Nicholas turned back, eyes blazing.“Who I am.”
His voice shook—not with weakness, but with certainty.“Tomorrow, I will walk into Parliament as myself.Not your son.Not Winston’s protégé.Nor his future successor.And not a puppet carved by other men’s hands.”
“Fool!”VanDeVere thundered.
“Perhaps,” Nicholas said.“But I’ll be a fool on my own terms.”
His father’s nostrils flared.“Do you truly think Winston will allow you to marry his daughter if you vote against the party on this bill?”
“Winston does not grant permission over his daughter’s heart,” Nicholas said evenly.“And I’ve already lost her.”
VanDeVere frowned.“You speak as though that question has been settled.”
“It has,” Nicholas replied.“Just not in the way you assume.”
His father stared at him, thrown off balance.“I don’t follow.”
Nicholas met his gaze, unflinching.“No,” he said quietly.“You wouldn’t.”
Then, with all the calm certainty of a man whose path had finally come into focus, he added, “I will not take instruction from you or Winston or anyoneeveragain.”
VanDeVere stared at him, stunned, furious, speechless.
Nicholas stalked across the room, reached for the study door, and held it open.“Goodnight, Father.”
The duke hesitated—rage, disbelief, and a flicker of something akin to fear battling in his dark eyes—before he swept past him and stormed into the hall.
Nicholas shut the door behind him, exhaling a breath that felt like a victory and a wound at the same time.
He leaned his forehead against the wood.
Tomorrow was the vote.
Tomorrow everything he’d been raised for—everything he’d been told mattered—would be tested.
And perhaps, just perhaps, when he stood and spoke with his own voice instead of the one bred into him, he would finally stop hating himself.
He pushed away from the door, squared his shoulders, and looked at himself in the dark window.
Steady.Unbreakable.Clear.
He no longer belonged to his father’s world.
From now on, he would belong only to his own convictions.
