Page 90 of His Mad Duchess
The words burned, but Margaret forced her breath to be steady. Her fingers curled tighter around her cup, porcelain knocking faintly against the saucer. “Without love, sacrifice curdles into bitterness.”
The Dowager’s lips curved in something too thin to be a smile. “Bitterness matters little if the line is preserved.”
A log cracked in the grate, sharp as a whip, but Margaret did not flinch. Her gaze lifted, cool and unwavering. “What is a line worth, if it leaves only coldness behind?”
The Dowager’s hand smoothed her skirts, each movement deliberate, measured. “Posterity will not ask whether you were warm, only whether you fulfilled your charge.”
Margaret’s eyes glistened, though no tears fell. She leaned forward, her voice low, urgent. “Posterity may not ask, but children do. Husbands do. Wives do. I will not believe that affection is a bauble simply because you never held it.”
The older woman’s nostrils flared; she shifted her teacup as if to mask the tightening of her jaw. “You speak as though love shields against ruin. It does not. Duty alone prevents collapse.”
Margaret’s hands, still trembling slightly, folded atop one another. Margaret lifted her chin, fragile but unyielding, and let her gaze drift to the far wall, as if searching for an answer there. Her voice, quiet yet steady, carried the weight of all she had felt. “And yet duty without love is only collapse drawn out moreslowly. A legacy built on fear leaves nothing but ruins in the heart.”
She imagined the generations who had come before, bound by expectation, and shivered at the thought of what their lives might have been if affection had been allowed to flourish alongside obligation.
The Dowager’s gaze lingered on her, sharp as a pin. For a moment, the silence between them felt like a held breath, the entire house waiting to hear which would break first.
The elder woman’s eyes flashed. “Child, you speak of what you do not understand. Love is selfish—it demands, it weakens, it blinds. Duty is hard, yes, but it strengthens. Without it, families crumble, titles fall, and nations decay. It is duty alone that preserves.”
Margaret leaned forward now, her breath unsteady, though her words came swiftly. “No, Your Grace. It is love that preserves. Love binds one heart to another, makes sacrifice bearable, even noble. It is not weakness. It is strength of the truest kind.”
The Dowager’s hand struck the table, a sharp crack against the china. “Strength? You would speak to me of strength? I have buried a husband, held an estate together, raised a son to his station—all without the luxury of your fanciful ‘love.’ Do not presume to lecture me, Duchess.”
Margaret’s cheeks burned, her pulse hammering, but she met that fierce gaze without flinching. “And yet for all you claim, yousit here alone, scorning what you never allowed yourself to feel. That is no strength, Your Grace—it is poverty of the soul.”
The Dowager’s breath hissed through her teeth, her back stiffening like a blade. “Poverty of the soul? Better that than the ruin love brings. Love makes fools of women… it makes slaves of them. Your own mother wasted herself in such folly. And you…” Her voice cut low, almost a snarl. “You will waste yourself too if you cling to it.”
Margaret trembled slightly, but her voice steadied, sharpened by pain. “If to love is to waste, then I would rather be spent than withered. I would rather give and lose a hundred times than live untouched, cold as stone.”
The Dowager leaned forward, her eyes narrowing to slits. “You speak like a girl, not a duchess. Do you not understand the eyes of the world are upon you? That an heir is expected, and soon? Sentiment will not secure your place. Only duty.”
Margaret rose half from her chair, her color high, her breath unsteady. “And what good is a place secured by chains? I will not have my heart traded for appearances nor be measured only by the children I bear. If Sebastian and I—” She stopped, catching her breath, realizing how near she had come to saying too much.
The air between them was taut, crackling like a storm about to break.
The Dowager drew breath to unleash her reply, but the words never came. The door burst wide, striking the paneling with a crack.
Sebastian filled the threshold, broad-shouldered and dark-eyed, the light from the corridor at his back casting him in stark relief. His sharp gaze swept the room once and fastened upon his mother with all the force of a storm breaking upon the shore.
Margaret’s breath caught, a wild thrum rising in her throat. Relief… terror… longing, she could not name what seized her, only that the sight of him struck through her like a bell’s toll.
“Enough,” he said, his voice low yet carrying, a command that stilled even the air. “This ends now.”
CHAPTER 31
Sebastian strode forward, each step deliberate, the folded note crushed in his fist. His gaze never left the Dowager’s face.
“You will not speak another word to her,” he said, his voice low, sharp as tempered steel. “Not until you answer me.”
Honoria’s composure flickered, just a tightening about the mouth and a quickening of the eyes, but her chin lifted. “And what is this performance meant to be, Sebastian? You barge into my drawing room; you thunder like a tradesman?—”
He threw the letter down upon the table. The parchment slid across the porcelain, coming to rest in her hand. “Read it, Mother. Or rather—confess what you already know.”
Margaret’s breath caught, a soft sound in the charged silence. She sat rigid, her heart thudding unevenly in her chest. Her gaze darted between them as if the ground itself might split.
Honoria did not lower her eyes to the page. Instead, her fingers brushed it only once before withdrawing. “Where did you find this?”
“In Brighton,” Sebastian bit out. His pulse hammered, the fury in his chest held back only by sheer will. “Hidden, as if his shame might be buried with him. But tell me, Mother, why did you never speak of it? How long have you known?”
