Chapter 17
Seventeen
The ride back to Bramwell Park rushed past in trees and pounding hooves. Her final refusal beat against his skull with every strike of the horse’s feet.
My answer is no. Dominic didn’t remember the journey.
He didn’t remember urging his horse faster, nor the wind cutting at his face or the branches whipping past his shoulders.
He only remembered her steady eyes as she refused him.
He’d offered her everything. His name. His home.
His heart. She had said no as though the choice were simple, as though it cost her nothing.
Bramwell Park appeared through the trees, a grey stone monolith with empty windows that looked like hollow eyes.
It was a mausoleum of memories and silence, yet he’d grown up in this house.
He’d learned to walk in its corridors and had hidden from his father’s rages in its dark corners.
Now it loomed before him like a prison, and he rode toward it with something black and terrible building in his chest.
He dismounted in the stable yard and threw the reins at a groom without a word.
His boots hit the gravel with a sharp crunch as he strode toward the house.
He moved through the entrance hall, past Graves, who took one look at his face and pressed himself against the wall in silent retreat.
He took the stairs two at a time, his pulse hammering and his hands shaking, running from a rejection he couldn’t escape because it lived inside him.
He reached his study and slammed the door behind him hard enough to rattle the paintings on the walls.
Silence pressed in from all sides, punctuated by the ticking of the clock on the mantel and the crackle of the fire in the grate. He stood in the middle of the room, breathing hard, his fists clenched at his sides and his whole body trembling with a volatile energy he couldn’t name.
She’d said no.
Because he was too young. Too reckless. Too impulsive. Because his feelings would fade. She spoke the way he were some boy with a passing fancy, some green youth who didn’t know his own heart.
The rage came then, hot and sudden. It roared up from somewhere deep in his gut like a wave crashing against jagged rocks. His arm swept across the desk before he could stop it. Papers flew into the air, and the crystal inkwell shattered against the floor in an explosion of black.
It was not enough.
He grabbed the edge of the mahogany bookshelf and pulled with all his might.
His muscles screamed with the effort as books cascaded down around him in a waterfall of leather and parchment.
They were first editions his father had collected, volumes that had been in his family for generations.
He didn’t care. He snatched the crystal decanter from the sideboard—expensive and irreplaceable—and hurled it at the wall with every ounce of his strength.
Glass exploded. Brandy dripped down the wallpaper like amber tears.
Still, it was not enough.
His fist connected with the wall, the impact jarring his shoulder.
Once. The plaster cracked beneath his knuckles.
Twice. Blood bloomed across his skin, staining the white wall.
Three times. Four. He kept hitting until his hand was a ruin of split skin and shattered bone, until pain screamed up his arm and he could no longer lift his limb.
He slid down the wall, his back scraping against the ruined plaster, and drew his knees up to his chest. Blood dripped from his hand onto the carpet, pooling in the cracks between the floorboards.
She’d said no. And he’d nothing left to give.
The study was destroyed. Books lay scattered across the floor like fallen soldiers, their spines cracked and their pages torn.
Glass glittered in the firelight—the remnants of the decanter, the shattered inkwell, and a vase he didn’t remember breaking.
Brandy soaked into the expensive wool of the carpet, filling the air with its sharp, sweet scent.
The wall bore the imprint of his fists, plaster crumbling and blood smeared across the cream-coloured surface.
He didn’t care. He couldn’t feel anything except the hollow ache in his chest where his heart used to be.
The door opened. He didn’t look up.
Footsteps crossed the room, careful and measured. Someone was picking through the debris with the practiced ease of one who had seen far worse. He heard the rustle of silk as a visitor settled into the one chair that remained upright.
“Well.” Philippa’s voice was dry as autumn leaves, carrying no judgment and no surprise as she observed the carnage. “I see we are redecorating.”
Dominic kept his focus on his bloody knuckles, watching the slow drip of crimson onto the carpet. “Go away, Aunt.”
“No.” The chair creaked as she settled deeper into the velvet cushions, her skirts rustling around her ankles. “I don’t think I will.”
She let the quiet sit. She had always been good at waiting; and she was as patient as stone and as immovable as a mountain.
“She said no.” The words scraped out of him like shards of glass, tearing at his throat. He didn’t move a muscle.
Philippa’s hands folded in her lap, her tone remaining carefully neutral. “Who said no to what?”
He let out a laugh that was hollow and broken, echoing off the ruined walls. He tipped his head back against the plaster until it bruised. “Nell. I proposed. She refused.”
Philippa stayed quiet for a long moment. She took in the room. “You proposed marriage.” She spoke each word with care. Her silver brows rose. “To the baker.”
Dominic looked up at last. His jaw set. “Yes.”
“Today.” Her head tilted to the side as she studied his disheveled appearance.
“Yes.” He dropped his gaze back to his ruined hand, watching the blood well up from his split knuckles.
Philippa studied him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. “Did she give reasons, or did she simply refuse?”
“Reasons.” He laughed again, the sound as bitter as wormwood, and began listing them on his uninjured fingers.
“She is a widow. She has children. She counts pennies while I have never wanted for anything. She is older. The ton will eat her alive. She cannot give me an heir. And my feelings —” He spat the next words like something foul.
