Page 95 of Duke of Destruction
And so, if he ever wanted to give her the chance to admit all of herself, he had to admit all of himself, too. Which meant that, though he longed to jump to the end, to the hope, he needed to give her everything.
So, he dug deep and cracked the door that he had never let himself open.
“When I was young,” he said, “your grandfather came to visit.”
Catherine blinked like she couldn’t possibly have heard this right.
“My grandfather?”
He nodded, his head feeling uncommonly heavy. “To this day, I don’t know why, exactly. I was probably five and twenty by the time it occurred to me to wonder, and by that point, my father was dead, as was your grandfather. But it didn’t really matter—what mattered to me was what I overheard.”
He drew in a deep breath. He’d never spoken about this to anyone, not toanyone. Not in the specifics, at least, though friends like David knew Percy disliked the Lightholders as a placeholder for all of the many snobs of theton.
It was hard to talk about. It made him feel very small again.
“I was beneath my father’s desk; neither of them knew I was there. But your grandfather essentially told my father that a dukedom was not enough to wash out centuries of commoner blood—that my family would never, ever rank compared to the like of the Lightholders.”
He braced himself for Catherine to be angry that he had dared to malign her dead kinsman. He braced himself for pity or for disbelief, for her to call him a liar.
Instead, she looked intensely annoyed.
“I wish I could say that I didn’t believe that he would have said such a thing,” she said dryly. “But alas, that would make me a liar. Grandfather was many things—but he was certainly an enormous snob. I’m sorry he said that to you. It was very unkind.”
A hysterical sort of laugh threatened to bubble up inside Percy because, really, he should have expected this. The one thing he should have known by now about Catherine Lightholder was that he was absolutely hopeless at predicting her reactions.
“Thank you,” he said, because itdidfeel good to have someone apologize, even if it wasn’t the man responsible. “I suppose the part that upset me the most, back then, was how it upset my father. I never saw the man lose his cool, or, rather, never except for that day. And I think—” He made himself complete the admission. “—that it made me hate your grandfather a bit. Not just for hurting my father’s feelings, but for making me see that my father was human like the rest of us.”
Catherine just nodded at this, her gaze distant, but it struck Percy as thoughtful rather than dismissive.
He smothered the spark of hope that dared to light in his chest. He had to wait until she’d heard it all.
“I hated him even more when I found out that, in some ways, your grandfather was right. After my father died, I learned that he’d done a truly mediocre job of maintaining the dukedom. If we weren’t desperately in debt, that was more because the preceding duke had left things in such good order, not because my father had done a spectacular job. And it was clear that part of the blame could be pointed at the fact that my father had been brought up to think of ‘wealth’ as having enough to pay the rent the full year in advance, rather than quarterly. He simply didn’t know how to manage something as big as an estate. He never seemed to realize that this wasn’t something that could be solved by dint of effort alone.”
Catherine’s gaze narrowed.
“That doesn’t mean my grandfather was right,” she pointed out. “That was a flaw in your father’s education, perhaps. It had naught to do with—” She rolled her eyes expressively. “—common blood.”
Despite his nerves and exhaustion, Percy had to smile at her visible disgust.
“No,” he allowed. “But I was a second son who was never meant to inherit. I was the son of a common man who wasreallynevermeant to inherit. I was young, and my father was dead, and suddenly I was a duke.” He shrugged a shoulder. “I could either be angry with my dead father or your dead grandfather.”
“I can’t blame you for your choice.”
Her tone was still very guarded. Percy made himself open up more in response. He would give her everything. Anything she wanted or needed. She could have all of him.
“You can blame me for visiting the sins of the father—or grandfather, I suppose—down on the whole family, though,” he said. “It sounds very foolish now, but at the time, the division was very clear in my mind: in order to be like my father, a man I did admire despite his lackluster land management skills, I had to hate your grandfather and his ilk.”
Catherine gnawed at the corner of her lip. He wanted to reach out and stop her from even this tiny hurt, but knew he hadn’t the right.
“I understand all that, Percy, I do—it doesn’t sound nearly as foolish as you seem to think. But the part I just can’t understand…” She paused, pressing her lips together tightly, apparently gathering herself before continuing to speak. “But once you got to know me, didn’t you see how that was wrong?”
Percy swallowed. Honesty mattered most when one was tempted to lie.
“No,” he confessed, cringing at the flicker of hurt that crossed her face. “I should have but… No, I didn’t.” He sucked in a breath. She wasn’t quite looking at him now. “But it wasn’t because of you, Catherine.”
A cautious glance darted his way.
“It was because ofme.” He kept his eyes on her, refused to look away from what his words were wreaking. “It was because I had spent do much time telling myself that I was one thing—that I was bravely and boldly standing up to snobs—that…” His laugh was self-deprecating. “I didn’t know who I was without it. And I was—I was scared.”
