Chapter Thirty-Four
Nicholas did not remember the walk home from Winston’s town house.
He’d sent his carriage on without him. He needed the air…
and the space. Some part of him must have navigated the streets, nodded to footmen, mounted his steps, opened the door.
But the rest of him—the parts that breathed and felt and thought—had been left behind upstairs in Bea’s sitting room.
With her tears. With her apology. With the words that still lodged inside him, painful and immovable.
I release you, she’d said.
As if he were some animal straining at his leash. As if he had ever once needed pressure or obligation to want her. As if she hadn’t already carved herself into him so deeply that removing her would require tearing out organs he needed to live.
He slammed the door to his study behind him hard enough to rattle the frame. The decanter on the sideboard glinted in the lamplight. He seized it, sloshed brandy into a glass, and swallowed half in a single, burning gulp.
Normally, he hated drinking alone. Tonight, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
He stood by the window, staring at the ink-black street outside.
She thought he’d expose her. She thought he’d destroy her. She thought he’d marry her only out of obligation. But what gutted him most… What hollowed him out until he could feel the emptiness of it rattle in his bones was the simple, devastating truth—she did not want him.
Not really. Not enough.
At first—when their courtship had barely begun, back when she still rejected him on principle, he’d told himself she simply didn’t know him.
But today… Today she’d looked at him with such fear and guilt and certainty.
Certain that he was wrong for her. Certain that an alliance between them would be a mistake. Certain that he couldn’t be trusted.
It was no longer about his politics. It was about him. And her utter failure to see who he truly was.
He threw back the rest of the brandy.
His vision blurred for a moment, then sharpened—dizzily, painfully—as he recognized footsteps in the hall.
Who could it be at this hour?
His father entered without knocking, as if this were still his house, as if Nicholas were still a boy and not the man who now held in his hands the power to upend two great political dynasties.
Nicholas’s body reacted before his mind could—spine locking, jaw setting, breath going shallow with the old, boyhood reflex of obedience. He hated that his father could still do that to him with nothing but an entrance.
“Good God,” his father grunted. “You look like hell.”
Nicholas didn’t bother turning. “Feel free to leave.”
VanDeVere snorted. “Not until you tell me what possessed you to damage your own career so spectacularly.”
Nicholas’s grip tightened on his glass. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Spare me.” The duke stalked to the newspaper on the desk and slapped it with the back of his hand.
“This. This is everywhere. Every gentleman’s club, every drawing room.
The caricature of you and Winston looking like the foxes who stole the canary.
The one signed with that ludicrous pseudonym. I told you to take care of this.”
Nicholas said nothing.
His father continued, voice rising. “You are meant to be leading men to vote tomorrow. Instead, you are the punchline of the Season. You should have shut this down weeks ago.”
“I hired someone,” Nicholas said flatly. “He failed.”
“So I gathered,” the duke snapped. “And instead of regrouping, instead of preparing for the most crucial vote of your career, you spend the evening looking like you’ve been trampled by a cart horse.
Not to mention the story about some sort of a spat with Hargrave. Don’t be a fool. We need his vote.”
That. Was. It.
Nicholas felt something inside him—some quiet, obedient, dutiful part—finally crack down the middle. He turned. Slowly. Deliberately. And the thunderous expression on his face made the duke go still.
“You think this is about my career?” Nicholas growled.
The duke blinked. “It is always about your career.”
“No,” he replied. “It isn’t.”
His father’s nostrils flared. “This is not the time for distractions.”
Nicholas laughed once, sharp and humorless. “Distractions. Right. That’s all you see, isn’t it? A son behaving inconveniently. A vote at stake. A headline that might bruise your standing at the club.”
VanDeVere stepped closer, voice dropping. “You will maintain composure. You will attend the vote tomorrow. And you will not allow some anonymous scribbler to derail what you have spent your entire life preparing for.”
Another fissure opened inside of Nicholas. He stared at his father. Really stared.
The man was imposing. He always had been. Broad-shouldered, silver at the temples, jaw cut like a Roman statue. A lifetime of command radiated from him like a cold, steady wind.
