. “No?”
He shook his head once. “My mother lives quite determinedly so. Her greatest preoccupation is my marriage. Or rather, the speed with which I can enter one. The bride matters little. Heirs, stability, a tidy continuation of the Greystone line—those are her priorities. She calls it honoring my father’s legacy. I call it convenient.”
The bitterness in his tone stung her. She felt it like cold air on her skin.
“She was not unkind,” he continued. “Not the way he was. But she was never warm either. She maintained a distance that no child could cross. After he died, she retreated into the same rigidity he had taught her to admire. Her version is quieter, more polished, but no less suffocating.”
Gwen’s heart clenched. “You were still very young.”
“Yes.” His voice lowered. “And entirely unprepared. She said the best way to honor him was to excel. At everything. Always. To meet every expectation he had. To keep the estate running smoothly. She never once asked if I grieved, only whether I was ready to perform.”
Gwen felt something inside her twist painfully. She imagined a proud, distant woman dressed in a widow’s silks, nodding to condolences with serene detachment, then turning to her son with nothing but fresh obligations in her hands.
“You missed having someone to comfort you,” she whispered.
His jaw tightened; he looked everywhere but at her.
“I mourned her,” he admitted. “That is the truth. I mourned the mother I never had. The one I kept hoping she might become after my father left us… once she had room to be herself. And I hated myself for not making an effort to understand the way an estate is run better before I went abroad. For returning to find nothing but falsified ledgers, tenant disputes, and men twice my age watching to see if I would fail.”
“Oh Victor…” It came out before she could stop it.
It hurt. It truly hurt to imagine the lonely child he had been, and the equally lonely young man forced to stand in his father’s shadow with a mother too cold to put even a hand on his shoulder. The weight of expectations that no one had helped him bear.
She wished she could take that boy into her arms. She wished she had known him back then.
But all she could do now was look at him, her voice soft with something dangerously close to devotion.
“You deserved better,” she whispered. “You deserved kindness. You deserved warmth. Every child does.”
He said nothing at first. Only breathed once, slow and tight. But his eyes softened. Just slightly. Enough that her heart soared.
She wanted to take his hand, but feared it would undo her.
“You are not him,” she said thickly.
“I know,” he murmured. “Yet men whisper that I am. Like father, like son. They look at my restraint and call it cruelty. They see my distance and call it violence. Rumor clings to my name the way it clings to your own, only with different flourishes.”
“Do you care?” she asked.
“I did,” he said. “Until I learned that squashing gossip is a full-time occupation and an utterly thankless one. I guard my temper because I must. I guard my reputation because it serves my work. Let them say what they will.”
She studied him. The stern angles of his face, the calm in his eyes, the weight of expectation he carried with terrifying ease. She saw not the frightening Duke the ton gossiped about, but a boy who had never experienced gentleness except in stolen moments.
“You are not nearly as terrifying as the ton imagines,” she said.
A shadow of humor crossed his mouth. “No. More tedious, I suspect.”
A small, helpless smile tugged at her lips. “Occasionally tedious. Also… unexpectedly kind.”
He arched an eyebrow. “High praise, indeed.”
“I mean it,” she insisted, warmth unfurling in her chest. “If your enemies knew that the fearsome Duke of Greystone lay awake worrying about fugitives in Cheltenham, they would have far less to say.”
He huffed a laugh. “I would appreciate it if you did not share that detail at the next ball.”
She laughed, too. And when she looked at him again, her heart felt unbearably full.
“I will tell them that you snore,” she teased.
“I do not snore,” he scoffed, affronted.
“How would you know?” she asked, smiling. “You are asleep when you do it.”
His eyes softened in a way that made the room feel warmer than the fire ever could. And Gwen knew with a clarity that terrified her that she would carry every piece he had shared with her. The cold. The fear. The grief. The guilt.
That small, lonely boy lived inside him still, and she felt an ache for him so deep it might split her in half.
She wondered, just for a fleeting moment, if anyone had ever held his hurt with gentleness. And whether he realized how fiercely she wanted to be the first.
She lay very still beside him, her heart swollen from his confessions. She had not expected Victor Stephens, the Duke of Greystone, to speak of his childhood agony with such quiet simplicity, nor had she expected the ache it stirred in her chest.
She touched his hand lightly.
He looked at her in a way that made her feel seen. Their faces were close, and in the warm hush of the shared bed, with firelight flickering across his cheek, she felt the pull of something thick and dangerous.
She kissed him.
It was a small kiss, fragile and hopeful, but it carried all the tenderness she had felt while listening to his story. His lips responded instinctively, firm and warm, and for one breath, one glorious heartbeat, he kissed her back.
