Chapter 19
Nineteen
“Who,” Norman said, his voice thunder, low and electric, “invited him? I won’t ask again.”
The room fell into a sudden hush, chairs creaking as guests subtly leaned away from the confrontation blooming in front of them like a fire.
He hadn’t intended to join them today. There were too many pressing matters demanding his attention—endless considerations about Kitty, their strained marriage, the debt...
His study had become a prison of ledgers and unanswered questions.
Then the news came.
Grewin had arrived.
Something in his mind fractured at those words. A red haze descended, swallowing reason whole. The next moments existed only in fragments—the slam of his studio door, the startled gasp of a maid, the way his pulse roared in his ears like cannon fire.
He scarcely recalled striding into that room. Yet there he stood, every muscle taut with the effort of not tearing the house apart stone by stone.
And then—he had seen Kitty’s face.
She stood in the center of the parlor like a ghost. No, like something ripped out of a nightmare, her expression frozen between rage and agony, her hands balled at her sides, her lips trembling with unshed tears.
Grewin beside her, too close, always too close. That bastard.
And the grotesque absurdity of them—Kitty forced to act out that scene with him, of all people—was so wrong it made Norman’s vision go white at the edges.
His blood howled in his ears at the sight. The room’s air, once warm with social noise, had turned brittle and cold.
No one spoke. Even the most gossipy among them—the fluttering aunties, the wine-loosened baronets—sat still as statues. Grewin’s grin, always the first offense in any room, had disappeared from his face.
Then—
“I—I did.” Lady Mulberry stepped forward. Her voice cracked like a twig underfoot.
Norman turned to her, slow and menacing as he could feel sparks of fury flowing out of his eyes—burning like furnace coals.
“You.” He didn’t shout. Not yet. But the weight in his voice dropped like a hammer. “You brought him into my home?”
Lady Mulberry flinched, her hands clasped in front of her as though in prayer, but she nodded.
Kitty still hadn’t moved. The silence around her made it worse, somehow. She looked like she was standing at the edge of a cliff, waiting for someone to shove her off.
Norman looked at her, and that was it.
The fury broke.
“I will deal with you later,” he spat at Lady Mulberry, and the room jumped with the force of his voice. A few guests recoiled. Someone gasped sharply. Norman barely heard it.
He turned to Grewin, took two strides forward, and grabbed the man by the collar so violently that his script dropped from his hand to the floor with a thud.
“How dare you,” Norman hissed, his breath sharp and hot in Grewin’s face. “After what you’ve done. After everything. You think you can slither back in front of her? What—what did you think would happen? That you’d get applause? A danged encore?”
Grewin opened his mouth, maybe to lie, maybe to laugh it off. But he seemed to think better of it.
The grin was gone, wiped clean. There was something tight around his eyes now—fear, maybe. But still, the man managed to murmur, “I was invited.”
Norman’s fist clenched. He shook Grewin once, hard enough that the man staggered.
“You listen to me,” Norman said, so low and lethal the fire in the hearth seemed to shrink. “If you ever set foot on my property again, if I so much as see your shadow near these walls—”
He pulled Grewin in, until their noses nearly touched.
“—I will ruin you. In ways you can’t even fathom.”
Then he let go.
Grewin stumbled back, coughing and brushing himself off, trying to salvage some shred of dignity.
He adjusted his jacket as though Norman’s handprint hadn’t just burned into it. He turned to the room like a performer giving his last bow.
“Well,” he said hoarsely, “clearly, I’m not welcome.”
No one answered. Not a soul in the parlor moved.
He gave a little bow—mocking, as always—and stalked out the door.
The silence he left behind was suffocating.
Norman stood rooted in place, his hands still trembling from rage. His chest heaved, but he refused to let himself fall apart. Not here. Not in front of them.
His gaze swept the room, the same way a hawk scans a field before descending on prey. Most couldn’t meet his eyes. Some looked at their feet. One woman near the door clutched her pearls, visibly shaken.