But for the first time in Nicholas’s life, the duke looked small. Not physically. Morally. Emotionally.
He was a man so consumed by the machine of politics he could not conceive of anything outside it. Not loyalty. Not passion. Not truth. Certainly not love.
Nicholas set his empty glass on the table with a soft click. “The vote is tomorrow,” he said. “And I will be there.”
“Good.” VanDeVere exhaled, sounding relieved. “Then see to your duties. And stop drinking like a common wastrel.”
Nicholas’s eyes hardened. “You misunderstand me,” he said slowly.
VanDeVere frowned. “What?”
“The vote is tomorrow,” Nicholas repeated. “But it is not your definition of duty I intend to follow.”
A dangerous quiet settled between them.
VanDeVere’s voice dropped to a disbelieving whisper. “You cannot be thinking of voting against the party.”
Nicholas stepped closer. “No,” he said. “I’m voting for what I actually believe.”
The duke’s face went red. “You arrogant, idealistic child. You’ll throw away everything. Everything. Your alliances, your standing, your future. You’ll make a mockery of your own bloodline!”
Nicholas shook his head slowly. “You’ve already managed that well enough without my help.”
His father reeled as if struck.
Nicholas continued, voice low and iron-hard. “How ironic, Father. You wanted a politician. You raised one. You molded me into something sharp and obedient and unbreakable. And the moment I dared to think for myself—really think—you’ve decided I’ve become defective.”
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” VanDeVere spat.
Nicholas smiled. It was not warm. It was not forgiving. It was the smile of a man who had been walking in the wrong direction his entire life and had finally—finally—turned toward the sun.
“Oh,” he said determinedly, “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“And what is that?” the duke demanded, his eyes flashing with anger.
Nicholas turned away from him and walked toward the window again.
He pulled the vellum from his pocket, holding it loosely in his palm.
The name wouldn’t let him look away.
Lady Beatrix Winslow. B. Adroit. The woman he wanted. The woman he lost. The woman who had changed him without meaning to. The woman who had believed—incorrectly—that he had no loyalty to anything but ambition.
Nicholas closed his fist around the vellum. “I’m choosing.”
“Choosing what?” VanDeVere snapped.
Nicholas turned back, eyes blazing. “Who I am.”
His voice shook—not with weakness, but with certainty. “Tomorrow, I will walk into Parliament as myself. Not your son. Not Winston’s protégé. Nor his future successor. And not a puppet carved by other men’s hands.”
“Fool!” VanDeVere thundered.
“Perhaps,” Nicholas said. “But I’ll be a fool on my own terms.”
His father’s nostrils flared. “Do you truly think Winston will allow you to marry his daughter if you vote against the party on this bill?”
“Winston does not grant permission over his daughter’s heart,” Nicholas said evenly. “And I’ve already lost her.”
VanDeVere frowned. “You speak as though that question has been settled.”
“It has,” Nicholas replied. “Just not in the way you assume.”
His father stared at him, thrown off balance. “I don’t follow.”
Nicholas met his gaze, unflinching. “No,” he said quietly. “You wouldn’t.”
Then, with all the calm certainty of a man whose path had finally come into focus, he added, “I will not take instruction from you or Winston or anyone ever again.”
VanDeVere stared at him, stunned, furious, speechless.
Nicholas stalked across the room, reached for the study door, and held it open. “Goodnight, Father.”
The duke hesitated—rage, disbelief, and a flicker of something akin to fear battling in his dark eyes—before he swept past him and stormed into the hall.
Nicholas shut the door behind him, exhaling a breath that felt like a victory and a wound at the same time.
He leaned his forehead against the wood.
Tomorrow was the vote.
Tomorrow everything he’d been raised for—everything he’d been told mattered—would be tested.
And perhaps, just perhaps, when he stood and spoke with his own voice instead of the one bred into him, he would finally stop hating himself.
He pushed away from the door, squared his shoulders, and looked at himself in the dark window.
Steady. Unbreakable. Clear.
He no longer belonged to his father’s world.
From now on, he would belong only to his own convictions.