“You did not expect me to fall in love,” he murmured.
Her lips curled into a faint, rueful smile. “No, I did not. I did not even consider it a possibility. You have always kept your feelings so firmly leashed that I doubted you remembered how to attach them to anything. Then I heard what you shouted in the corridor tonight.”
He remembered it, too.
“I only care about her.”
Dorothea continued, “I still think love is foolish. It complicates. It fades. Yet I cannot deny one advantage.”
“And what advantage is that?” he asked.
“That you will at least marry someone,” she said dryly. “I do not approve of your choice, of course. She is not what I imagined for a duchess. She is troublesome. She has a history. Her family is a disaster.”
“She is none of your concern,” he muttered.
Dorothea inclined her head. “You told me that earlier. I have decided to believe you. My approval no longer matters. It is your life.”
Something inside Victor loosened, just slightly. He even smiled, though it faded quickly as another realization dawned on him.
“I struck her stepfather.”
Dorothea’s eyes sparkled in a way he had never seen before. “Yes, I heard.”
“I hit him,” Victor repeated. “With my fist. In the drive.”
Dorothea did something he had never seen her do in response to violence—she laughed.
Not a cold, cutting sound. But a real, startled laugh that escaped before she could contain it. She even pressed a gloved hand to her mouth, as if shocked at herself.
“Mother,” he said slowly.
She lowered her hand, her eyes bright. “I despise that man,” she admitted. “He has been insufferable in drawing rooms for years. I am delighted someone finally knocked him to the ground.”
Victor could only stare at her.
His mother, who had always been composed, who had always maintained decorum, who had always encouraged restraint, had just confessed to enjoying the sight of her son behaving precisely as gossip had always suggested he might.
The world, he thought, had tilted entirely on its axis.
Dorothea’s amusement faded, but a trace of warmth remained in her eyes. “You think that because you struck him, you have become your father?” She shook her head. “That is not how it works.”
“You told me he would have done the same,” Victor reminded her. “You said he would have struck Fenwick.”
“I said hemighthave,” she corrected. “For very different reasons. Your father would have defended his house from insult. You defended that girl from harm.”
Victor’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair. “He raised his hand to me, to you, to the servants. I have spent my entire life determined to break that chain. I do not want even a fragment of his temper in me.”
Dorothea’s gaze softened in a way that startled him more than her laughter had. “You are not a chain, Victor. You are a man who grew up in a house ruled by fear. That is not your fault. It is not your legacy, unless you choose to make it so.”
“He raised me as he was raised,” Victor muttered. “With cold, with canes, with endless lessons.”
“Yes,” Dorothea said quietly. “He believed that was the only way to forge a duke. He was wrong. I knew it. But I did not dare say so.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed on her. “Youallowedit. You watched.”
Her flinch was almost imperceptible. “I watched and hated myself for it. I was his wife, not his equal. I knew I could not oppose him in front of you; he might have redoubled his efforts with you. He might have turned his attention on me more often. I chose the path I knew, which was silence. It was cowardice.”
Victor frowned. “I never saw him hurt you.”
