Chapter 28
Victor had never cared for mirrors, but if one had been placed before him that night, he suspected he would not have recognized the man he saw.
He sat in his study, coat discarded, cravat loosened, hands still faintly bruised across the knuckles. The fire had burned low, casting restless shadows over the bookcases. A decanter of brandy stood at his elbow, barely touched.
Roderick lounged in the opposite chair, watching him over the rim of his glass. “You keep looking at your hand,” he observed. “Is it injured, or are you simply astonished it functions as a fist?”
Victor flexed his fingers. “I struck a man in my own drive.”
“Yes,” Roderick said. “A man who was about to hit a woman in front of your house. You may embroider the story in whatever direction pleases you, but that particular stitch is quite clear.”
Victor ignored the jest. His mind echoed with his mother’s voice, with the murmur in the hall, with Howard’s expression as he staggered backward, and above all with the startled look on Gwen’s face as it all unfolded.
“He is her guardian,” he grunted. “I had no right to lay hands on him.”
Roderick snorted. “He had no right to lay hands on her. That did not seem to trouble him.”
Victor stared into the fire. “This is precisely what they say about me. That I am violent. That I am my father’s son. Today, I proved them right.”
“Did you drag her out into the drive?” Roderick asked. “Did you raise your hand to her? Did you threaten a woman smaller and weaker than you for the crime of existing in your presence?”
Victor’s jaw clenched. “Of course not.”
“Then you did not behave as your father,” Roderick said lightly. “You behaved as a man given an opportunity to remove his fist from his pocket, for once, and place it where it belonged.”
Victor’s temper flared. “You make a jest of everything.”
“I make a jest of what you twist into weapons against yourself,” Roderick shot back. “You are not your father, Victor. You never were. Your greatest fear is becoming him, yet you spend so much time staring at the shadow that you forget you are not walking in his boots.”
Victor pushed a hand through his hair. “I lost my temper, Roddy.”
“Yes, Vic,” Roderick acknowledged. “You did. After weeks of restraint, after watching that man tear strips from a girl who has already suffered enough, after learning that he means to sell her to the highest bidder, you finally allowed yourself a moment of human anger.”
Victor closed his eyes briefly, only for Gwen’s face to flash behind his lids. The bruise on her cheek. The way she had flinched when Howard raised his hand. The brave tilt of her chin when she insisted she would obey.
“I have fallen in love with her,” he confessed.
The words settled in the room like ash.
Roderick was silent for a moment. Then he nodded once. “I know.”
“Of course you know,” Victor muttered. “You always know.”
“You have been intolerable for weeks,” Roderick drawled. “That is usually the first sign.”
Victor’s mouth twisted. “I do not know myself any longer. I thought I had arranged my life. Seven nights. No entanglements. No promises. No hearts. Then she walked in with her nonsense about blackmail, and I have been sinking ever since.”
Roderick smiled faintly. “You have not been sinking. You have been feeling. It is a very different thing.”
“For me, it is the same,” Victor replied. “Feeling loosens control. Control prevents harm. When control slips, I become him.”
Roderick sat forward. “Listen to me. Your father used his strength to dominate. To terrify. To bend every person around him into a shape that pleased him. You used yours tonight to prevent a blow from landing on a woman who had already been struck.”
Victor stared at the rug. “I still struck a man in anger.”
“Yes,” Roderick agreed. “And if you had not, that man would have struck Gwen. In public. Before your door. In front of you. Would you prefer that outcome instead? Would that make you more virtuous?”
Victor did not answer.
They sat in thick, difficult silence. The fire crackled. Somewhere beyond the closed door, the house settled into its nighttime stillness.
Suddenly, a knock sounded at the door.
Roderick sighed. “At this hour, that can only be your mother. I shall brace myself for frost.”
“Enter,” Victor called.
Dorothea stepped in, regal as ever in deep blue silk, her expression composed. Her gaze flicked over Roderick, then to Victor.
“Wycliffe,” she greeted. “Might I borrow my son for a few moments?”
Roderick rose, smooth as always. “I can take a hint, Duchess.”
Victor exhaled. “I am not in the mood for lectures.”
Dorothea regarded him coolly. “I am not in the mood to give them. However, some things must be said. Wycliffe, if you please?”
Roderick gave Victor a brief, sympathetic look. “I will be in the smaller sitting room if you wish to resume the self-loathing later,” he said, then slipped out, closing the door behind him.
Victor looked at his mother. “I do not wish to talk.”
