Chapter 22 #2
Victor did not bother correcting him. Instead, he ordered enough food for four people and watched grimly as the innkeeper arranged it with cheery enthusiasm on a tray adorned with sprigs of something green and a ridiculous pair of orange slices cut into hearts.
He took it upstairs himself out of some misguided desire to control at least one element of the morning.
When he shouldered the door open, Gwen was standing near the window, smoothing her hair. She turned at once.
Her eyes landed on the tray. On the absurd decorations. On the folded napkins shaped into doves.
She bit her lip and then burst into a fit of uncontrolled laughter.
It came in a rush, bright and helpless, bubbling up until she had to put a hand on the wall to steady herself. Victor stared at her, tray in his hands, caught between irritation and reluctant amusement.
“Don’t,” he warned.
She only laughed harder.
“The doves,” she gasped. “Victor, they are kissing.”
He looked. They were, indeed. Two little birds made from white napkins. Their beaks were pressed together with innocent fervor.
He closed his eyes briefly. “I despise this inn.”
“No,” she gasped, wiping tears from her cheeks. “I adore it. Look, they have made the eggs in the shape of a heart. How thoughtful.”
He set the tray down with more force than necessary on the small table between the two chairs by the fire. “Eat, before I throw it all into the flames.”
Her laughter died down, though a smile lingered at the corners of her mouth. Without further teasing, she took the chair opposite his.
The fire crackled between them. Outside, a cart rattled past.
They ate in relative quiet. He passed her the bread. She poured the tea. Their fingers brushed once over the jam pot, and both drew back with unnecessary swiftness.
Victor kept his voice cool, his expression neutral, careful not to let his temper show. He had seen what anger did to a woman who had to endure a man’s unpredictable moods. He would not add himself to that catalog.
“You are very polite this morning,” she noted, eventually.
“I am rarely otherwise,” he replied.
“That is not entirely true,” she said. “But I appreciate the attempt, even though I’m sure you’re frustrated with how fickle I seem.”
He merely grunted in response, but continued eating silently otherwise.
They finished the meal, descended the stairs, and stepped out into the pale, chilly day. The carriage waited. His horse stamped in the yard.
The world appeared perfectly unchanged. But Victor felt nothing of the sort.
They climbed in. The door shut. The wheels turned.
And they rolled back toward the life Gwen had chosen.
The ride back to London seemed shorter. Gwen watched the familiar hedgerows and fields blur past the small carriage window, each mile pulling her closer to the place she had tried so desperately to escape.
Victor sat opposite her, a ledger open on his knee, his quill poised, every inch the distant Duke again. The man who had held her in his arms last night and coaxed pleasure from her with nothing but his voice might have been a dream.
He had barely spoken a word since they had left the inn. When he did, it was to the driver. Or to ask if she was warm enough. Or to comment on the likelihood of rain.
His gaze did not seek hers. His lips did not curl into those faint smiles she had started to catalog.
He was withdrawing.
She recognized the action. It felt like watching a door close inch by inch while she stood on the wrong side of it.
She kept silent as long as she could. Longer, perhaps, than was usual. Eventually, after an hour of his carefully structured silence, she lowered her gaze from the window and said, “You do not have to do this.”
He did not look up from his ledger. “Do what?”
“This,” she said. “Become colder with every passing mile. It is quite unnecessary. We are adults. We can acknowledge that last night happened without pretending that it turned us into strangers at dawn.”
His quill paused.
He lifted his eyes to hers. They were as cool and as clear as water. “I am not pretending you are a stranger.”
“You are acting as if I should be,” she countered.
He tucked the quill in the spine of the ledger and closed it with deliberate care. “You were right at the lodge,” he sighed. “We should have ended this arrangement when you first asked.”
Something in her chest squeezed. “I did not ask lightly.”
“I know,” he said. “You had sound reasons. I chose to disregard them. That was my error.”
“Error,” she repeated.
He seemed to search for words that would not cut. “You are about to return to a house where your footing is precarious. Your reputation is already fragile. My presence in your life complicates matters you cannot afford to see complicated.”
“That has been true from the very beginning,” she pointed out quietly. “It did not stop you then.”
“My judgment then was clouded by curiosity,” he said. “And other impulses I allowed too much rein. That will not continue.”
Her nails dug into her palms. “You have made a decision, then?”
“Yes,” he replied. “We will not meet privately again. Not at my lodge. Not at my house. If we encounter one another at social events, we will behave as distant acquaintances. Polite. Unremarkable. That is all.”
Her throat burned. “I see.”
“It is the only sensible course,” he continued.
“You yourself have proved that any deeper entanglement is impossible. You will not leave London. You will not relinquish your loyalty to a man who despises you. I cannot marry you, and I will not commit myself to a woman I cannot honor publicly. I will not become my father in that respect.”
The words struck her like sharp little stones, each one lodging somewhere tender.
“I never asked you to marry me,” she said, her voice thin but steady. “Our agreement was never about that. I am not so naive as to dream of ducal proposals.”
“You are not naive at all,” he assured her. “That is precisely why I must make sure you do not begin to hope for more.”
She stared at him. “Do you truly think me so weak?”
“I think you’re human,” he answered. “As am I. Which is why restraint is required from both parties.”
Heat surged up her spine, a mix of shame and fury. “Very well, Your Grace. Allow me to reassure you that I will not sit by my window at Fenwick House pining for you like a girl in a horrid novel. I have neither the time nor the inclination.”
His jaw tightened. “I did not suggest—”
“You implied it,” she cut him off. “You may erase whatever ridiculous notion your mind has conjured. I hoped for kindness, for continuity. Perhaps even for something like friendship beneath all the bickering. I did not expect a future. I know my value in your world.”
“That is not what I meant,” he protested.
“Is it not?” she asked firmly. “You have made your position clear. I shall reciprocate. I have no desire to be a repeat of your father’s mistake. Nor your mother’s disappointment.”
His eyes flashed at that.
Good.
“You and I agreed on seven nights,” she continued. “I tried to end our arrangement. You insisted on continuing it. I agreed. I take responsibility for that. I will also take responsibility for ending it now in my own mind. You need not fear that I am harboring secret romantic schemes.”
He looked as if he wanted to argue further. But then his gaze cooled. “As you wish,” he said.
There it was. The door.
The rest of the journey passed in a silence that felt heavier than words.
Victor reopened his ledger and bent over it with fierce attention, as if the figures could shield him from the inconvenient reality that another human heart sat throbbing across from him.
Gwen turned her head back to the window.
Patches of white drifted across the pale blue sky, shapes shifting and dissolving as the carriage moved. She watched them as if they might offer an answer she could not find within herself.
She imagined, for a foolish moment, what might have been if things were different. If she had been born with an unblemished name and a dowry. If Victor had not been raised by a man who turned love into a weapon. If she did not have a mother tethered to a cruel husband. If the world were kinder.
Perhaps she and Victor might have sat side by side on a different journey.
Not lady and duke, not fugitive and escort, but equals.
Partners. He might have pointed out some distant field that was his.
She might have laughed and teased him about drainage or barley.
They might have planned something together. A future.
The picture dissolved as quickly as the clouds, but reality remained.
Fenwick House would rise before them soon enough. Howard would sneer. Her mother would smile through fear. Victor would deposit her at the door like a parcel delivered safely. He would hand her back to the life she loathed.
She lifted her chin. She would walk into that house. She would endure. She would find another opening, another exit, when the time came.
Across from her, his quill scraped steadily on the page.