Chapter 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

H is mother?

Margaret looked sharply between Theodore and the woman who was approaching them.

The Dowager Duchess was striking in appearance. She was tall, though not as tall as Theodore. Her eyes were a steely cold gray, that never once looked away from her son. She was dressed in the finest of clothes, a stole looped loosely across her arms and a glittering necklace sparkling around her neck. She tilted her head to the side as she looked at her son, the same coolness Margaret had already perceived in her character now emanating from her.

“Theo?” Margaret whispered, for his hand had suddenly tightened across her waist. It was possessive, but not forceful, just a subtle action that clearly spoke volumes.

Margaret curtsied to the Dowager Duchess, even though Theo’s hand tightened even more.

It’s as though he’s trying to stop me from curtseying to his mother. Why is that?

“Your wife?” the Dowager Duchess’ voice was as sharp and as steely as her gray eyes. She glanced briefly at Margaret then back at her son, clearly waiting for him to make a formal introduction.

Margaret said nothing though. He was still, impervious to what she had said.

“Yes,” Margaret murmured. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Your Grace.”

Theo now looked sharply at Margaret. She must have said something wrong, for he ever so slightly shook his head at her.

“Mother,” Cedric now whispered to the other woman who stood behind the Dowager Duchess. “Did you invite her?”

His mother waved her hand in answer, clearly not thinking it worthy of words. Cedric, however, was shaking his head. He looked in despair, as animated as Theodore was as still as stone.

“To think this is how I would meet your new wife.” The Dowager Duchess still looked at Theodore, her eyes no longer blinking. It was as if she was drinking in the sight of her son, but with no pleasure.

Margaret shifted her gaze to Theo alone. He stared back at his mother, his posture rigid straight. His free hand adjusted his cravat ever so slightly, making it even neater than it already was.

Margaret shifted toward him, aware that his hand slipped even more around her waist, tugging her into his side.

What does he mean by this possessive touch?

“Well, let me look at you.” The Dowager Duchess turned to face Margaret so abruptly that she flinched. The gray eyes looked up and down Margaret, studying every part of her being. An eerie silence followed. She neither complimented nor insulted Margaret’s appearance, but just looked at her.

Is that a suspicious look? What does this awkward meeting mean?

Out of the corner of her eye, Margaret saw Theo look around the room. She followed his gaze, seeing that many people in the room were now looking at them. They were being watched like hawks.

“I must speak with you, Theodore.” The Dowager Duchess lifted her chin and spoke imperiously, the command plain as day. “We shall take a private room in Cedric’s house here for our discussion.”

“Will you now?” Cedric declared with thick sarcasm, clearly believing it to be a bold thing to demand without any hint of a polite request. Yet his mother waved her hand dismissively at him once again.

A sense of foreboding filled up Margaret’s stomach so much that it clenched tight. Despite the fact this was Theodore’s mother, it felt like a very ill idea indeed to let the two of them go to speak alone together. She reached out and laid a hand on the lapel of his jacket, about to plead with him not to go, but he had already loosened his hand from her waist.

Without a word, he gestured for his mother to lead the way out of the room.

The Dowager Duchess turned and walked away. Before Theodore could follow, Margaret reached out and took hold of his arm again.

“Theo –”

“I shall not be long,” he muttered. He didn’t even look at her as he said the words and walked away.

Margaret stared after them as Cedirc moved to her side, shaking his head.

“Mother,” he hissed at his own mother. “You know they cannot be in the same room together. Why would you invite her?”

“I do not need my son’s permission to invite my own sister.” With a flick of her head, Cedric’s mother walked away.

The door had closed soundlessly as Theodore and the Dowager Duchess had left the room. Those who had been staring now exchanged glances, whispering between them.

“What is it I do not know?” Margaret whispered to Cedric in a mad rush. “There is something happening here, is there not? Some… mystery.”

“It is not my secret to share.” Cedric stared at the door. “As pleased as I am for my cousin, Your Grace, that he has married and he has a companion in you at last, take heed in one regard…” He looked straight at her. “There is a part of him that Theodore will share with no one. I think it highly likely he would never share it with you either.”

