VanDeVere continued as if Nicholas hadn’t spoken.“Winston has permitted her freedom because his duchess insisted.That’s ended.And if the duchess objects”—he lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug—“she will be reminded what happens when a woman challenges a duke.”
Nicholas’s stomach turned, but he kept his jaw clenched tight.
He thought of Lady Beatrix’s sharp mouth.Her fire.Her refusal to bow.She would not be ordered about…not even by two dukes.
VanDeVere set his glass down with a distinct click.“There is another matter.”
Nicholas lifted his gaze again, bracing himself for whatever came next.
VanDeVere’s eyes gleamed faintly.“These cartoons.”
Nicholas kept his face still.“Yes.”
“They’ve made both you and Winston look ridiculous.”
Nicholas’s throat tightened despite himself.
VanDeVere noticed, of course.
His father’s smile returned, thin and knowing.“They must bother you.”
Nicholas didn’t deny it.Denial would be a weakness, and VanDeVere fed on weaknesses.
Instead, he said, “I agree.They are an attack on our credibility.”
VanDeVere nodded as if Nicholas had recited a lesson properly.“Precisely.Credibility is currency.And you are being robbed in public.”
Nicholas’s fingers curled around the arm of the chair.
VanDeVere’s gaze pinned him.“You will find the cartoonist.”
Nicholas’s voice stayed even.“I intend to?—”
“You will not intend,” VanDeVere corrected softly.“You will act.Quietly.Efficiently.Immediately.No mistakes.No excuses.”
Nicholas’s jaw clenched.“Yes, Father.”It was a waste of breath to tell the man he’d already hired a Bow Street Runner.
VanDeVere moved closer, and Nicholas felt, as he always did, that invisible tightening—like a noose being adjusted, not yet pulled.
“Remember who you are,” VanDeVere murmured.“You shall not be made a laughingstock by some guttersnipe with a pencil.”
Nicholas’s pulse ticked again, hard.
VanDeVere’s eyes bored into him.His gaze sharpened, as if he sensed something—some future fracture, the hint of rebellion—before it happened.“Do you understand me?”
Nicholas stared up at him.
He could, if he wanted, say something clever.Something barbed.Something that would give him a fleeting sense of power.
But Nicholas had survived his father by never needing the fleeting kind of power.
So he lowered his gaze.And he nodded.“I understand.”
VanDeVere’s hand rested on his shoulder—brief, firm, a benediction that felt like a brand.
“Good,” his father said.“Then we are finished.”
Nicholas rose.
