She looked toward the window. “You told me yourself that our arrangement was business. Money for seven nights. Curiosity and nothing more.”
“I did,” he admitted. “At the time, I believed it. I clung to that belief because anything else frightened me.”
She swallowed. “Frightened you?”
“Yes,” he said. “Because anything else meant I was in danger of losing the rigid control I spent my life cultivating. I grew up in a house ruled by a man who used his power and temper to shape everything around him. I swore I would never repeat that pattern. The safest way to keep that promise was to care for nothing and no one too much.”
Gwen’s gaze returned to his face. “And now?” Her voice was very soft.
“Now I care for you too much,” Victor rasped.
Saying the words did not loosen the knot in his chest. It tightened it, but with a different ache.
Gwen’s lips parted. “You care for me?”
“I love you, Gwendoline Reeves.”
The world narrowed to her eyes, the wet sheen in them, the way her breath caught.
“For weeks, I tried to pretend otherwise,” he continued. “I told myself you were another story, another seven nights, another curiosity to occupy my mind between ledgers. Then you told me you were to be sent away. Then I watched you flinch when he raised his hand. Then I saw you slip from this house like a thief so that you would not endanger your mother. At some point between those moments, something inside me changed. I did not wish to admit it, but the letter forced me to.”
Color rushed into her cheeks. “You read it?”
“Yes, after you left Greystone House last night.”
She pressed her hands together so hard that her knuckles whitened. “I told you not to.”
“You begged me not to read it in front of you,” he corrected. “You did not forbid me from reading it at all.”
“That is a very convenient interpretation,” she muttered.
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “It is the truth. You intended to leave it on my desk and flee. You hoped I would find it when you were safely beyond my reach, so that you need not witness my reaction.”
Her blush deepened. “I did not wish to see you pity me.”
“Is that what you expected?” he asked. “Pity?”
“What else?” she murmured. “A girl with a ruined reputation in love with a duke who has reminded her repeatedly that he will not marry her. It is a sad story, not a triumphant one.”
Victor took a step closer. The open door and the maid beyond it made the movement feel both intimate and perilous.
“When I read your words,” he said, “I did not feel pity. I felt as if someone had handed me the answer to a problem I had been working on for months. The numbers suddenly aligned. The columns balanced. The world made sense.”
Her eyes shone. “You and your ledgers.”
“You will forgive the comparison,” he said. “It is the language I know.”
She almost smiled.
“I love you, Gwendoline. I have tried not to. I have lectured myself on the unsuitability of your family, on the risks of an association with your stepfather, on the inconvenience of your cleverness. None of it made the slightest difference. I love that you lied to ruin your own reputation because you refused to leave your mother. I love that you face me with your back straight, even when I am at my worst. I love that you care so fiercely for your mother that you would sacrifice your own peace. I love the way you laugh when you forget to be cautious. I love the way you look when you play the pianoforte as if it were the only place you can relax.”
Her lashes trembled. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
He swallowed. “I have spent years afraid of my father’s shadow. Afraid that if I allowed myself to feel anything deeply, I would turn that intensity into harm. I still fear it. I might always fear it. But when you are near, that fear feels smaller. When you look at me as if I am more than the sum of his lessons, I begin to believe you.”
She drew in a shaky breath. “Victor.”
“You wrote that you loved me,” he said softly. “Is that still true? Or was it only a moment of weakness on a night you now regret?”