Then he stopped.
“Gwendoline,” he murmured against her mouth, his voice strained with something she could not name.
She waited for him to continue. He did not. He only pulled back an inch, his breathing uneven.
“I will not touch you,” he rasped. “Not while you are on the verge of starting anew. I will not cloud your choices.”
That stung. It was foolish. It was humiliating. Yet the disappointment settled over her chillingly. She tried to hide it, but he saw everything.
She turned her face away. “Very well.”
Silence stretched. Then, unexpectedly, he suggested, “I can show you how to take your pleasure. Without me.”
What?
His eyes darkened, and her pulse leapt. A heat that had nothing to do with embarrassment slowly unfurled in her belly. She stared at him wide-eyed, uncertain if she had heard him correctly.
“Only if you want it,” he added. “Say no, and I will never speak of it again.”
A tremor rushed through her limbs, not of fear, but of a strange kind of anticipation. She remembered how he had touched her at the hunting lodge. How her body had responded, awakening in ways she had never imagined possible.
The memory alone sent warmth spiraling through her again.
“I…” She swallowed. “Show me.”
His gaze heated, not only with lust, but also with deliberate restraint.
“Lie on your back,” he instructed gently.
She obeyed, sinking against the pillows, her breath uneven. She tried to appear composed, but her limbs trembled.
“Close your eyes,” he murmured. “You are too aware of me.”
She did as he asked.
“Where does the heat begin when you remember when I pleasured you at the lodge?” he asked quietly.
Her face burned. “My chest. My throat. All the way down.”
“Then begin there,” he urged.
Her hand rose, hesitant and trembling, until it rested near her collarbone. She felt foolish and vulnerable, but his voice wrapped around her like a steadying hand.
“Good,” he murmured. “Now, press lightly. Follow the warmth.”
She let her fingertips glide down her sternum, lingering over the lace of her nightgown. Her skin suddenly felt too sensitive, every brush of her fingers igniting a spark.
Heat pooled lower.
“Does that feel pleasant?” Victor asked.
“Yes.” It came out breathless.
Her hand moved again, guided by instinct and his quiet instructions. She felt her body stir. A small sound escaped her before she could hold it in. She pressed her thighs together.
Victor let out a raspy breath. She heard it. It felt like a flame.
“Let yourself follow it,” he said softly. “Do not rush. Take the time you need. Feel your arousal.”
Her fingers traveled lower, over the soft silk of her nightgown, the sensation maddening but intoxicating. She arched slightly without realizing it. His breath was so close that she felt his hot praise on her breasts.
“Very good,” he whispered. “You see, your body knows what it wants. Now, right there—” he said as her finger stroked her core. “Rub small circles, slowly.”
She whimpered as a wave of pleasure rushed through her. The sound made her cheeks flush, but she could not stop. The more she touched herself, the more she wanted. Like an itch she needed to scratch.
A slow ache built deep inside her, curling, building, tightening.
“Victor,” she breathed.
“I am here,” he assured, his voice rough.
She did not dare look at him. She could feel him watching her, his presence like heat on her skin. Her breathing quickened. Her thighs trembled.
“More,” he urged quietly. “However you need. Don’t be afraid.”
She obeyed, her fingers circling, pressing, tracing her pleasure until the warmth coiled so tightly it bordered on pain. She gasped, biting her lip.
“That’s it,” he murmured. “Let go. Let it take you.”
The pleasure crashed over her, stealing her breath. Her back arched off the bed, a small, helpless cry escaping her lips. The world blurred and brightened, every nerve coming alive. She felt heat, release, trembling relief. She shuddered, her breath catching again and again.
She had never felt anything like it. Nothing so powerful.
As she sank back onto the pillows, her chest rising and falling, her eyes heavy, she felt warm tears on her lashes. She did not even know when they had formed.
“Gwen,” Victor whispered.
She opened her eyes.
He looked undone.
Not outwardly. Outwardly, he lay perfectly still, one forearm tucked behind his head, the other resting on the coverlet between them. But his eyes burned.
He looked hungry, desperate for control. As if he wanted to devour her and had barely held himself in check.
“You are…” He stopped, his jaw tight. “You are extraordinary.”
Her heart throbbed painfully. “You taught me.”
“No,” he said. “I merely guided you. You did everything.”
He closed his eyes briefly, as if steadying himself.
She realized then that he had given her a gift. Something intimate. Something he could never take back.
And he had not touched her once.
That knowledge warmed her more deeply than anything else.