They remained like that, curled together on the chaise, the world outside the lodge falling away. Gwen nestled closer almost without thinking, fitting against him as if he had been made to protect her. His arm tightened around her, his fingers splayed over her ribs in an absent, protective gesture.
“You were very gentle,” she added after a while, needing the sound of her voice to steady her.
“I had reason to be,” he answered. “You are not made for rough handling.”
She gave a faint huff. “I am tougher than you think. But I thank you for believing I warranted care.”
He shifted, and when she tipped her head back to look at him, she saw something unguarded on his face. Honesty, restless on his tongue.
“I was not gentle out of mercy,” he admitted. “I wished to know what pleased you.”
Her cheeks warmed anew. “You discovered rather a lot.”
“One cannot learn a ledger without studying its entries,” he said.
She made a small sound that hovered oddly between a laugh and a sigh. “You would compare me to a book of accounts?”
“Never,” he replied. “Ledgers bore me less than most things. You do not bore me at all.”
That sent a little flare of heat and something dangerously like joy through her.
“You are not bored,” she repeated quietly, incredulous.
“No,” he affirmed. “Though I ought to think of timber and roads and foolish lords who mismeasure their own fields more.”
“That paints me as very inconvenient,” she said, unable to keep her voice from softening.
“It does,” he agreed. “And yet here we sit.”
She nestled closer, resting her head fully on his shoulder. The trust in the movement frightened her, but she did not pull back.
For a moment, it felt as if the sharp corners of her life had been padded just here, just with him.
“Tell me something about you,” she said quietly. “Not about Greystone or your tenants or the numbers. But aboutyou.”
Victor hesitated. She felt it in the way his chest rose and paused beneath her cheek. He seemed to stand at some unseen threshold.
At last, he stepped through.
“My father,” he began slowly, “was not a kind man.”
She had known that in some instinctive way. Hearing it aloud made her hand curl more tightly in the fabric of his coat, as if she could anchor him. “I had guessed.”
“He believed that a duke’s first duty was mastery,” he continued. “Of himself. Of his household. Of his land. He admired hardness. He considered sentiment a disease.”
“Did he show you any affection?” she asked softly.
“Once,” he replied. “When I was ten, I broke my collarbone falling from a horse I should not have been riding. He told me I had ridden well. Then he left the room and did not speak to me for three days.”
Her breath caught. “That was his idea of praise?”
“Yes,” he muttered. “I learned that approval was silence and disapproval was sound. I adapted accordingly.”
“And your mother?”
“She survived. That was her talent. She filled her days with small civilities. Charities. She played the pianoforte beautifully. But he never listened.”
“You did,” Gwen guessed.
