The duke didn’t move so much as a hair. When Lucien was upright again, his father continued staring, mouth parted slightly. Then he seemed to rally, as though he’d administered a mental slap to his own face
“So... the broadsheet nonsense wasn’t nonsense,” he said finally. Sounding somewhat ironic himself. His voice was still faint. Lucien half-admired the fact that he wasn’t letting the bad shock he’d sustained show.
“No.”
“Upset the duchess terribly every time you were mentioned.”
That was my plan.“I can imagine it did” was all he said. The poor, poor duchess who’d paid Cuttweiler to facilitate his drowning death. Perhaps he ought to bitterly say, “Just like your letter upset my mother.”
But this spotless grand office in this gleaming house... Somehow he knew that something about the sterile marble and gleam of it all would leech every sentence of emotion, sterilize it, turn it into a statue about emotions.
His heart was still beating harder than he preferred.
Jingle bang jingle bang jingle bang hi ho.Rather in that rhythm. Bloody Delacorte.
“She told me some years ago that she’d written to you to ask you whether you’d consider more decorous behavior, for our son’s sake.”
Our son.His half brother. The future Duke of Brexford.
“She did.” It seemed unnecessary to say more than that.
The silence rang almost shrilly.
“You’ve got my height,” the duke said. With the ghost of a smile. He was wary, a bit uncertain, but he didn’t look a bit like a man suffering from guilt or regret.
It’smyheight now, Lucien felt like saying, absurdly.
He said nothing. He was waiting to feel something definitive. Fury or heartbreak or bitterness, some echo of the love or affection he’d once felt, something he could use as a lever to settle scores, get answers, form powerful sentences the duke would never forget. And perhaps it would come after the shock of the first moments of meeting. But somehow he doubted it.
Something had changed. And that something was him. He’d been fitted with a new lens.
The duke cleared his throat. “Well. Er. Would you like to sit down?” He gestured to the leather wing chair in front of his vast oak desk.
Another surface in which the duke could see his reflection.
Lucien sat. They regarded each other in silence.
“Forgot you had your mother’s eyes. Unusual color. Unsettling, sometimes. You’re like your mother in the way she could seem to look right through you.”
“I’ve used it to my advantage once or twice,” Lucien said pleasantly. Ironically.
The duke pressed his lips together, uncertain what to do with this statement.
He seemed not quite able to hold Lucien’s gaze, and that was, in fact, the power of Lucien’s gaze. The whole of his personality shone through it.
Did the duke feel guilty?
Did Lucien even want him to anymore? Suddenly he didn’t know.
And then the bastard turned toward the clock as though there was something, anything he’d rather be doing than talking to his bastard son, returned from the dead.
Lucien’s lips curved in a small, hard smile.
“So... we thought you drowned. Cuttweiler reported what happened and it was upsetting indeed.”
“I didn’t drown. I was rescued by a ship sailing to China.”
“Ah. Well. That’s a good thing, then. I paid for your funeral. Quite the turnout. Drinking and brawls. Women bawling. For God’s sake. I wonder who we buried? Wouldn’t it be amusing if I paid good coin to bury some rummy who rolled into the river? Of course, we all rather thought that’s what happened to you. Seemed inevitable, the way you carried on. I imagined you’d be knifed by a gambler or run over by a carriage.” Those last words had an edge to them.