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The grand lady rose. “I’ve never thought it possible, but right now you look more like your father than ever before. You may actually show some promise, Gavin.”

Ina moved protectively to him, but he waved her off. Still, there was no mistaking the tremble of his hand.

“Grace, we will discuss your future at a later date,” he said before finally turning to Ina. “We need to talk. Privately.”

They did indeed.

Chapter Twenty

INA CLIMBED THE stairs behind her husband, ready to fight. Despite being stronger than most women of her class thanks to her days spent sculpting, she had no interest in physical altercations. Her weapons of choice were words, and her fury over her wishes being brushed aside was honing the spears she’d throw at Gavin more with every passing moment.

Never once did Gavin look back at her as they climbed the stairs. When they reached their rooms, he stopped at his door. “Your rooms or mine?”

“Does it matter?” she asked. Either way this would be ugly, and this time it wouldn’t fizzle out and end with a stolen afternoon between the sheets. They were going to have this out one way or another.

“My room then,” he said.

He opened the door and stood back. When she walked by, she caught his scent. Normally it would entice her to wrap her arms around him, but instead she hugged them tight across her chest. If she touched him, she might lose some of her anger and right now she wanted to gather it all to her chest and revel in it.

She’d never liked Gavin’s room in the west wing, no matter what Grace had said about the views of the sea. It was cold and devoid of anything that resembled comfort—fitting for this horrible house they were stuck with. The grand carved bed that dominated the room was too ostentatious, and so were the huge gilt-framed mirror and imposing paintings of ancestors past. It was impossible to catch a breath in this stuffy space with its walls that seemed to close in around her.

“Will you sit?” Gavin asked, gesturing to the large settee where he’d knelt between her legs and made her cry out with just his tongue a few nights before.

She rolled her shoulders back. “No.”

“So it’s to be one of those conversations?” he asked.

“It won’t be a conversation,” she warned. It was a fight she wanted. A fight for her choices. For her home.

“You’re angry.”

Her gaze cut over to him. “I am.”

“At me?” he asked, his voice infuriatingly detached.

“I’m angry at your mother and sister-in-law for their meanness. At your father and your brother for dying. But mostly I’m furious with you,” she said.

“Why?”

She stared at him as though he was mad. “Why? You must be joking.”

“I want to be sure we’re having the same fight, because there are a few things I could take you to task for right now too.”

“Why don’t we start with the idea that you’re going to move into your father’s rooms and I’ll move in to your mother’s and live there?”

He threw his hands up. “That? You’re angry about that? It was just something I said to show my mother I was serious.”

“You sounded serious to me too,” she pushed.

“I was trying to convince my mother out of the house so that you would be more comfortable,” he said, letting out an exasperated sound. “Do you think I want to disrespect a grieving widow and tell her she no longer has a home in the house she’s known for more than forty years?”

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

He gripped his hair by the roots and pulled in frustration. “She attacked you!”

“She’s been attacking me for days now, but you’ve been too preoccupied to notice,” she said.

“I’ve been trying to dig the estate out of this mess so I can stop worrying. It’s my duty.”