CHAPTER EIGHT #2
She was fully aware that she was. She could feel it in the tension of her shoulders, the angle of her chin, the careful distance she was maintaining.
He was not Mr. Langford anymore, not the man she had come to know through evening conversations and shared concerns about the children.
He was the Duke of Trevane, a figure from gossip sheets and society whispers, a man whose reputation preceded him like a warning.
“I have built a world here,” she said. Her voice was quieter now, some of the sharp edges worn down by the complexity of what she was feeling.
“I have built trust with those children. They believe that what I tell them is true. They believe that the adults in their lives are honest with them, even when honesty is difficult.”
“They don’t know about the title.”
“Of course they don’t know about the title.
They don’t know their father is one of the most powerful men in England.
They don’t know that their illegitimacy is not merely a social inconvenience but a scandal that could destroy them if it became public.
” She pressed her hand against her forehead, feeling the headache building behind her eyes.
“They don’t know anything except that their papa cherishes them deeply and comes to visit when he can. And I have been complicit in that deception without even knowing it.”
“You were protecting them.”
“I was being managed. There is a distinction.” She looked at him, really looked, trying to see past the revelation to the man she had been coming to know.
“I need to understand something. The rake, the gambling, the scandals, the women. Is that who you actually are, or is that another performance?”
He was silent. When he spoke, his voice was careful, measured.
“Both, neither.” He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture of frustration she had never seen from him before.
“The rake is a role I built after Celeste passed away. It was a way to distract myself from the grief. A fortress of scandal and charm that kept people from asking questions I couldn’t answer.
But the longer you perform something, the more it becomes part of who you are.
I don’t know anymore where the performance ends and I begin. ”
“That is remarkably honest.”
“You demanded honesty. I’m attempting to provide it.”
She stood in the middle of the study, caught between the door and the man, between anger and something that was not quite forgiveness. The fire crackled in the hearth. The wind continued its restless movement through the garden. The house settled around them with all the weight of secrets revealed.
“I need time to think,” she said finally.
“Take whatever you need.”
“I’m not going to leave them.” She said it fiercely, as though he might doubt it, as though anyone might doubt it.
“Whatever I decide about you, I will not leave those girls.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know. You can’t know. You have no idea what kind of woman I am, because you never bothered to find out. You were too busy managing me, controlling the information I received and ensuring that I could never become a threat.”
“That’s not…” He stopped himself. Took a breath.
“That’s fair. I do deserve that.”
“You deserve considerably more than that.” She turned toward the door, then paused with her hand on the frame.
“The children’s birthday is next week. I assume you knew that.”
“I know.”
“They will expect you to be here. They have been planning celebrations for months. Anna has created an elaborate schedule. Viola has drawn invitations. Thistle has compiled a list of requested presents that includes, among other things, a horse, a castle, and a brother.”
“A brother?”
“She believes siblings come in sets of three and that they are due for an additional one.” Mel’s voice was dry.
“I have attempted to correct this misunderstanding with limited success.”
Despite everything, something that might have been amusement flickered across his face. She saw it and felt her own expression soften slightly before she caught herself.
“I will be here for their birthday,” he said. “I would not miss it.”
“Ensure that you do not.”
She walked out without looking back.
In the corridor, she stopped and pressed her hand against the wall, steadying herself. The anger was still there, but it was mixed now with other things. Confusion and recognition. A reluctant understanding of why he had done what he had done, even as she condemned the doing of it.
He was the Duke of Trevane. London’s most notorious rake. A man whose scandals filled gossip sheets and whose name was synonymous with everything that polite society found both thrilling and deplorable.
He was also the man who read bedtime stories with voices. Who let himself be buried in sand. Who looked at his daughters with such desperate affection that it made her chest ache.
He was both of these things. Both Mr. Langford and the Duke of Trevane, both the father who was learning to be present and the rake who used scandal as a shield against the world.
How was she supposed to reconcile these two people?
She did not know. She only knew that she had promised to stay, and she would keep that promise. Whatever she decided about the man, she would not abandon the children.
Back in the study, Rhys remained standing where she had left him. He did not move to follow her. He did not call out or attempt to explain further.
He simply stood there, alone, thinking about what he had seen in her face when she learned the truth.
Every woman I’ve ever known has wanted me to be a duke.
It was true: Lady Forsythe and her ilk, the fortune hunters and the social climbers, the widows looking for position and the young ladies looking for triumph.
They pursued the duke, the title, the scandal, the story.
They saw him as a prize to be won, a conquest to be claimed, a character in the narrative of their own advancement.
Mel had seen something else. She had seen a man struggling with fatherhood, failing at presence, trying to be better than he had been. She had seen someone worth helping, worth teaching, worth the effort of inclusion.
And now she saw the duke. The rake and the man whose reputation preceded him like a warning.
She had looked at him differently. Just as he had feared. Just as he had known she would.
The one woman I want sees the duke as the problem.
He sat back down in his chair and stared at the fire. The book he had been reading lay forgotten on the side table. The evening stretched ahead of him, empty of the conversation he had come to depend on, empty of her presence and her honesty and her almost-smiles.
She had said she needed time. She had said she would not leave the children.
She had not said she would forgive him.
He had not asked her to.
Tomorrow he would face her across the breakfast table, knowing that she knew.
Tomorrow he would see her with the children, professional and competent and utterly beyond his reach.
Tomorrow he would begin the work of proving, somehow, that the duke and the father were the same person, that the man she had been coming to know was real even if the name he had given her was not.
But tonight, he sat alone with the wreckage of his deception and wondered if this was what he deserved.
He thought it probably was.