Chapter Seventeen
The air still held the scent of rain, earthy and clean, but a fresh tension buzzed beneath the quiet.
Nicholas shifted his weight as Victoria dabbed at her eyes with a silk handkerchief, one far too fine for the act she was trying to pull off.
They stood beneath the climbing roses of the eastern trellis, petals shivering in the breeze like eavesdropping debutantes.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, voice watery. “I didn’t mean to come uninvited. I just… I needed to see you.”
Nicholas said nothing. His arms were folded, jaw clenched. He’d tried to avoid this very moment for years, and now it was blooming before him like some hideous, perfumed weed.
“My father is dying,” Victoria said at last, her voice cracking.
He glanced at her, surprised despite himself.
“He’s been ill for months,” she went on, sniffling. “Consumption, the doctors say. There’s no more money. No investments. The estate is—God, Nicholas—it’s barely standing. The staff have already begun leaving.”
She trembled.
Nicholas didn’t move. His instincts warred with disdain, sympathy, suspicion.
Then, like a sudden downpour, she began to sob, and just like that, her arms were around him.
Nicholas stiffened.
“I don’t know what to do,” she gasped, clutching the lapels of his coat. “I have no one left.”
He stood frozen for a beat. Then, against his better judgment, he gently, briefly, placed his arms around her, patting her back once. It was one single, dispassionate gesture.
“Victoria,” he said lowly, stepping back, “I’m sorry about your father. I truly am. But—”
“But?” Her voice turned sharp.
Her tear-streaked face lifted toward his, eyes glinting.
“But you’re married now,” she said bitterly. “To a merchant’s daughter. A seamstress. How… quaint.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Careful.”
“You were raised to marry someone of your standing,” she hissed, her composure unravelling. “Not someone with ink on her fingers and trade in her blood. You should’ve waited. I would have—”
She surged forward suddenly, lips brushing the edge of his jaw.
“—taken you back,” she whispered.
He jerked back, recoiling.
“What on earth are you doing?”
His voice cut through the garden like a blade. The roses seemed to be still.
Victoria blinked. “I thought—”
“You thought wrong,” he snapped. “You thought I was the same man who let you walk away when things got hard? But I’m not.”
“Nicholas—”
“Don’t,” he said, voice low and lethal. “Don’t use your father’s death as a way back into this house. Into my life.”
Her mouth parted, stunned.
“You may have been invited here,” he continued, stepping closer, voice a cold hiss, “but I’m telling you now: you are no longer welcome.”
“You’d throw me out?”
“I just did.”
He turned on his heel, fury pulsing through him. But before he left, he glanced back once. She stood alone beneath the trellis, her tears gone, her expression flat.
The mask had dropped, and Nicholas felt his stomach turn with the sick realization that he'd once loved her. That he'd once almost tied his life to hers.
God help me, he thought. What a fool I was.
He strode across the damp garden lawn, boots crunching the gravel as the wind shifted behind him.
He needed to find Lydia.
Nicholas tore through the house like a storm, his boots echoing against marble, shoulders tight with something closer to dread than anger.
He cursed under his breath as he passed a startled footman in the hall.
“Where is she?” he barked.
The young man stammered. “I—I believe Her Grace is in the library, Your Grace.”
Nicholas didn’t thank him. He was already striding toward the double doors, heart pounding.
He pushed them open without knocking and stopped.
She stood by the far window, spine straight, arms crossed, light from the sconces flickering across the polished spines of the books around her. Her hair was pinned too tightly, like armour. A single book was clutched in her hand.
She didn’t look at him.
“Lydia—”
“Don’t.” Her voice was low, sharp. That single syllable held enough fury to freeze the air between them.
Nicholas stepped forward cautiously.
“I need to explain—”
The book flew before he saw it coming.
It hit the shelves behind him with a thud, and the echo of it rattled through the silence.
“You made me look like a fool,” she said, her voice trembling—not with weakness, but with something sharper. Betrayal.
“Nothing happened—”
“Of course not.” Her eyes blazed now as she turned to face him fully. “You only let her cling to you in the garden. Like I wasn’t even alive. Like I was nothing.”
Nicholas’s jaw flexed.
“You never defend me,” she went on, relentless. “You never tell me what you want, what you feel. You just shut me out, again and again.”
“I want you,” he snapped. “Only you.”
She stared at him, breathing hard, like she didn’t believe a word of it.
“After what happened between us, there’s no one else in my mind,” he said, quieter now. “No one.”
The words seemed to pull the breath from the room.
Lydia didn’t move. Her lips parted slightly, but no words came.
He took a step closer.
“She kissed me,” he said. “But I pulled away. I told her to leave. I told her she wasn’t welcome in this house. And I meant it.”
A single beat passed, and then another. Then, in an instant, they crashed into each other.
His hands found her waist just as hers gripped the front of his coat. Their mouths collided, no pretence, no control. Just heat, need, frustration. Books toppled to the floor, forgotten.
He backed her against the library table, bracing his hand beside her head.
“Is this what you want?” he whispered, voice hoarse.
“I want you to stop pretending,” she breathed. “Be who you were with me. At the picnic. In the pavilion.”
He stilled and then—slowly—he brought his mouth to her ear.
“Take off your dress.”
Lydia froze.
Their eyes locked.
She didn’t speak. Just nodded once, her breathing shallow, and reached for the buttons of her gown with steady hands. The fabric fell around her in a slow rustle, until only her shift remained—white, sheer, clinging.
He let out a low breath.
“Sit on the table,” he murmured.
She did.
He stepped in close, his hands skimming the curves of her waist, her back, sliding over linen and skin. She trembled, but not from fear.
“Tell me to stop,” he said softly, almost like a dare.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
He moved, parting her legs wider with his body as he lifted the cotton shift over her head. Then he removed his cravat and bound her hands together at the wrists.
“You are not to come until I tell you to,” he whispered.
She gasped as he leaned in to kiss her collarbone before moving down to her nipples. His tongue grazed over her navel, and he watched her chest rise and fall more quickly, urgently.
He placed his shoulders under her thighs before kissing the inside of her left thigh. As he did, he took pleasure in her scent, the warmth and softness of her skin.
Then, with his tongue, he tasted her. She gasped, her whole body tightening in pleasure. Nicholas pulled her closer to his face, burying his tongue in her.
“Oh god,” Lydia moaned as she grasped at his hair. “God, Nicholas, please—”
“Not yet,” Nicholas murmured.
He buried his face between her legs again, tasting her wetness as she buckled, her fingers tugging at his hair.
She moaned loudly, and he knew she was close.
“Tell me you were jealous,” he said softly, running his hands over her ass.
“What?” she gasped.
“Tell me,” he said.
“I-I was jealous,” she moaned. “Oh God.”
Nicholas smiled against her as, moments later, her whole body tensed. He held her as the waves of pleasure rattled through her, leaving her gasping.
He moved his face to hers and kissed her. Her face was flushed, her skin clammy.
“You’re not a duchess because you married me,” he said against her skin. “You’re a duchess because no one alive could match you.”
She exhaled a trembling laugh. Not because it was funny, but because it was the only sound she had left to make.
Then he carefully untied her wrists and massaged the pink skin with his thumbs, before bringing them up to his lips and kissing them softly.
Whatever this was becoming, whatever line they’d just crossed, it wasn’t business anymore.
And it sure as hell wasn’t pretend.