Page 163 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
The Duke narrowed his eyes, unused to being given orders. “She was amaid,son. Not worth all this fuss you’re making. You’ll be over her soon enough.”
“Like you are over Mother?”
The Duke advanced, making Dimitri shrink towards the wall. He almost wanted the pain, thought that perhaps he deserved it.
But he did not want the fear.
“Do not compare your mother to anyone,” the Duke warned, his voice ice. “Your mother was irreplaceable. But do you know what her finest quality was?”
Her heart,Dimitri thought, but swallowed before he could speak, eager to avoid the anger shimmering in his father’s eyes.
“Her sense ofduty,” his father continued. “Something of which you know little, a fault I hope to correct.”
“Can’t wait to see how.”
The Duke smacked him clean across the face. Not hard. Or at least, not as hard as he could. A warning. With his left arm now fully human, Dimitri didn’t even have the monster’s strength to fight back.
“Watch your tone, boy,” the Duke snarled. He turned his back, sighing, straightening his clothes as he paced about the room. “Perhaps it was a mistake to quit this place,” he announced, drumming his large fingers on the dresser. “You’ve been indulged in my absence. Grown insolent.”
You could have taken me with you,rose a thought unbidden, but Dimitri quickly quashed it. There had been a fragment of a moment when he’d wanted that, a long time ago. But not now, or ever again.
“I think it’s time you returned to society,” suggested the Duke. “Learnt how to be a proper gentleman.”
“You never much cared for my education before.”
The Duke snorted. “Before, you were a lost cause. Now, at least, you show some promise.”
Dimitri suspected there was more to it than the curse simply breaking. His father was not getting any younger, he disliked the idea of remarrying, and as far as Dimitri knew, he’d not fathered another child. There were plenty of rumours about his liaisons over the years, but nothing to show for it. Dimitri had long suspected his father would have preferred another heir, even an illegitimate one, over himself. And yet, nothing had happened.
The Duke was running out of other options.
He wondered once more about the prophecy his father had received, but did not ask. He feared his fists as well as his answer.
And what did anything really matter, now?
“I’ve made arrangements for you to enrol at the St Bartholomew’s Academy for Young Gentlemen after the midwinter break,” his father announced. “The same school I attended, in my youth. I’m not sure what good they can do with you in the year or two you have left of schooling, but we’ll see.”
A year. A year or two. Away from this place. Away from—
Adeline. Who only saw him as a friend. Who he ought towantto escape from.
And yet… and yet leaving felt like the worst thing he could do, each mile between them a further dagger in his chest. He had no hope of her reciprocating. He wasn’t that foolish. But the thought of never seeing her again, or going two years without her—
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I will start making life very difficult for that maid of yours.”
Dimitri flinched.
The Duke shook his head. “Foolish boy. You still want to protect her after she abandoned you? You should have heard some of the things she said. Called you a child, said that she only indulged you, pitied you—”
“Stop,” Dimitri pleaded, the words grating against his chest. He had no way of knowing if Adie had said any of it, but he could do without imagining it. “Why do you need to tell me this? You got what you wanted. There isn’t anything between us any more—”
“What I want is for you to go to school,” said his father shortly. “And if you decide that you actually don’t care what happens to her, if you wish to refuse just to spite me, you should also know that I can make Mrs Minton averygenerous early retirement offer. One she could not refuse.”
Dimitri’s heart sank further. He could not imagine this place without Mrs Minton. She’d been his angel of steel his entire life, as much a part of the manor as the very stones on which it was built.
And he knew why his father was driving in this wedge: to remind him that there existed no one in this world who couldn’t be bought, that everyone who felt anything for him didn’t prize him above money.
