The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister 1)

“I see,” Robert said. “Well, thank you for your time.”

“But—”

Robert was already standing, leaving the room without so much as a glance back.

He paced in his library, waiting for his emotions to catch up with him.

But in the end, what triumphed was a surprising sense of calm—as if he’d been through a sandstorm, and it had scoured away the excess, unreliable flesh of his emotion, leaving only his bones behind. Bones didn’t yearn. Bones didn’t wish. Thank God for that.

He didn’t feel the slightest bit of anger as he asked his staff to have a horse readied for him. The road to her great-aunts’ farm was long, but he didn’t feel a sense of annoyance at the minutes ticking by. He didn’t feel anything at all.

He didn’t feel anything when he threw his reins over a hitching post. Not one twitch from his chest as he knocked on the door. It seemed as if he were wrapped in muffling cotton, as if the entire world had gone mute around him. The door opened soundlessly, and he could scarcely hear himself request to see her.

The drawing room where he was shown might have been devoid of all furniture, for all that he noticed it. He didn’t sit. He didn’t look. He only waited, knowing what might come.

She opened the door.

Perhaps, deep down, he’d feared that when he saw Minnie once more, he’d be so overcome by his feelings that he would forgive what she had done. He’d built up an image of her, expanding on things she hadn’t said, words she’d never spoken, until he’d imagined himself enamored of a woman who didn’t exist. But when she walked in, he didn’t feel anything.

She was small, and she drew in on herself. All the magic had gone from her. He felt nothing but a dull ache where she had once been.

He was safe, thank God. Safe from himself.

“Your Grace,” she said simply.

He inclined his head to her.

It was the first time in all of their acquaintance where she had treated him like a duke. It was the first time that he’d wanted to be treated as one. Dukes didn’t need to explain. They didn’t need to beg. They just did, and nobody ever questioned their actions.

“You must know why I’m here,” he said.

She bowed her head. Distantly, he noticed that she looked miserable. There were dark circles under her eyes. And that light he’d seen in them—that beautiful light that had seemed to fill the room—was utterly extinguished.

He didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything any longer.

“Your Grace. I owe you an explanation.”

“I don’t want an explanation.” Ice didn’t listen.

“But—”

“I don’t care why you did it,” he said. His words seemed to ring out with a hollow, staccato sound. “I don’t care how much my mother paid you. I don’t care about you at all.”

She flinched. “Then let me assure you—”

“I have even less wish for your assurances.” Not, he realized, that she’d ever given him any. He’d been the only one providing them. He’d fooled himself into thinking that if only she knew him, if only he could explain to her, that she might…what?

That she might care about him, too. Just a little. She’d known who he was, what he wanted. He’d told her his dreams, his secret wishes. He’d offered her everything.

And he hadn’t been enough.

His own delusion, once again. His own foolish daydream, built up around someone who scarcely noticed him.

The difference was that this time, he wasn’t going to be the one watching someone else walk away. He wouldn’t be the one waiting hopelessly for letters that never arrived.

He made himself breathe evenly, until that sense of benumbed calm returned. Swathed in cotton? No, cotton was too light to hold the entirety of him. He was buried in sand, each grain a weight pressing against his chest, so heavy that all other sensation was blocked. He didn’t feel anything at all, and he liked it.

She must have seen something of what he didn’t feel flit across his face, because she bowed her head. “I’m so sorry, Your Grace.”

“I don’t want an apology,” he snapped.

“Then why are you here?”

“Simple,” he said. He wished that he’d been sitting down, only so that he might stand at this moment. “I’m here to say good-bye.” He strode to the door and then turned. She was gaping at him. “And now I’ve said it.”

And on those words, he strode out.

It seemed to take ages to traverse the hall back to the entry and another age to get his hat and cloak. He could hear his heart racing in his chest.

This time, Minnie would run after him. She would throw herself at his feet and beg for clemency, and he—why, he would take great satisfaction in not even glancing down. He would brush her off his shoes like so much dust.

He wouldn’t forgive her. To forgive her, he would have to care, and to care, he would have to let himself feel.

But she didn’t come, and so he never had to decide what to do.

BREAKFAST WITH HIS MOTHER the next morning suited Robert’s dark mood all too well. The clink of her teaspoon as she stirred in sugar interrupted a silence that seemed weighted down by a hundred conversations they’d never had. Today, he was in a mood to be irritated.

The duchess set her cup down with the finality of a builder slapping bricks in mortar, finally, and looked at him.

“I suppose,” she said, tilting her chin in the air, “that you agreed to see me because you’re angry about what I did.”

He simply folded his arms and looked at her.

“I didn’t tell her what to do, mind,” she said. “That, your Miss Pursling decided on her own. But yes, I admit it freely. I did pay Miss Pursling five thousand pounds to refuse your offer in as ungracious a manner as she could.”

His mind blanked. It took every ounce of will that he had to keep his arms folded, to keep staring at her. But this time, his silence didn’t produce any comment. She simply took another sip of tea, leaving him to make sense of the confusion he felt.

“You paid her to refuse me,” he said.

She nodded.

Stevens had said—he had said most distinctly—that Miss Pursling had been paid to find out his secrets. He’d thought she intended to entrap him. He’d thought that the attraction had been all on his side. He’d remembered, with chagrin, the way she’d pretended to be withdrawn and shy, and wondered how it was that he hadn’t noticed this element of untrustworthiness.