Chapter 25 #3
The afternoon was fast advancing when Ambrose returned.
He’d been gone long enough for Nic to start worrying, but had come back bearing the intelligence that His Grace had just left the chamber.
“He was in there when I arrived, so I waited a while,” the young valet said, determined to be helpful.
“And now he’s gone to his study, my lord. ”
“Thank you, Ambrose. Just fetch my dressing gown and we can go.”
It took many long minutes to make it down the stairs even with Ambrose’s assistance, but Nic soon stood outside his father’s study as he had done so many times before, his heart thudding in his stillaching throat.
His knock sounded hollow and overloud, and in the silence before his father answered, Nic fought the urge to be sick.
“Come in.”
The duke sat at his desk in his shirtsleeves, cleaning his prized pistols.
“Nicholas.” He paused, brush in hand. “Are you sure you feel well enough to be out of your bed? I hope you did not venture out alone.”
The hint of concern reminded Nic of the previous night’s gesture, as though the ghost of his hand remained in Nic’s hair.
“I am well enough, sir,” Nic said, glad the croak in his voice was less pronounced now. “Enough to no longer be served by lying in bed. And no, Ambrose is waiting outside.”
“Very well. Your errand must be very important to have brought you here in your dressing gown, so do enlighten me.”
He had come on a mission, yet as his father sat waiting to hear it, Nic’s courage flagged. “You sent for me,” he said, to buy himself some time. “Yesterday evening. When—” He broke off as the pressure of those hands around his throat returned in a flash.
A frown marred the duke’s brow and he set down the half-dismantled pistol. “I did not. Recall that I came to see you. To ask about Lady Leaf’s… mood.”
He had, and Dashiell had hidden under the table—the whole a lifetime ago. Almost it had been. “But… someone knocked on the door and said you wished to see me.”
“As I was testing these in the long gallery when you were found, I assure you I did not. It is, however, an unpleasant thought that anyone could have knocked on your door and lain in wait for you.” The man’s frown crinkled into something like fear as he glanced to the door.
“I hope you mean to keep Ambrose with you at all times from now on.”
His father’s fear was unsettling, yet it was the opening Nic needed for the real reason he had come. “I am, sir, but what is to stop someone poisoning me instead? Or Leaf? You have to call this off—or ask Lord Charborough to do so. In the circumstances, he would surely oblige.”
“Nicholas, we have had this conversation already. We need this to go ahead. You assured me you understood.”
“I hadn’t almost just died!”
The duke pushed his pistols aside and gestured to the chair. “Sit down, Nicholas.”
It was an order, yet there was a note of fatigue he had never heard in his father’s voice, and for a moment it held him frozen, feeling as though he had somehow stumbled through a mirror into an alternate world where his father was a living being.
The duke didn’t press his invitation, just waited, his glasses reflecting Nic’s indecision back at him. At length Nic sat, wincing at the pain in his side.
“This is about Master sa Vare, I take it,” the duke said. “I had thought that somewhere in your endless string of male company over the last few years you would have forgotten about him.”
Nic caught a breath, as shocked by the words as the gentle manner in which they were spoken. Having stared, open-mouthed, he eventually managed to splutter out, “You knew.”
“Of course I knew. I am not imperceptive, nor are young boys as clever as they think they are. And as much as I did not wish to lose my best pupil, it was as well he left us when he did.”
“I love him.”
“I don’t doubt it. Nor do I doubt that he loves you.
You represent every shred of wildness and creative spirit he admires and wishes for himself but does not have.
You are, indeed, extremely well suited. But you are a Monterris and your duty is to your family and your name—that the burden we must all bear.
You could not marry a mere vowsmith, the youngest son of a baronet, no matter what his career prospects were even then.
So when he asked to leave, I let him go.
Before either of you could embark on idealistic dreams. Breaking this contract now will, however, change nothing.
You are still a Monterris and he is still unworthy of you. ”
It was on the tip of Nic’s tongue to argue, to rage at so pathetic a notion of worth, but his father hadn’t said anything he didn’t already know. It wasn’t his future with Dashiell he had come to fight for, rather to ensure they had futures at all.
“Very well, sir, but this is not about Dashiell. This is about the four people who have died under our roof. I was almost a fifth and we cannot—cannot—keep doing this. Nothing is worth so many lives; nothing is worth the risk that as the contract nears completion my attacker may become desperate enough to try again, whether I have Ambrose with me or not. If I die, the contract will be broken anyway. Is seeing it through truly worth the risk of having no heir?”