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"When I am good and ready, there will be another Lady Hannah for me," he told her.

"With that attitude, you'll be walking with a cane and sniffing after fresh faced debutantes."

His jaw clenched, "then so be it."

She advanced, waving her index finger at him, "not under my watch."

"Mother, for the love of God, I hardly think I should be the one being poked and prodded. Don't you have your hands full with Georgie?"

"I'm trying to do what's best for the title."

His lips thinned, "I know what's best for the title."

"If you did, you would have a duchess and an heir by now. You can afford to be careless about anything else, but securing theline is the one thing I won't let you ruin, like you did Georgie's upbringing."

Jumping to his feet, the duke slapped his palm down on the surface of the desk, "Enough!" he thundered.

His mother went still with shock. In all her years, he had never once raised a voice to her in such a way and the fury burning in his eyes made her shiver.

"Leave, now," the lowly delivered words carried as much authority as if he had roared the words.

The dowager duchess squared her shoulders, gave him one last glance full of absolute contempt and then marched off, as regal as ever.

He slumped into his chair after she had left and dragged a weary hand through his hair, mussing it up.

"Damn it all to hell," he sighed. He owed her an apology, but for now he couldn't find it in him to feel apologetic. She had been driving him insane with her less than subtle matchmaking and this explosion was bound to happen.

Somehow, Victor had to make it clear to her that he didn't need her butting into his affairs. He had never wanted any of this, but then again, neither had she.

If only his father was alive.

He needed to get his mother off his back without hurting her feelings and without also having to give in to her matchmaking schemes.

But how?

CHAPTER 5

"The blue reticule or the silver?" Lavinia asked the lady's maid that she now shared with her aunt.

Hers had been one of the many servants that had quit mysteriously in the past few days.

"The silver," the girl said while attaching the last hair pin to her hair, "it brings out the color of the dress."

"I shall have the silver then," Lavinia nodded and rose from where she had been sitting in front of the dressing mirror.

Smoothing a hand down the front of her blue dress, she took a deep, cleansing breath and then made her way out the door and towards the spiral staircase.

Her cousin, who should have been waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, was curiously absent. She made to head back up to his suite of rooms.

"Lavvie, there you are," Lady Hartfield's voice stopped her.

She turned to see her aunt walking down the hall towards her.

"Aunt Felicity?" Her brow wrinkled up in confusion, "I see that you are dressed, are you out for the evening? Noah should be here any second and we can drop you off on our way."

"I heard all about the other night from Noah. How you spent most of the night arm in arm with Jenny."

She blinked at her aunt, "it was not as though I was rejecting gentleman left, right and center to spend time with my best friend. We were both relegated to the sidelines as usual."