Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
“Welcome home, duchess.” Hector had spent the journey aware of every inch between his shoulder and the duchess’s sleeve.
His wife. The word had sat beside him in the dark like a third passenger.
She had been closer to him than she had ever been before, but not close enough to touch unless the carriage lurched. And she had kept her face angled toward the window, so he still did not learn the color of her eyes.
“The gardens are beautiful.” She looked around; her gown began to glow in the fading sun.
Hector questioned the irritation he felt at not truly seeing her. There were many things he could not see, and he had learned not to resent each missing detail because resentment wasted time and strength.
Besides, a man could govern a household, a dukedom, and himself without knowing whether the curtains were blue or green. He could hear a lie before most men saw it. He could tell from the air in a room whether servants were afraid, idle, or concealing damage.
Still, he wanted to know how deep the color of her blush was.
“You will be overseeing the gardens from now on as one of your duties as the duchess.” She looked at him then, and his throat felt dry.
“These gardens?” She looked around wide-eyed.
“Yes, you will order the workers on what to do and oversee it. What seems to be the issue?” Hector raised a brow at her.
“Nothing. It is just…huge. What if I fail and ruin its beauty?” She sounded deeply troubled.
“If I could do everything semi-blind, then you can do things better.” Hector did not look at her then, but he felt her eyes on him.
She took a deep, shuddering breath and quietly accepted his words and her new duties.
“All right, then I shall do my best and fulfill my duties.” She turned around and faced the towering house. “So, this is our new home.”
Home.
Hector had never thought of it as such, as he remembered the loneliness within its walls.
“Yes, I suppose it is.” He tapped the ground with his cane and offered her his hand. He was not sentimental enough to make a performance of it, but when she accepted and placed her gloved fingers in his palm, Hector felt a wave of warmth rush through him.
They fit perfectly.
The butler opened the entrance hall door.
“Welcome home, The Duke and Duchess of Sterling.” Mr. Clarke’s introduction was quiet, as they did not wish to wake the household and cause some whispers.
The Duchess had gone still beside him, and Hector wondered what she saw.
Grandeur, perhaps. Or severity?
“Thank you,” she said kindly to his butler.
Hector guided her over the threshold. The house was too large for tenderness. That was often the way of old families: they built rooms designed to impress men they disliked, then wondered why children whispered in them.
Hector stopped suddenly in the dimly lit hall; the sharp echo of his footsteps bounced off the cold walls, reminding him of his father’s voice.
“Control is everything,” his father used to say, standing tall in the parlor with an unblinking stare. There was no room for softness in his world, and Hector could still feel the weight of that severity pressing down on him.
“These paintings are beautiful.” The Duchess’s voice pulled him back to the present.
Hector was glad that he could not see the paintings; it reminded him of his greatest loss.
He removed his gloves and turned toward his wife. “There is a matter we must address.”
Her head snapped toward him when she heard his cold tone; she stood as if bracing herself without wishing him to notice.
“Already? I have not even toured my new home,” she responded drily.
“It is late, and you will have time to tour tomorrow. This cannot wait.”
He knew he sounded too stern on their wedding night, but he was getting distracted from his duties, and he could not afford that, especially now that his nieces depended on him.
Her brow furrowed with worry. “Are the girls all—”
“Aurora has a problem,” he cut her off.
The silence that followed was small but distinct. “My mind is reeling, Your Grace; you will have to be specific.”
“Hector,” he said.
She let out a soft sigh and whispered, “Hector.”
His name on her lips did not settle well within him, but he had to move past this.
He shook away the distracting thoughts and said, “Aurora stutters when she speaks.”
The duchess looked unsurprised. “Yes, I am aware.”
He had expected denial, distress, and excuses, but her calm answer cut across all three.
“You knew? And you did nothing to help her?” His tone suggested an accusation.
She flinched as if he had offended her. “It is not an issue. She only stutters when she is nervous.”
Hector grunted.
Only when she is nervous?
“Around me, it appears to be constant.”
She drew a slow breath, and he heard it, though she tried to hide it. “She is four years old, Hector. She had lost her mother, been sent away, and now she was brought into a house she did not know. You are a stranger to her; of course, that would make her nervous.”
“But I am not a stranger. I am her uncle.” He shot back defensively.
“That does not make you familiar with her.”
“It should make me safe.”
“It may. In time.”
“You will help her overcome it, then?” He was not sure if he was asking for the impossible.
Her Grace tilted her head at him, and he saw her brows knit together at the center. She captivated him even as she frowned in her wedding attire.
“I can help her feel safe if that is what you are asking for.”
“That is not what I asked for,” he argued.
“No, it is not. But that is what would help her.”
He rested both hands on the head of his cane. “Duchess, the child cannot grow up afraid to speak.”
“I agree,” she said simply.
He raised his hand exasperatedly. “Then fix it.”
“I cannot fix that for you.”
“For me?”
“Yes. This is for you to fix.” Her voice changed with conviction. “If Aurora is nervous around you, then the answer is not to make her ashamed of how fear comes out of her mouth. The answer is to help her stop being afraid.”