Margaret felt she had been kicked in the gut. It was yet another pain, a reminder of the cold heart that Theodore had been insisting to her that he had.

That he has no capacity to love…

Yet for all of these warnings and dark words, something did not make sense. If he felt nothing, if Theodore was not capable of caring for her in any way, why had he gripped so tightly onto her waist in that possessive way?

There is more to this. Much more than either Theodore or Cedric will tell me.

If she was going to discover what secrets Theodore was hiding, no man was clearly going to tell her. She would have to find a way to discover the secret all by herself.

Theodore followed his mother all the way to the library. He glanced back more than once as he walked, ensuring that no one else was following them. To his relief, not even Cedric trailed after them.

In the library, candles were already lit. Theodore shook his head as he slowly closed the door. Clearly, this had been planned between Catherine and his aunt, for the room had already been prepared for their arrival.

Catherine turned in the center of the room, running a hand across her forehead and cheek, as if she suffered great pain and was steeling herself to speak. Theodore barely entered the room. He placed his hands neatly in his pockets, staring at his mother and waiting for the inevitable.

Every meeting with her is the same.

“I am surprised you came with me so willingly,” Catherine scoffed. “There had been a time when you ran as far from me as you could get, your devil tail trailing behind you.”

He gave no sign of feeling anything at her words. If she wasn’t comparing him to the devil, then it was to a demon or a monster. This was nothing new.

“You did not run tonight?” Catherine was clearly trying to provoke him into a reaction.

I didn’t want Maggie to hear how you speak to me.

The thought cut through surprisingly sharply. He may have been used to the way that Catherine spoke to him, but to even consider that Maggie might hear it was cutting.

He adjusted his cravat, his hand falling still when Catherine’s eyes narrowed on his hand.

“Obsessed with being neat as you always have been, I see?”

“You did not come here to comment on my neatness,” he said in a low and level tone. “Speak as you wish to.”

Catherine stepped closer toward him, her expression so dark that he was ready for it the moment she raised her hand. Her palm struck cleanly across his cheek. The stinging pain told him at once that his skin would be red and smarting in seconds. He didn’t wince though, nor did he let out any sign of pain. He just calmly, slowly, angled his head back around to face her.

Catherine actually flinched at his look, jerked her head back.

“How could you?” she seethed. “You married? After I told you not to.”

“If you have come to talk facts, I have no interest in the discussion.”

“How could you repeat the past?” She began to walk around him. “You’re just like your father. His reincarnation. Shadow and darkness, made into man,” she spat, reaching his back. She flicked at the corner of his jacket, and he calmly rearranged it, so his appearance was perfectly neat again. “To think, I had to hear it from my sister. I didn’t even hear it from you –”

“We both know you wouldn’t have come to the wedding,” he muttered.

“Ha! I would have come. I would have come to object. To point out that no lady of this world should be bound to a demon.”

There were words he wished to hurl back at her, to demand that she held her tongue and desisted with this infernal wish to torment him and persuade him that he was nothing but the devil’s spawn. Yet what would be the point?

“She seems a normal lady too. Decent. She even curtsied just now, probably against your wishes. Oh, I saw you hold her, try to stop her from showing any deference,” she pushed on, walking around to his front. “How she must now suffer at your side. Poor lady, to be bullied by you.”

Bullied!?

Something snapped in Theodore’s gut. He stepped toward her sharply. She jolted back, cowering away, her hand trembling as she reached for the necklace at her throat.

Those gray eyes quivered, then her hand steadied and any fear in her face abated, replaced with anger.

“Do you wish to hit me, Theodore? You wish to strike your own mother?”

His hand balled into a tight fist at his side. The scars on his back he could suddenly feel scraping against his shirt. What wounds had been caused between them were done by her, and yet… he was the bully? He was the devil?

“Enough of this,” he spat. Turning on the spot, he marched toward the door. He had to get away, not just from Catherine but from this whole evening. Why he had even come in the first place baffled him now.

