Chapter Thirty-Four
Nicholas did not remember the walk home from Winston’s town house.He’d sent his carriage on without him.He needed the air…and the space.Some part of him must have navigated the streets, nodded to footmen, mounted his steps, opened the door.But the rest of him—the parts that breathed and felt and thought—had been left behind upstairs in Bea’s sitting room.
With her tears.With her apology.With the words that still lodged inside him, painful and immovable.
I release you, she’d said.
As if he were some animal straining at his leash.As if he had ever once needed pressure or obligation to want her.As if she hadn’t already carved herself into him so deeply that removing her would require tearing out organs he needed to live.
He slammed the door to his study behind him hard enough to rattle the frame.The decanter on the sideboard glinted in the lamplight.He seized it, sloshed brandy into a glass, and swallowed half in a single, burning gulp.
Normally, he hated drinking alone.Tonight, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
He stood by the window, staring at the ink-black street outside.
She thought he’d expose her.She thought he’d destroy her.She thought he’d marry her only out of obligation.But what gutted him most… What hollowed him out until he could feel the emptiness of it rattle in his bones was the simple, devastating truth—she did not want him.
Not really.Not enough.
At first—when their courtship had barely begun, back when she still rejected him on principle, he’d told himself she simply didn’t know him.But today… Today she’d looked at him with such fear and guilt and certainty.Certain that he was wrong for her.Certain that an alliance between them would be a mistake.Certain that he couldn’t be trusted.
It was no longer about his politics.It was abouthim.And her utter failure to see who he truly was.
He threw back the rest of the brandy.
His vision blurred for a moment, then sharpened—dizzily, painfully—as he recognized footsteps in the hall.
Who could it be at this hour?
His father entered without knocking, as if this were still his house, as if Nicholas were still a boy and not the man who now held in his hands the power to upend two great political dynasties.
Nicholas’s body reacted before his mind could—spine locking, jaw setting, breath going shallow with the old, boyhood reflex of obedience.He hated that his father could still do that to him with nothing but an entrance.
“Good God,” his father grunted.“You look like hell.”
Nicholas didn’t bother turning.“Feel free to leave.”
VanDeVere snorted.“Not until you tell me what possessed you to damage your own career so spectacularly.”
Nicholas’s grip tightened on his glass.“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Spare me.”The duke stalked to the newspaper on the desk and slapped it with the back of his hand.“This.This is everywhere.Every gentleman’s club, every drawing room.The caricature of you and Winston looking like the foxes who stole the canary.The one signed with that ludicrous pseudonym.I told you to take care of this.”
Nicholas said nothing.
His father continued, voice rising.“You are meant to be leading men to vote tomorrow.Instead, you are the punchline of the Season.You should have shut this down weeks ago.”
“I hired someone,” Nicholas said flatly.“He failed.”
“So I gathered,” the duke snapped.“And instead of regrouping, instead of preparing for the most crucial vote of your career, you spend the evening looking like you’ve been trampled by a cart horse.Not to mention the story about some sort of a spat with Hargrave.Don’t be a fool.We need his vote.”
That.Was.It.
Nicholas felt something inside him—some quiet, obedient, dutiful part—finally crack down the middle.He turned.Slowly.Deliberately.And the thunderous expression on his face made the duke go still.
“You think this is about mycareer?”Nicholas growled.
The duke blinked.“It is always about your career.”
