It hurt. It truly hurt to imagine the lonely child he had been, and the equally lonely young man forced to stand in his father’s shadow with a mother too cold to put even a hand on his shoulder. The weight of expectations that no one had helped him bear.
She wished she could take that boy into her arms. She wished she had known him back then.
But all she could do now was look at him, her voice soft with something dangerously close to devotion.
“You deserved better,” she whispered. “You deserved kindness. You deserved warmth. Every child does.”
He said nothing at first. Only breathed once, slow and tight. But his eyes softened. Just slightly. Enough that her heart soared.
She wanted to take his hand, but feared it would undo her.
“You are not him,” she said thickly.
“I know,” he murmured. “Yet men whisper that I am. Like father, like son. They look at my restraint and call it cruelty. They see my distance and call it violence. Rumor clings to my name the way it clings to your own, only with different flourishes.”
“Do you care?” she asked.
“I did,” he said. “Until I learned that squashing gossip is a full-time occupation and an utterly thankless one. I guard my temper because I must. I guard my reputation because it serves my work. Let them say what they will.”
She studied him. The stern angles of his face, the calm in his eyes, the weight of expectation he carried with terrifying ease. She saw not the frightening Duke the ton gossiped about, but a boy who had never experienced gentleness except in stolen moments.
“You are not nearly as terrifying as the ton imagines,” she said.
A shadow of humor crossed his mouth. “No. More tedious, I suspect.”
A small, helpless smile tugged at her lips. “Occasionally tedious. Also… unexpectedly kind.”
He arched an eyebrow. “High praise, indeed.”
“I mean it,” she insisted, warmth unfurling in her chest. “If your enemies knew that the fearsome Duke of Greystone lay awake worrying about fugitives in Cheltenham, they would have far less to say.”
He huffed a laugh. “I would appreciate it if you did not share that detail at the next ball.”
She laughed, too. And when she looked at him again, her heart felt unbearably full.
“I will tell them that you snore,” she teased.
“I do not snore,” he scoffed, affronted.
“How would you know?” she asked, smiling. “You are asleep when you do it.”
His eyes softened in a way that made the room feel warmer than the fire ever could. And Gwen knew with a clarity that terrified her that she would carry every piece he had shared with her. The cold. The fear. The grief. The guilt.
That small, lonely boy lived inside him still, and she felt an ache for him so deep it might split her in half.
She wondered, just for a fleeting moment, if anyone had ever held his hurt with gentleness. And whether he realized how fiercely she wanted to be the first.
She lay very still beside him, her heart swollen from his confessions. She had not expected Victor Stephens, the Duke of Greystone, to speak of his childhood agony with such quiet simplicity, nor had she expected the ache it stirred in her chest.
She touched his hand lightly.
He looked at her in a way that made her feelseen. Their faces were close, and in the warm hush of the shared bed, with firelight flickering across his cheek, she felt the pull of something thick and dangerous.
She kissed him.
It was a small kiss, fragile and hopeful, but it carried all the tenderness she had felt while listening to his story. His lips responded instinctively, firm and warm, and for one breath, one glorious heartbeat, he kissed her back.
Then he stopped.