“You will not turn your back on me. I will not have it!” Catherine raged.

Theodore reached for the door just as the vase flung through the air. He didn’t even turn to face her as the vase cut across the side of his face. The porcelain struck the wall beside him, smashing into shards and fragments. One fragment cut across the top of his cheek.

The blood shot up, some trickling in warm droplets down his skin, as another drop landed on his eyelashes, pooling red in his vision.

“Face me!” Catherine demanded. “Show me some pain. Show me the devil can be hurt!”

He wouldn’t dare give in. So many times she had hurt him in his life. Sometimes, he had thought she hurt him just to displace her own pain onto him. Other times, he had thought it was because she just wanted to see the son she despised so much could be hurt by her.

I won’t be hurt. Not anymore.

“Face me!” she demanded.

She wants to see the blood.

“Don’t find me again. If I ever see you again, you will regret it, Catherine.” He addressed her by her name, coolly.

He opened the door, about to march out when he found himself face to face with Maggie. She stared at him, her jaw going slack as her eyes landed on the cut on his cheek.

No. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

“Theo,” she whispered, “did she…?” She raised her hand toward his cheek, clearly about to wipe the blood away. He blinked madly, trying to get the blood out of his eyes lashes.

“Face me, Theodore!” Catherine yelled again, clearly unable to see Maggie for Theodore blocked her from view.

Unable to speak to either of them, Theodore grabbed Maggie’s hand before she could touch his cheek. He dragged her away as they walked down the corridor, hurrying as fast as he possibly could. At the very least, Catherine’s yelling voice didn’t follow them.

“What just happened?” Maggie asked in panic. “Did your mother do that to you?”

“Not now.”

“But… you’re bleeding…”

“I know what a little blood is like,” he muttered, more to himself than to her at all.

“What does that mean?” she said wildly.

He just kept walking out of the house as fast as he could. In the entrance hall, he practically snatched Maggie’s pelisse out of the footman’s hand and hurried to put it around her shoulders. Cedric appeared in the drawing room doorway a second later. He looked as flustered as Theodore felt, his face red.

“Honestly, Theodore, I didn’t know.” Cedric shook his head.

“I know.” Theodore jerked his head as he nodded. “She gets everywhere. She’s like smoke that way.”

“Don’t go yet,” Cedric pleaded. “You know what she is like. She’ll leave now she has made her point. Stay, have a nice time. Please, cousin.”

Theodore took his frock coat out of the footman’s hand and shrugged it on over his shoulders. He caught the bloody cut on his face by accident, smearing it across the side of his head. Afraid to get it on his jacket, he snatched up a handkerchief, then grunted under his breath as he smeared it across the sleeve of his jacket.

Maggie was suddenly there. She had a handkerchief of her own and was wiping the blood off his cuff for him. It was a moment of calm, simple, small, and disappearing all too fast as her hand lowered away from him again.

“We’re not staying,” Theodore muttered. “We’re going home. At once.”

Cedric nodded, reluctantly.

“Then… goodnight.” Cedric sighed. “And to you,” he turned to Maggie and reached for her hand.

An anger ripped through Theodore. It was like white hot lightning, and he saw Cedric’s fingers nearly brush Margaret’s own. He reached out fast and closed his hand over Margaret’s, pulling her away and turning to face Cedric.

“Don’t touch her,” he seethed under his breath.

“Cousin.” Cedric’s mouth fell slack.

“You heard me.” Theodore turned and dragged Margaret down the front steps and toward the carriage.

“Theo,” she whispered. “Please, just tell me what is wrong.”

“Not now.”

“Why? Theo!” Margaret pulled on his arm. “You’re being rude to your cousin, there’s blood on you, and I heard your mother yelling foul things at you. What does all this mean?”

He flung the door to the carriage open and helped her inside.

“It means there’s a reason I stay home. There’s a reason that it’s best not to let anyone in.”

“What do you mean by that?”

He closed the door and said nothing else.