Page 72 of The Feared Duke’s Found Family

The silence in the pantry grew suffocating.

Fanny did not back away. She did not flinch. Her chest heaved beneath the tight bodice of her dress, a deep, hot flush rising up her neck to stain her cheeks.

“An explanation?” she echoed, her voice trembling—not with fear, but with a sharp, white-hot indignation. “You are asking me for an explanation?”

“I am asking what entered my son’s body,” he growled.

“You are asking if I poisoned him!” Fanny took a step toward him, her small frame quivering with quiet rage, her dark eyes flashing up into his. “You stand there, in the dark, looking at me as if I were a stranger who slipped venom into a child’s cup! How dare you, Lysander. How dare you.”

“Fanny.”

“No!” she snapped, striking her hand against the edge of the worktable. “You want to know why his body collapsed? You want to know why he was twisting in his bed at midnight? If you had paid a single shred of real attention to your son over the past three days, you would have known he was already suffering!”

Lysander froze, the cold anger in his chest hitching. “What?”

“He has been pale since Tuesday!” Fanny cried, her voice cracking as the tears she had held back all morning finally brimmed over her lashes. “At dinner two nights ago, he didn’t touch his roast mutton; he only pushed it around his plate because he was afraid you would scold him for wasting food!”

She paused.

“I assumed it was mere nervous tension from his lessons! He was already ailing before I ever brought him that tea, Lysander! But you didn’t see any of it! You were so wrapped up in your stern, distant duty, hiding behind your ledgers and your cold silence, that you didn’t notice your seven-year-old boy was quietly weeping in his room!”

Every word hit him.

Lysander stood frozen. The accusation didn’t just pierce his armor; it shattered it entirely. The image of Michael sitting at the long dinner table—quiet, small, picking at his plate with pale fingers while Lysander stared straight ahead, lost in his own dark thoughts—flashed through his mind with devastating clarity.

He was sick before.

The air rushed out of Lysander’s lungs. The cold, rigid strength that had held his spine straight since dawn disintegrated.

He didn’t speak. He couldn’t. His hands, still dusted with the crushed tea leaves, began to shake. A terrible, hollow gasp broke from his chest, a sound so raw and broken it sounded entirely inhuman.

Before Fanny could take a breath, Lysander’s knees gave out. He didn’t drop to one knee; he sank completely, his tall frame folding as he fell against her skirts, his forehead thumping heavily against her hip before sliding down to rest against her knees.

“Lysander!” Fanny gasped, her anger instantly evaporating into shock.

His broad shoulders shook violently. His large hands reached out, clutching blindly at the heavy fabric of her skirts, and he buried his face in the folds of her dress.

“I am useless,” he sobbed, the sound muffled against her wool skirt, dark and agonizing. “God help me, Fanny, I am entirely useless. I couldn’t save his mother from her own ruin, I couldn’t protect my name, and now… now my boy is dying in that room, and I am standing here sniffing jars like a fool because I don’t know how to save him.”

Fanny stood frozen for a fraction of a second.

“Lysander…” she whispered.

“I cannot lose him,” he choked out, his grip on her skirts tightening until his knuckles turned bone-white. “I cannot lose Michael, Fanny. I cannot look at that empty bed. If he dies… if he dies in that room, there is nothing left of me. Nothing.”

Fanny dropped to her knees beside him on the cold stone. She didn’t care about the dust, or her skirts, or the heavy gloom of the room.

She wrapped her arms around his broad, trembling shoulders, pulling his head firmly against her chest. She held him with all the strength in her small frame, resting her chin against his dark hair as he buried his face in the crook of her neck, his harsh, ragged breaths burning against her skin.

“He is not going to die,” Fanny whispered fiercely, her fingers digging into the heavy wool of his coat, her own tears slipping down her cheeks to tangle in his hair. “Do you hear me, Lysander? He is strong. He is fighting. And we are going to stay right beside his bed until Dr. Thorne comes back.”

Lysander held onto her as if she were the only solid thing in a world falling to ash, his chest heaving as he anchored himself to her warmth.

The flagstones beneath his knees were relentless and cold, but the small, immovable warmth of her arms around his shoulders held him fast. Her fingers brushed through his hair, steady and unhurried. With every breath she drew, the suffocating dark in his chest yielded just a fraction, replaced by a cold, grounding quiet.

He let out a long, ragged breath that trembled against her skin. Slowly, the frantic tension in his shoulders unclenched. His large hands, buried deep in the heavy folds of her wool skirts, loosened their desperate grip.

He pulled back half an inch, his jaw tight, looking up at her face through the dim light of the pantry. Fanny’s dark eyes were bright with tears, but her expression was unyielding, an unwavering anchor set firm against the storm sweeping through Hilgrove.