Page 63 of The Duke’s Defiant Love

"You have grown thin," the Dowager Duchess observed, halfway through the soup.

"I am precisely as thin as I have always been."

"You have grown thin and short-tempered, which I attribute to the same cause, whatever you insist otherwise." She set down her spoon with deliberate care. "I had hoped marriage might soften some of what your father's death hardened in you. I see it has not yet managed it."

"Do not speak of my father at this table."

"I shall speak of your father wherever I choose, Sebastian. He was my husband for four and twenty years, and I have rather more right to his memory than you have granted me credit for." Something sharp moved behind her composed expression. "You have never once, in ten years, allowed me to explain myself regarding the estate."

Amelia set down her own fork, listening now with her full attention.

"There is nothing to explain. I found the accounts myself, Mother. I found what Grimshaw had done with the tenant repairs, what the solicitors had bled from the investments while you signed whatever they placed in front of you."

"You are quite the harsh critic, Sebastian. I signed what I was told to sign because I had buried a husband I loved and had no earthly notion how to run an estate. nI four and twenty years of marriage, I had never been permitted to learn a single thing about, , because your father believed such matters were not a woman’s concern." Her voice cracked, and the composure Amelia had watched her wear like armor finally showed its seams. "I did the best I could do, with men who had served this family for decades and whom I had no reason to distrust until it was already too late to undo the damage."

"You cared more that London never saw the cracks than you cared about the tenants living in them."

"I cared about protecting what remained of this family's name, because I understood, even then, that a scandal on top of mismanagement would have finished what Grimshaw had started. I made the best choices available to a woman with no training and no allies, and I have never once heard you acknowledge that once I understood what had been done, I did everything in my power to set it right, for years."

"You gave those years to appearances, not to repair."

"I gave those years to my son," she said, and her voice had gone entirely unsteady now, "who has spent every day since deciding I was the villain of this story rather than another person that estate very nearly ruined."

"You gave it to protect the title. You have always made every choice to protect the title."

"That is not fair."

"It is entirely fair, and you know it, because you have spent what little time we’ve spent together since, reminding me of my duty to the succession and never once asking whether I was actually happy, which tells me precisely which concern actually governs you." Sebastian's voice had risen, rougher now, years of careful control finally giving way at his own table. "You do not get to arrive here, unannounced, and demand I simply set aside a decade of resentment because you have finally decided to explain yourself."

"Sebastian!"

"Enough." Sebastian stood, his chair scraping hard against the floor. "I have heard quite enough for one evening." He walked from the room without looking at either of them again, the door closing behind him with a finality that left his mother visibly shaken.

Amelia sat a moment, turning over everything she had just heard, understanding, with a clarity she had not possessed an hour before, precisely how deep and how tangled this wound ran. And how neither mother nor son had ever managed to speak of it without turning pain into accusation. .

"Your Grace." She kept her voice even, watching the older woman's hands, which had begun, very slightly, to tremble. "I think it would be best if you retired here for the evening. Hopkins will see that a room is prepared."

"You think me the villain too, I imagine."

"I think you are both carrying a version of that story that has never once been permitted to sit in the same room as the other's, long enough to actually be compared." Amelia rose. "I do not know yet which of you is right. I only know my husband cannot hear any moretonight, and I mean to respect that."

Amelia inclined her head. "Good night."

She left the older woman sitting alone at the long table, and went to find her husband, carrying with her a far fuller understanding of the complicated past that had shaped him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Where is His Grace, Hopkins?"

"I do not know, Your Grace. He did not say, when he left the house." Hopkins’ face carried its usual careful neutrality, though something in it softened as he looked at her, standing in the front hall with her shawl already half around her shoulders. "He has not returned since dinner."

"He must have gone somewhere."

Hopkins hesitated, and Amelia caught the exact moment he decided to tell her something he might otherwise have kept to himself. "There is a set of rooms he kept in the city, Your Grace, before the wedding. Jermyn Street. I could not say for certain he has gone there, but it is where he generally went, in years past, when he wished to be alone."

She was in the carriage within moments.

I did not expect it to be this easy. The thought arrived unbidden as the carriage rattled through the dark streets, and she turned it over with some surprise, realizing only now how true it was.