Page 39 of The Feared Duke’s Found Family

Veronica curtsied and turned to the boy without another word.

Lysander stepped back into the corridor, his eyes finding Fanny’s in the dark. He said nothing. He didn’t have to. The look was an unambiguous summons.

“Duchess,” Lysander ordered. “A word in your bedchamber. Now.”

Without waiting for her reply, he gripped her elbow with firm, hot, and unyielding fingers, guiding her down the dark corridor toward her private bedchamber.

He shoved the heavy mahogany door open, waited until she stepped inside, and slammed it shut behind them with a violent, resounding crash that echoed into the pitch-black hallway.

Fifteen

The heavy mahogany door rattled in its frame as the latch bit home, the violent, splintering crack echoing through the bedchamber’s vaulted ceiling.

Lysander did not move from the threshold. His chest heaved beneath the unbuttoned linen of his nightshirt, his hands curling into tight, white-knuckled fists at his sides. The room was thick with shadows, lit only by the dying embers in the grate and the pale, cold moonlight slicing through the tall mullioned windows.

Before him stood Fanny. She spun at the sound of the door slamming, the dark green velvet of her dressing gown clutched tightly at her collarbones. Her amber eyes, wide and luminous in the gloom, flashed with defiance rather than fear. Her hair, unbound for sleep, tumbled over her shoulders in thick, disordered waves of warm chestnut, catching the faint silver light.

Lysander’s jaw locked so hard the muscles along his temples throbbed with a dull ache. The sheer, intolerable audacity of what had just transpired in the nursery corridor burned in his veins like caustic lye.

“Do you make a habit of humiliating me before the servants?” Lysander’s voice did not rise in volume; it dropped into a low, lethal rasp that scraped the silence of the room like a drawn blade.

Fanny did not shrink. She drew a sharp, audible breath, squaring her shoulders as she held his icy gray stare. “I did not humiliate you, Lysander. I intervened before you dismissed a woman whose only crime was exhaustion.”

Lysander took a single, heavy step forward, the floorboards groaning under his weight. The sheer mass of his frame cut off the faint light from the hearth, casting her into his shadow.

“You countermanded my direct order in front of a domestic,” he growled, pointing a rigid finger toward the closed door. “You stepped between a duke and his dependent, stripped my authority from my hands, and lectured me on charity while my son lay sobbing in his sheets. Is that what you believe a duchess was brought here to do? To undermine the master of this estate in his own corridors?”

“I was brought here to care for your children!” Fanny shot back, her voice ringing clear and fierce against the stone walls. “And that means caring for the environment they live in! I only want what is best for this household, Lysander—for you, the staff, and above all, for those three children!”

“If you truly desire what is best for this household,” Lysander stepped closer, towering over her until he could see the erratic flutter of the pulse at the hollow of her throat, “then you will cease your endless interference and start listening to me! You have been in this house for barely a week, yet you march through these halls as though you are commanding an army, turning every established rule upon its head!”

“Because your established rules are failing them!”

The words struck the dark room like a physical blow.

Lysander went utterly rigid, his gray eyes narrowing into lethal, dangerous slits. “Be very careful, Fanny.”

“No, I will not be careful!” Fanny took a step directly toward him, refusing to yield an inch of ground, her head tilted back to meet his furious glare. “You have governed this house by cold ledgers and absolute silence for four long years, Lysander! And what has it earned you? Look at them! You have managed to make yourself an utter stranger to your own flesh and blood!”

A sharp, violent pain lanced through Lysander’s chest, catching his breath in his throat, but his granite mask did not slip. He stood unmoving, his jaw clenched so tightly it felt ready to crack.

“You know nothing of what I have sacrificed to keep this family whole,” he snapped, every syllable dragged over broken glass.

“I know what I see with my own eyes!” Fanny countered, her voice trembling with a mix of anger and raw, heartbreaking passion. “I see three little souls starving for you, while you hide behind estate accounts and behind closed library doors! Emily walks through this house like a weary old woman because she believes she must carry the world on her back! She is desperate for your approval, Lysander! She longs for your affection, for a single word that tells her she is safe and loved, yet she is terrified that any mistake will turn your face away from her!”

Lysander felt a knot tighten in the pit of his stomach, the memory of Emily flinching away from his hand in the corridor, searing behind his eyelids.

“And Peter,” Fanny continued relentlessly, gesturing toward the east wing, “Peter is desperate to learn from you! He drags wild creatures from the dirt because he wants someone to notice him! He wants his father’s time, his father’s guidance, his father’s voice! And instead, the mere sound of your boots on the gravel sends him fleeing into the briars like a hunted animal!”

“That is enough,” Lysander commanded, his voice dropping into a dangerous, warning vibration.

“And Michael!” Fanny pressed on, taking another half-step forward until the soft velvet of her robe brushed against the coarse linen of his shirt. “You have allowed Veronica to overwork herself to the bone, keeping that poor boy locked behind heavy curtains and bolted doors! He is isolated from his brother, isolated from his sister, and kept away from the light of day as if he were an animal in a cage! I have no idea what that boy truly needs, because you have surrendered him to a servant and refused to look at the misery right beneath your own roof!”

Lysander’s pulse hammered behind his ears like a battering ram, his temper shredding the iron restraint he had maintained for years. Every sharp, unerring word she spoke had struck a raw, bleeding nerve, tearing open the guilt he carried every waking hour.

“If you possess such an exquisite, effortless solution for every domestic tragedy under the sun,” Lysander rasped, his voice dropping into a vicious, mocking sneer, “how is it that you could not even find yourself a husband in four whole Seasons?”

The words left his mouth before his mind could pull them back. A sickening jolt shot through him the instant the sentence hit the air. It was brutal, unchivalrous, and unwarranted. A blow only a coward would deal.