Not now. Not here. Not in front of her.
“I c-can’t.”
The stammer broke through like a crack in a dam.
Two syllables. Two fractured, mangled syllables that carried the weight of every humiliation he had ever endured, every night he had practiced his own name in an empty bedroom, every snort of laughter from a woman in a crimson gown, every scornful word his brother had hurled at him on a marble floor.
Lily’s expression shifted: concern, not realization. She thought it was emotion. She thought his voice had cracked under the strain of the conversation, the way any person’s might when pushed too hard on a subject that cut too deep.
She did not know. She could not know. And the thought of her knowing, of seeing the broken machinery behind the polished exterior, of looking at him the way that woman had looked at him when he was seventeen, sent a bolt of pure, unreasoning panic through his chest.
He turned away from her.
“Hugo.” She reached for his arm. Her fingers brushed his sleeve. “Whatever this is, whatever you are carrying, it does not change how I see you.”
“You do not know that.”
“I know you. I know you better than you think I do.”
“You know what I have shown you. That is not the same thing.”
“Then show me the rest.”
He pulled his arm free. The contact, her warmth, her steadiness, was too much. It made him want to crack, and cracking was the one thing he could not afford.
“Leave.” The word came out whole. He forced it through clenched teeth. “Please.”
“I am not going to leave you like this.”
“Lily.” He gripped the edge of his desk. His knuckles whitened. His breathing came fast and shallow, and he could feel the stammer lurking in his throat, waiting for the next word, ready to betray him again. “I need you to go. Now.”
She stood behind him. He could feel her there, the warmth of her, the steadiness of her, the fierce, stubborn refusal to retreat that had drawn him to her from the very first night.
He wanted to turn around. He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to open the door she was knocking on and let her in and trust that she would not look at him the way his brother had, the way his father had, the way every person in his childhood had looked at the boy who could not speak without stumbling.
He could not. The fear was older than the want, and stronger, and it won.
“Go,” he said.
A silence. Long and terrible.
Then her footsteps crossed the study floor. The door opened. It closed.
Hugo stood alone.
His hands shook against the desk. His jaw ached from clenching. The fire popped and settled, and the brandy sat untouched. His father’s portrait did not hang in this room because Hugo had removed it years ago, but the old Duke’s voice echoed through the silence anyway, cold and dismissive.
No son of a Duke sits on the ground sniveling like a common peasant.
Hugo released the desk. He straightened his spine. He drew a breath and held it until his hands stopped trembling.
He had protected himself. He had kept the door shut. He had maintained the wall that stood between Hugo Beaumont, Duke of Thornwaite, and the stammering boy who still lived somewhere inside him, curled on a marble floor, waiting for someone to help stand.
He picked up his brandy glass and hurled it at the fireplace. The crystal shattered against the stone, and the brandy flared in the flames, and the sound rang through the empty study like a gunshot.
He stood in the silence that followed and felt nothing at all.
Three floors above, Lily sat on the edge of her bed and pressed her palms against her eyes.