“You seldom do,” she scoffed. “Which is why this will be brief.”
He sank back into his chair, his fingers steepled. “Very well. Speak.”
Dorothea moved closer to the fire, arranging her skirts as she sat. For a long moment, she simply studied the flames. Then she said quietly, “The note was from Harriet.”
Victor stared at her. “Harriet?”
“Yes.” Dorothea nodded. “Miss Harriet Parsons. The young lady who has visited me frequently this Season. You recall her?”
“I recall her,” Victor replied. “I do not recall asking her to arrange clandestine meetings on my veranda.”
“You did not,” Dorothea said. “I asked her to.”
His heart stuttered. “You did what?”
She met his gaze without flinching. “I told her to send the note.”
Victor barked a laugh, incredulous. “You orchestrated a false summons. Why?”
Dorothea folded her hands in her lap. “I thought it might solve two problems at once. Harriet has been eager. You have been stubborn. I assumed that if you were caught in a compromising position with a gently bred young lady, you would be forced to do what you have resisted for years.”
“Marry,” Victor said flatly.
“Yes,” Dorothea replied. “You are not getting younger, Victor. Neither are your responsibilities. The duchy needs an heir. You show no inclination toward courtship. I thought a little nudge might be necessary.”
“A little nudge,” he repeated. “You call luring me to the veranda in order to manufacture a scandal a little nudge?”
Her mouth tightened. “You make it sound sordid.”
“It is sordid,” he bit out. “Did you truly believe I would be content to enter a marriage brought about by trickery?”
“I believed you would behave as a gentleman,” she said sharply. “That you would not allow a young lady’s reputation to be ruined. I believed that once you had a wife, you would adjust. That affection might come in time.”
He stared at her. “Even if there were no affection at all to begin with?”
Dorothea’s gaze did not waver. “Love is a foolish luxury; it fades. Respect remains. Marriage does not require passion. It requires stability.”
“Then why,” he asked slowly, “did you not attempt to scandalize me with Miss Parsons tonight? Why did she not appear on the veranda?”
Dorothea’s expression shifted, almost imperceptibly. A crack in the ice.
“Because there was no opportunity,” she said. “The girl lost her courage at the last moment. She begged me to allow her to remain with the other ladies. I had no chance to send anyone else.”
Victor let out a slow breath. “Yet someone did send a note.”
“Yes,” Dorothea agreed. “But it was not Harriet. I did not know until later that another letter had been intercepted, one addressed to you. The servants talk, Victor, no matter how hard we pretend otherwise. I know enough to understand that my first plan failed. Another person’s scheme succeeded instead. ”
He thought of Howard’s face at the door to the study. Of Gwen’s body tangled with his own on the floor. Of the Baronet’s wife clutching her pearls.
“So you were attempting to trap me?” Victor asked. “With Miss Parsons?”
“Yes,” Dorothea admitted quietly. “I regret the method, but not the intention.”
He shook his head. “You were willing to risk our reputation?”
She lifted her chin. “I have spent twenty years watching you refuse every eligible lady who crosses your path. I have listened to the ton invent reasons. I have heard the whispers about your temper, about your supposed tastes, about your supposed coldness. I thought if I did nothing, your isolation would calcify into something worse.”
Victor had not expected that. Not the worry in her words. Not the quiet desperation.
“You did not expect me to fall in love,” he murmured.
Her lips curled into a faint, rueful smile. “No, I did not. I did not even consider it a possibility. You have always kept your feelings so firmly leashed that I doubted you remembered how to attach them to anything. Then I heard what you shouted in the corridor tonight.”
He remembered it, too.
“I only care about her.”
Dorothea continued, “I still think love is foolish. It complicates. It fades. Yet I cannot deny one advantage.”
“And what advantage is that?” he asked.
“That you will at least marry someone,” she said dryly. “I do not approve of your choice, of course. She is not what I imagined for a duchess. She is troublesome. She has a history. Her family is a disaster.”
“She is none of your concern,” he muttered.
Dorothea inclined her head. “You told me that earlier. I have decided to believe you. My approval no longer matters. It is your life.”
Something inside Victor loosened, just slightly. He even smiled, though it faded quickly as another realization dawned on him.
“I struck her stepfather.”
Dorothea’s eyes sparkled in a way he had never seen before. “Yes, I heard.”
“I hit him,” Victor repeated. “With my fist. In the drive.”
Dorothea did something he had never seen her do in response to violence—she laughed.