“My feelings will fade. As if I am some boy with a passing fancy who will forget her in a fortnight.”
Philippa listened without interrupting, her hands still folded in her lap, her face giving nothing away.
“She thinks I proposed because I saw Hartley leaving.” Dominic’s voice turned bitter. His bloody hand curled into a fist despite the white-hot pain. “Because I panicked. Because I was jealous.”
“Did you?” Philippa’s voice stayed gentle, but it pressed. Her stare stayed sharp.
“I—” He stopped. The word caught in his throat. He let his head fall back against the wall. He shut his eyes. “Perhaps. I saw him leaving her shop with that smile on his face, and I just… I couldn’t stand it. Not the thought of her with him. Not the thought of her choosing him.”
“So you proposed on impulse.” It was not an accusation. It was a fact delivered in the calm tone she used when he was being foolish. She smoothed a stray thread on her sleeve.
Dominic opened his eyes. He held her stare. His jaw tightened with defiance. “I proposed because I love her.”
“Both can be true.” Philippa spoke gently, her head tilting as she studied his face. “You can love her and still have proposed rashly. One doesn’t preclude the other.”
Silence fell between them again, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the distant, rhythmic ticking of the clock.
“She is not entirely wrong, you know.” Philippa gestured toward the destruction surrounding them—the shattered glass, the scattered books, and the blood on the wall. “This is what you do when you are hurt. You destroy things. You lash out. You make the world match the chaos inside you.”
Dominic stared at his bloody hand, watching the slow drip of crimson onto his trousers. “I know.”
“The ton would be unkind to her.” Philippa maintained her unwavering focus on him, her fingers laced together in her lap—a picture of aristocratic composure. “A widow. Older than you. No connections, no fortune, and no family name to protect her. They would tear her apart, and you know it.”
“I don’t care about the ton.” He growled the words, his good hand curling into a fist against his thigh.
“You can afford not to care.” Philippa said. “You are a viscount. They can whisper about you all they like, and it won’t touch you. But she? My dear boy, she cannot afford your indifference to society’s opinion.”
Dominic stilled. His mouth opened, then closed. He looked down at his hands — whole, titled, wealthy hands that had never built anything, never stretched a shilling, never held a child through a fever while wondering if the flour would last the week. For the first time, he had nothing to say.
Philippa rose from her chair, her joints creaking with a dry protest, and crossed the room to where he sat slumped against the wall.
She looked down at him for a long moment, then lowered herself to the floor beside him with a grunt of effort.
Her silk skirts pooled around her on the blood-spotted carpet.
“Let me tell you something, nephew.” She took his injured hand in both of hers, turning it over to examine the damage. Her touch was surprisingly gentle despite the age in her fingers. “Something I have learned in my sixty-eight years on this earth.”
Dominic watched her face, his breathing slowing as he waited for the blow or the wisdom.
“You cannot force love.” She began cleaning his wounds with a linen handkerchief pulled from her sleeve, dabbing at the blood with careful precision. “You cannot demand it, or chase it, or wrestle it into submission. Love is not a horse to be broken or a battle to be won.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” The words cracked, sounding raw and desperate in the hollow room. He didn’t pull his hand away.
Philippa looked up from his mangled knuckles. Her attention settled on him with quiet certainty. “If she is meant to be yours, she will come back to you. Not because you chased her. Not because you hammered down her door. But because you became the man worth coming back to.”
“And if she doesn’t?” He whispered the question, his throat tight.
“Then you will survive it.” Philippa wrapped his hand in the bloodied handkerchief, tying it off with practiced efficiency.
She patted his knee before beginning the slow process of rising to her feet, her knees popping with the strain.
She paused at the door and looked back. “But remember — fate favours the man who has done the work to deserve it.”
She stood over him, her silver hair gleaming in the dying firelight. Her expression softened with a sharp stab of genuine sympathy.
“Give her time, Dominic. Give her space.” She gestured at the wreckage surrounding them, one silver eyebrow arching in a silent reprimand.
“Let her see who you are when you are not chasing her, not demanding things from her, and not destroying rooms because you didn’t get what you wanted.
And if it’s meant to be, if she is truly yours, she will find her way back to you. ”
She left him there, sitting in the wreckage of his study. His hand throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and her words echoed in the heavy silence.
Fate favors the man who’s done the work to deserve it.
He looked at his bloody knuckles. He looked at the shattered glass and the destruction he’d wrought simply because a woman had dared to refuse him.
Philippa was right. Nell was right. He was reckless.
He destroyed things when he was hurt. He’d proposed because he was jealous, without thinking about what it would cost her or considering anything except his own desperate need to claim her before someone else could. That was not love. That was possession.
If he truly loved her, if he wanted to deserve her, he needed to become someone different. He needed to be steady. Reliable. He needed to be a man who didn’t destroy rooms when he was hurt or make reckless proposals out of jealousy.
He looked at the ruin surrounding him, the books he’d scattered and the wall he’d bloodied. This was who he’d been—but it was not who he would remain, but he would give her time. He would give her space. He would let fate do whatever fate intended.
He pushed himself to his feet, found a clean cloth, and wrapped his hand more securely. Tomorrow he would start. Tomorrow he would begin becoming the man who deserved her, whether she ever chose him or not.