“Sybil, that’s not?—”
“Isn’t it?” she laughed, the sound brittle and sharp. “Do you think I haven’t heard the whispers? Do you think I don’t know what society says about the Earl of Keats’ fallen daughter, who somehow managed to snare a duke? They’re all waiting to see what becomes of this… arrangement.”
Hugo’s jaw tightened, but she pressed on, years of buried shame pouring out like poison from a lanced wound.
“I’m not the woman you courted and wed for love. I’m the convenient solution you married to manage your household troubles. A useful acquisition, as you once so charmingly put it.”
“I never said?—”
“You didn’t need to say it.” Her voice cracked with the weight of her own self-loathing. “I see it on your face right now. Relief that you won’t be burdened with a child from someone so far beneathyour station. Relief that you won’t have to explain to society why you’d allow someone like me to bear your name, let alone your children.”
She saw him flinch, saw something that might have been pain flash across his features, but it was quickly masked by that familiar cold control that reminded her exactly who she was dealing with.
“You’re overwrought,” he said in that carefully measured tone that made her feel like a hysterical child. “The disappointment of the evening, your monthly discomfort—it’s natural for a woman to?—”
“Don’t.” The word cracked like a whip between them. “Don’t you dare dismiss my pain as feminine weakness. I know what I saw on your face, Hugo. I know what I heard in your voice. You were relieved. Grateful, even, that you wouldn’t have to deal with such an… inconvenience.”
The word tasted like ashes in her mouth, but she forced herself to continue, to voice the deepest fear that had been eating at her soul.
“Because that’s all I am to you, isn’t it? A useful convenience. Someone to manage your daughters and run your household and warm your bed when it suits you. But heaven forbid I should presume to want something more. Heaven forbid I should dare to hope that you might actually want to build a real family with the scandalous woman you married out of necessity.”
She was shaking now, years of carefully suppressed longing and self-doubt finally breaking free. Hugo stood frozen before her, his face carved from marble, and she realized with crystal clarity that she had revealed too much, hoped for too much, loved too much.
The garden around them seemed to blur as tears gathered in her eyes. She turned away, desperate to compose herself before she humiliated herself further, and that’s when she saw them.
Two figures near the rose arbor, standing closer together than propriety allowed. Rosalie’s pale dress gleamed in the moonlight as she looked up into Thomas Pemberton’s earnest young face. Even from a distance, Sybil could see the joy radiating from them both, the pure happiness of two people deeply in love.
As she watched, Rosalie rose on her toes and pressed her lips to Thomas’s in a kiss that spoke of sweetness and promise and everything Sybil had once dreamed of having for herself.
It should have been touching. It was touching—young love in all its innocent glory.
But even as the thought formed, dread settled in her stomach like a stone. She turned slowly toward Hugo, some terrible instinct warning her of what she would see.
The man standing beside her was no longer her husband. Gone was any trace of the person who had worked beside her in the garden, who had brought her tea when she couldn’t sleep, who had looked at her with growing tenderness. In his place stood afigure of terrible, controlled fury whose amber eyes had turned to chips of winter ice.
This was the Duke of Vestiaire in all his fearsome power—the man who could destroy lives with a single word, who commanded absolute obedience through sheer force of will. This was the Duke whose displeasure could reduce grown men to stammering terror, whose very presence could freeze a room into deathly silence.
“Hugo,” she whispered, but he was already moving, his face a mask of lethal purpose as he strode across the garden toward the unsuspecting young couple.
And she knew, with horrible, crushing certainty, that everything she had ever hoped to build with him was about to crumble to dust.
She’s kissing him. My daughter is kissing that boy.
Fury exploded through Hugo, white-hot and all-consuming. Every protective instinct he possessed roared to life, drowning out rational thought and civilized behavior.
How dare he. How dare he take such liberties with my daughter?
“Hugo, wait—” Sybil began, following his gaze. “Oh. Oh, dear.”
Hugo was already striding across the garden, his vision narrowed to that single shocking image. His eighteen-year-old daughter—the girl he’d protected and cherished and worried over since the day she was born—locked in an embrace with a man who’d never even formally requested permission to court her.
In public. Where anyone might see. Where scandal could destroy everything.
“Pemberton,” he called, his voice carrying across the garden like the crack of a whip.
The young couple sprang apart as if burned, Rosalie’s hand flying to her lips in guilty shock. Pemberton stepped protectively in front of her, his face pale but determined in the lamplight.
At least he has the spine to face me. Though that won’t save him.
