His fingers clenched around the walking stick at his side.
“I’ve been consulting my solicitors about Father’s will, and it appears there is a codicil,” Matthew said, voice oily with smugness. “And they have made a case that the marriage clause is actually about perpetuation of the line, not matrimony itself.”
“Perpetuation of the…” Hector’s brain caught up. “Oh, damn you,” he snapped. “You’re going to claim that because I don’t have an heir—even though I’ve been married for less than three bloody weeks—that I’m not suitable for the duties of the title?”
Matthew’s expression grew uglier.
“Of course not, brother,” he said, the name coming out like an insult. “It would be one thing, of course, if you were eventryingto do your duty. But servants gossip, naturally. And the word is that you haven’t even consummated your relationship with the soiled dove you took to wife. Perhaps you are afflicted by unnatural desires? Pity, but really quite the risk for the family name.”
Matthew didn’t sound like it was a pity at all, though he did sound genuinely disdainful of so-calledunnatural desires. Hector wasn’t surprised. Matthew hated anyone who wasn’t exactly like him, and therefore, he no doubt judged men who preferred other men with gleeful rage.
Hector himself held that two people who cared for one another were inherently better than Matthew—who seemed to barely tolerate his own wife and took every opportunity to make her miserable—no matter their gender or manner of being together.
“You will not make comments about my wife’s person,” Hector said tightly, his hands clenching against his desk. “I will not have her disrespected.”
Matthew was not as afraid of Hector as he ought to have been, given how seriously Hector was considering rearranging his little brother’s face. He rolled his eyes at Hector.
“Yes, you’ve shown how veryrespectfulyou were of the chit when you tumbled her at a party,” he said dismissively.
Hector might have argued that Matthew could argue that either Hector was bedding Clio or he wasn’t, but not both, but he refused to be drawn into such a sordid argument.
“What transpires between myself and myduchess—”He leaned emphatically on the word just to irritate his brother and was gratified when Matthew went puce with rage. “—is none of your business.”
Except maybe it had been less than clever to provoke Matthew, who raised his chin.
“It will be a matter for the courts,” he informed Hector down his nose. “They will demand an inspection by a physician to discover if she has been properly wedded and bedded or if she is just some bit of skirts you’ve found to prop up your feeble claim to the title. It will be ever so humiliating for her, but perhaps you don’t care about such things. It takes agentlemanto care for the sensibilities of a lady.”
Hector was on his feet before he even realized he was moving. He should like to see Matthew try to steal Hector’s birthright after having his neck bloody broken. God knew he would deserve it for speaking that way about Clio, who had never done anything to hurt anyone.
Matthew skittered out of reach, actual fear crossing his expression. Ironically, this was the thing that stopped Hector from committing any intended violence.
Matthew was a peer, and no doubt the toffs of thetonwould love to see Hector goaled for any abuse against him. Wouldn’t that fit their story so nicely? The brute of a duke, with his coarse manners and grotesque, twisted limb, proven to be the monster they’d always assumed him to be?
“Listen to me now,” Hector said instead, his voice trembling with barely controlled rage. “If I ever hear you speak so rudely about my wife again—if I ever hear you so much as imply anything negative about her—I will make you wish you’d never been born, Matthew. You can test me if you wish, but I swear to you that you will not like how I respond to such pressure. Do you understand me?”
Matthew was shaking, too. His reaction appeared to be caused by both anger and fear. Good. Hector hoped he never got another good night’s sleep in his life, that he spent every hour lying awake, fearing what Hector might do to him.
“You are an animal,” his brother spat in those genteel tones that belied his status as the chosen son. “You disgust me, and everyone in London will soon see how repulsive you are. They will understand that I am the rightful duke, not some withered, broken creature, and when the courts decide in my favor, you will never be permitted to come anywhere near this family again. I hope your wife enjoys exile, for she has shackled her fate to yours.”
“Get out!” Hector shouted around the roiling, ugly feeling in his gut. Because, for all his flaws, Matthew was right about this, and somehow, in all the mess, Hector had failed to consider it.
He had framed his marriage to Clio as a quid pro quo: she would get the protection of his name, and he would get assistance in supporting his claim to the title. But he’d never truly considered what might happen to her if he failed to defeat Matthew in a court of law, if he didn’t succeed in defeating his brother on his own home territory.
This was slimy, this last move of Matthew’s, but it was just the kind of thing his brother did, just the kind of thing his father would have done. They’d taken the rules and tried to bend them to their will. That’s what their father had done when he’d tried to rid himself of an unwanted son. No doubt he’d hoped that Hector would die in some sort of accident at the forge. Then he would be rid of the problem with no dirt on his own hands to show for it.
And now Matthew. Matthew, who wanted to make Hector look bad, and didn’t care at all about using Clio to do so.
Hector wanted to blame this behavior on Matthew being an aristocrat, because that had always been the division, the line that he’d held in his own mind. It had been the way to categorizethemand us in a way that didn’t make him feel quite so rejected for being on the other side of the divide from the rest of his family.
But Clio wouldn’t do such a thing. Her brother would never. Xander Lightholder wouldn’t.
And Hector had shackled all those people—a family full of people who were essentially good and honorable, who loved one another—to his own sinking anchor.
“Enjoy it while you can, Hector,” Matthew said with the smile of someone certain he had won. “It won’t last for long.”
Hector sat quietly at his desk after his brother had left. Matthew had miscalculated, he decided, when he’d threatened Clio.
Because Hector would do whatever it took to protect her. He was determined, determined enough that he didn’t even pause to question when he’d started to feel this way. It didn’t matter, after all.
