Andrew leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong."
"Isobel." His hand covered hers, stilling her nervous stitching. "You've barely looked at me all morning. You picked at your breakfast. You're doing that thing where you agree to everything I say but don't really mean it. So, tell me, what's wrong? Is it Chance? Did he destroy another pair of slippers?"
Despite herself, she smiled slightly. "No, Chance has been well-behaved. Relatively speaking."
"Then what is it?" His thumb stroked across her knuckles, sending unwelcome sparks of awareness up her arm. "Talk to me."
She set down her painting carefully, buying herself time to find the words. How did she ask this without sounding like she was attacking him? Without revealing how desperately she needed to understand?
"What was it about your father that you wish to avoid so much?"
Andrew's hand stilled on hers. "What?"
"Your father." She forced herself to meet his gaze. "You've mentioned him before, how you swore never to become like him."
He pulled back slightly, his jaw tightening. "Where is this coming from?"
"I'm simply curious." She kept her voice gentle, non-confrontational. "We're married, Andrew. We share a home, a dog, and a life. But there are parts of you I don't understand. Parts that seem to drive everything you do."
"Isobel, I don’t think this is necessary."
"Please." She reached for his hand now, holding it between both of hers. "I need to understand. I need to know what you're running from."
He was quiet for so long she thought he might refuse to answer. Then he stood abruptly, pacing to the window, his back rigid with tension.
"My father was cruel," he said finally, his voice low and controlled. "Not in the obvious ways, he never struck me, never raised his hand to my mother. But his cruelty was insidious. Calculated."
Isobel said nothing, sensing he needed space to speak without interruption.
"He had no self-control in any aspect of his life." Andrew's hands clenched at his sides. "Not with drink, not with gambling, and especially not with women. He would see something he wanted, a lady at a ball, a servant in his household, and he would take it. Seduce it. Ruin it."
"He made promises he never intended to keep." The words came faster now, as if a dam had broken. "Told ladies he loved them, that he would leave my mother for them. Convinced them to give him everything—their virtue, their hearts, their reputations—and then discarded them the moment he grew bored. Some of them had children. His bastards are scattered across London like debris from a shipwreck."
Isobel's chest tightened at the pain in his voice.
"And the servant women..." Andrew's voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "They had no choice. They needed their positions to survive. To feed their families. And he knew that. He used their desperation against them, made them think they wanted it when really they were just terrified of losing everything."
"That's monstrous," Isobel said, the word inadequate for the disgust churning in her stomach.
"It was." Andrew turned to face her, and she saw the raw anguish in his eyes. "I watched him destroy my mother with his infidelities. Watched her fade away, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but a shell. I watched servant women leave ourhouse in tears. I watched ladies at balls avoid him; their faces twisted with pain or shame or fury."
He moved back to his chair, sinking into it as if the weight of memory was too much to bear standing.
"And through it all, he gambled," Andrew continued. "Every night, every cent we had. He would come home reeking of cigar smoke and cheap perfume, sometimes winning, more often losing, always laughing like it was all some grand joke. Until the night he came home and told me it was over. That he'd lost everything. The fortune, the estate, everything our family had built for generations, gone."
"Oh, Andrew." Isobel moved to kneel beside his chair, taking his hand again.
"I was young when he died." His fingers tightened around hers, almost painfully. "Young and facing complete ruin. And do you know what my last conversation with him was?"
"What?"
"I told him I would rebuild everything he'd destroyed. That I would prove I was nothing like him. That I would never let vice control me the way it controlled him." Andrew's laugh was bitter. "And he laughed. Called me his 'little fox.' Said I was just a gambler's son, doomed to repeat his mistakes no matter how hard I tried to be different."
"But you're not like him," Isobel said fiercely. "You're nothing like him. You built a business, rather than destroying a duchy. You have been faithful to me, rather than canoodling with other ladies."
Andrew said simply, “I built a place where men face their own weaknesses. Not mine. I have nothing to hide.” He shifted. “I lived ten years in temptation, Isobel. Every night. Every hour.”