“My apologies,” Norman said curtly. His voice was clipped, stripped of warmth. “That scene was not part of tonight’s entertainment.”
A few murmurs rose and died quickly.
“Lady Mulberry,” he said, without looking at her. “We’ll speak. Now.”
She was pale as a sheet, and shaking like a leaf in the wind. She nodded quickly and followed without a word as Norman turned and strode out of the room, fists clenched so tightly his nails dug crescent moons into his palms.
His footsteps rang through the halls. Cold marble, colder rage. He didn’t stop until he reached the door to his studio. The one place in the house untouched by farce.
The sound of Mulberry’s heels behind him confirmed she’d kept up. Good. She had some sense left in her.
Norman opened the door and entered the room, the familiar scent of leather-bound books and ink washing over him like a balm—but it did nothing to ease the fire still roaring in his gut. He stood at the center of the room, staring at the hearth without lighting it, his back to her.
He didn’t speak. Not yet.
Let her sweat.
Let her realize just how deep she’d sunk them both.
The door clicked shut behind her with the quiet finality of a guillotine.
The room stood frigid, the hearth’s fire having long since surrendered to ashes—but Norman burned from within.
Before him, the table lay strewn with papers in chaotic disarray, exactly as he’d abandoned them during his earlier futile attempts to work.
Inkwells stood uncorked, quills snapped mid-sentence, all evidence of a mind too agitated to focus on ledgers and correspondence when far more volatile matters demanded resolution.
He paced before it, his hands still trembling, the tension in his shoulders refusing to ease. Lady Mulberry stood by the door, frozen like a misbehaving child awaiting punishment, clutching her lace-trimmed shawl tightly across her chest as though it could shield her from what was coming.
“Sit,” Norman said, his voice gravel. Not loud, but dangerously low.
She scrambled for the nearest chair, the legs scraping sharply against the floor as she dragged it back. She sat with a rustling sweep of skirts, spine stiff, mouth tight.
Norman dragged his own chair opposite her and sat slowly, the act an effort in restraint. His hands balled into fists against his thighs. He stared at her. Not blinking.
With measured breaths, he attempted to master his rising temper.
A gentleman might overlook many slights, but to countenance such malice toward an innocent—and toward Kitty in particular—struck at his very foundation.
Lady Mulberry would learn. However silvered her hair, however frail her frame, she would learn that even a grandson’s patience had its limits.
“What,” he asked at last, his voice deceptively calm, “are you doing?”
“I—I’m not doing anything,” she said too quickly, her voice a thin, brittle thread. “I only—”
“Don’t lie to me,” he snapped.
The room cracked with his voice. Lady Mulberry flinched so hard her hand flew to her chest, her eyes wide.
“Don’t you dare lie to me. You invited him. You invited Grewin. Why?”
Lady Mulberry swallowed hard. Her lips moved before words formed, her gaze flickering to the bookshelves, the ceiling, anywhere but his face. “I simply… I thought it was odd, that’s all. That you hadn’t invited him yourself. He’s of our circle, our rank. It seemed…”
Norman surged from his chair.
Lady Mulberry shrieked, recoiling.
“Don’t you ever,” he growled, “ever put that filthy pig in the same breath as me again.”
He was shaking now. From the fury, from the utter insult of it all, from the image of Kitty’s face—Kitty’s face—stricken with horror, forced to stand beside that man, to touch him, to relive something she should never have had to live through in the first place.
“You think Grewin and I are equals?” he spat. “Is that what you believe?”
Lady Mulberry blinked, her chin beginning to lift. “He’s a perfectly respectable young man, Norman. His family is old blood. His mother is of an impeccable family. You cannot act as if he’s gutter garbage when he—”
“He is gutter garbage!” Norman roared.
His voice echoed like thunder through the studio, rattling the framed sketches on the wall. He leaned over the desk that separated them, both fists slamming down hard enough to make the inkwell jump.
Lady Mulberry gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. Her eyes sparkled with tears—tears he no longer had patience for.
