Her Family Cast Her Out for Being Barren — Three Months Later, a Widowed Duke with Five Heirs Chose Her as His Bride, but the Real Reason He Wanted Her in His Home Left Everyone Stunned.

PART 4

Vincent arrived as Victoria was wringing out the first cloth. He stood in the doorway, jaw tight, the particular stillness of a man who had stood in this exact spot before and lost.

“Is he —”

“Fever, high, but his pulse is steady. I’ve seen fevers like this before. Until the physician arrives, we keep him comfortable, keep fluids in him, and watch his breathing.” She didn’t look up from Thomas. “I need you to trust me for the next several hours.”

He didn’t answer. But he didn’t leave either. He sat in the corner chair and watched, hands clenched between his knees, while Victoria worked.

The night went long and ugly. Thomas’s fever climbed before it broke. He shivered, then burned, then mumbled half-words that weren’t sentences. Victoria didn’t stop — cool cloth to his forehead, water to his lips, her voice low and steady even when her hands weren’t.

“You’re not going anywhere,” she told him, more than once. The same words she’d once needed someone to say to her. “I’m not leaving this room.”

Near three in the morning, Thomas’s breathing finally evened. The flush in his cheeks dimmed to something almost normal. Victoria sat back on her heels, exhausted, and found Vincent watching her with an expression she couldn’t name — something between disbelief and a grief he hadn’t expected to feel that night.

“He’s passed the worst of it,” she said.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. I’ve sat through enough fevers to know the difference.”

He said nothing else, but he didn’t go to bed either. He stayed in that chair until dawn, and so did she, and neither of them spoke of why.

Thomas woke at first light, weak but clear-eyed, and looked up to find Victoria still there — hair loose, dress creased, eyes red with no sleep.

“You stayed,” he said, wondering, like it was a fact he needed to test out loud.

“I said I would.”

He reached for her hand, small fingers closing around hers with a grip stronger than his size suggested.

“Mama.”

The word landed in the room like something breaking open. Victoria’s breath caught. Across the room, Vincent went very still.

“You don’t have to call me that,” Victoria managed.

“I know.” Thomas didn’t let go of her hand. “I want to.”

It didn’t spread to the others. If anything, it made things worse. Edward heard about it from a maid before breakfast and said nothing — but his silence at the table had a new edge to it, something closer to betrayal than indifference.

“He’s six,” Edward said finally, not looking up from his plate. “He doesn’t remember enough to know better.”

“Edward —” Vincent started.

“I’m not arguing, father. I’m explaining.” He pushed back his chair. “The rest of us remember exactly how this goes.”

Charlotte and Beatrice exchanged a glance and said nothing at all, which was its own kind of answer. Henry didn’t even come down to breakfast.

But upstairs, in a small room with a damp cloth still folded on the nightstand, one small boy had decided — against every signal the house was sending him — that Victoria was staying.

Thomas’s recovery should have softened the house. Instead, it seemed to harden everyone else. Edward took to disappearing for hours, returning smelling faintly of brandy, though he was only sixteen. When Victoria tried to speak to him about it, he cut her off before she’d finished the sentence.

“You don’t get to parent me,” he said. “You weren’t here for the parts that mattered. You don’t get the easy parts now.”

“Edward, I only want —”

“I know what you want. Thomas’s whole heart. It’s easy, because he’s six and doesn’t remember enough to protect himself.” His eyes were hard, older than they should have been. “I remember everything. I remember my mother, and the one after her. I’m not handing you anything.”

He left before she could answer. She didn’t chase him. She was learning, slowly, which battles could be won by patience, and which only deepened by pushing.

The relatives came next, circling like they’d smelled something. Vincent’s cousin, Mr. Reginald Ashby, arrived under the pretense of a social call and stayed long enough to corner Victoria in the library.

“You understand, of course, that the children’s inheritances are entailed quite specifically,” he said, turning a glass of Vincent’s brandy in his hand he hadn’t been offered. “Should anything happen to Vincent before the boys come of age, the estate’s management would fall to a trustee. Myself, as it happens.”

“Why are you telling me this, Mr. Ashby?”

“Merely so you understand your position clearly. You’re not their mother. Not by blood, not by law beyond a signature.” He smiled like he didn’t believe a word of it. “If you’re hoping to secure yourself a comfortable widow’s portion —”

“I’m not hoping for anything but their well-being.”

“How fortunate, then, that it costs you nothing to say.”

She told Vincent that night. His jaw tightened in a way she was beginning to recognize.

“Ashby’s wanted control of this estate since before my first wife died. Ignore him.”

“He’s not wrong that I have no real claim here.”

“Victoria.” He said it simply, like it settled something. “You have my name.”

It didn’t settle everything. Not entirely. But it was the first time he’d said anything that sounded like he meant to keep her.

The rumors arrived through the twins’ governess, who’d heard them at a tea and repeated them at supper without thinking, the way servants and children sometimes did.

“They’re saying in town,” the governess offered, oblivious to the room going quiet, “that her grace trapped his grace into marriage. That she claimed to be with child to secure the match, then lost it conveniently once the ring was on.”

Victoria set down her fork. “That’s not true.”

“Of course not, your grace,” the governess said too quickly, already realizing her mistake.

But the twins were staring now, something calculating behind their matching faces. Victoria understood the rumor had already done its damage — not because anyone truly believed it, but because it gave the children one more reason to keep their distance.