“But I have not frightened her.” He frowned, trying to think about what he could have done differently to help her feel safer around him.
“You frown a lot; it is very…frightening to some people,” she pointed out, and Hector immediately stopped frowning.
Her honesty continued to surprise him, and he wanted to laugh, but this was a serious matter that needed to be addressed. He stared at her and noticed the blush that bloomed in her cheeks again.
“I beg your pardon?” Hector asked.
“You frown almost constantly, I think. If you wish a small child to feel at home, perhaps you might begin there.”
“I would not know whether I frown because I cannot see it.”
There was a sharp silence followed by the duchess’s laughter.
The sound seemed to move around him, and he enjoyed its vibrations.
As her laughter slowly came to an end, she stepped closer to him.
He should have moved back, but before he knew it, Her Grace’s fingers touched his forehead, and Hector completely forgot what they were arguing about or how they got there.
He exhaled through his mouth and almost dropped his cane. Her touch was so light, yet the sensation roared through him like a river. He had met many predictable people before, but his duchess was unreadable.
“Here,” she said quietly, brushing her fingers softly against his skin.
Her finger rested between his brows, then traced no more than the space of a thought above them. He felt, with abrupt and humiliating clarity, the tension gathered there.
“When the muscles draw together here,” she said, “you are frowning.”
He did not answer as she withdrew her hand.
The absence of her touch felt worse. For one irrational instant he wanted to catch her wrist and put her fingers back where they had been, as if the brief contact had identified some fault in him that only repetition could explain. The impulse was so foreign that he turned cold with it.
This is dangerous.
The warning rose without fear.
Very dangerous.
It was not fear, not quite. Hector had known fear as a boy: the sound of his father’s step, the smell of liquor, and the rigid calculation of whether pain could be avoided if he kept quiet.
This was different. This was a loss of command disguised as a woman’s touch. Hector towered over her and lowered his voice.
“Aurora’s stutter must disappear within a month,” he ordered more coldly than before.
Her Grace’s breath caught. “You cannot place a deadline on a child’s fear.”
“I can place expectations on this household.”
“But she is not an account to be balanced.”
Hector was losing his patience. “She is a child under my protection, and her future matters to me.”
“Then protect her,” she countered. “Do not make her believe love depends on…speaking smoothly!”
The word love had no place in his life and never would.
“No one has spoken of love in this agreement. Love is just a whimsical term for duty.” He glared in her direction, and she crossed her arms over her chest.
Hector could not help but admire her stubbornness, even while he was fuming.
“That may be part of the problem,” she muttered under her breath. “Are you implying that loving the children is just a part of your duty?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
The servants had vanished or made themselves indistinguishable from the walls, and he was grateful for that because he would not have made this into kitchen talk before morning. Still, the house listened, and stone kept memory better than people.
He lowered his voice. “Aurora is of my family. If the defect can be corrected, it will be corrected.”
“Defect?” Her Grace looked at him, appalled.
“It will hinder her; therefore, it is a defect.” He pointed the cane at her.
“She is only four years old. You have not even given her any time.” She began to pace in frustration.
“And she will not always be four, Duchess.” He saw her shoulders tense at the accusation.
“No, she will not. And when she is older, she will remember whether you gave her safety or another reason to be afraid.”
Hector frowned. “You speak as though I intend cruelty.”
“You intend results without considering the child who must produce them, and you expect this to be an act of kindness?”
He should have ended it there. Instead, he heard himself say, “You were brought here because the girls trust you. Use that trust.”
“That would be exploitation.”
His grip on the cane hardened. “Choose your words with care.”
“I am.” Her voice trembled now, but she did not yield. “Aurora’s stutter is not disobedience. It is not laziness. She cannot be ordered out of it because it inconveniences you. How can you demand that she change something she cannot control, especially when you yourself are—”
She stopped, but it was too late.
His voice went quiet. “I am what?”
The duchess said nothing.
“Say it. Say that I am blind,” he spat.
The word echoed around him.
“I did not mean—”
“Yes, you did. You meant precisely that, then lacked the courage to finish.”
A small, wounded, and angry sound left her.
“My condition cannot be changed,” he said roughly. “But Aurora’s can, and I refuse to let this affect her future.”
He could have pressed harder. He could have reminded her of what she had agreed to when she became his wife. But he found that the argument had moved somewhere he did not wish to follow. The fingertip on his brow still seemed to burn, though it was gone, and so was her accusation.
“It is late,” he finally said.
The duchess did not answer.
“The girls are already asleep. I suggest you see them tomorrow.” He turned to leave.
“Hector—”
“Tomorrow,” he repeated.
He heard her swallow the rest. If she continued, he might answer as a duke and not a husband, and he did not yet know what that meant.
“Dinner will be sent to your room,” he said without looking in her direction. “Mrs. Patterson will show you to your chamber, and you may begin your duties in the morning.”
The words were deliberately formal as he walked away from his duchess, leaving her alone at the entrance of her new home.