“You know exactly what he did. You were there. You knew.” Norman’s voice cracked, not from weakness, but from the sheer force of trying not to scream himself hoarse. “You saw what it did to Kitty. You saw how she looked at him. And you—”
He jabbed a finger at her, shaking with rage.
“—you still brought him into this house? You brought him into the same room as her? What—was this some sort of test? A joke? A scheme? You knew she’d be the one forced to play the part. You knew.”
“I didn’t know it would be that part!” Lady Mulberry cried, half rising in her seat before sinking back down again when he glared at her. “I didn’t think it would—Kitty is always so composed. I thought she could—could handle—”
“You thought she could handle it?” Norman’s laugh was sharp, joyless. “My future wife, the woman I shall marry to protect, to shield, and you thought—what? That she could handle standing beside her tormentor while a room of strangers stared and clapped like trained seals?”
Lady Mulberry pressed a trembling hand to her forehead, the gesture too practiced. “It wasn’t like that. It was just a rehearsal. To...to fill your spot. A silly little performance. You’re making this far more dramatic than—”
“No one fills my spot!” Norman snapped, slamming his hand down again. “You don’t get to decide what’s dramatic, Grandmother! Not when you didn’t even ask for my approval. Not when you went behind my back. I am the duke.”
“I didn’t think I needed to ask your permission to send out a dinner invitation,” she said, and her voice, for the first time, held a brittle edge.
Norman froze.
A cold, dangerous quiet settled between them.
He stepped around the desk slowly, his boots deliberate on the floor, every click a warning.
“You listen to me very carefully,” he said, voice now so quiet it could’ve cut glass. “If you ever—ever—do something like this again without speaking to me first, I will send you to the dowry house.”
Lady Mulberry’s gasp was enormous, theatrical. She flew upright from the chair, her hands flailing to her sides like a startled bird.
“You wouldn’t!” she exclaimed, one hand to her chest. “You wouldn’t dare! Your Grace, you can’t! You’d exile me to that—that dusty tomb with those old crones and their sour porridge and hymn recitations—!”
“Yes,” he said flatly. “I would.”
“But I’ve lived with you for years—I raised you—!”
“You hovered and interfered. That’s not the same.”
She let out a strangled little wail and collapsed back into the chair, her shoulders shaking. “Oh, the cruelty! The injustice! I try to give this house a bit of life, a little twinkle, and for that I’m sent off to rot with the widows?”
Norman didn’t flinch.
“I’m not laughing, Lady Mulberry,” he said coldly. “You crossed a line. Kitty is not your pawn. She’s not your stage doll. And I swear to God, if you’re trying to sabotage this marriage—”
“I’m not!” Lady Mulberry snapped, then clapped a hand over her own mouth as if shocked at herself.
Her eyes met his, and for the first time in the whole evening, something like genuine remorse flickered there. It didn’t reach her mouth.
Norman leaned in closer, his voice a blade.
“Are we clear?”
She looked at him.
Then, slowly, she nodded.
“Yes,” she whispered. “We’re clear.”
Norman stared a moment longer, searching her expression for anything false, any flicker of defiance.
Then he turned and walked to the window, dragging a hand down his face.
The sunlight pooled across the floor like spilled honey, warm and soft, a bitter contrast to the heat that still pulsed through his skin. He couldn’t stop thinking about Kitty. Her eyes. The way her hand had curled inward as if to protect herself.
And that bastard Grewin’s breath, his voice, anywhere near her—
He braced both hands against the windowsill and bowed his head.
God, he had failed her. Again.
Behind him, Lady Mulberry sniffled dramatically and muttered something under her breath about being “deeply misunderstood.” He didn’t respond. She wasn’t the one he was worried about.
He turned fully to her, arms crossed. “You’ll apologize to her. Sincerely. And you’ll keep your nose out of my affairs. Out of our affairs.”
She nodded mutely.
“And next time I host a dinner,” Norman added darkly, “you will run the guest list by me. Do you understand?”
Another nod.
“Say it.”
“I understand,” she whispered.
And with that, he left the room, the door slamming shut behind him.