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“ G ood morning.”

Violet, already seated with her tea for breakfast, nearly spilled it at the unexpected sound of his voice. She glanced up quickly, her green eyes wide with surprise.

“Good morning.” Violet blinked, recovering quickly. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Nicholas smirked faintly as he poured himself a cup of coffee. “After last night’s event, I thought it prudent to check on the hostess.”

“Oh. Well, I am doing just fine, thank you.”

The air between them felt oddly charged, as though his sudden appearance had disrupted the usual rhythm of her morning. For a few moments, the only sounds were the clink of his spoon against his cup.

“Besides, I have to say that you left me with quite a bit of… curiosity, the other night. I suppose I have questions of my own.”

Violet looked up at him in surprise. “It is rare that you ask me any questions, so I welcome the opportunity.”

He nodded taking a sip of his coffee. “I suppose I am still a bit stuck on the whole Prince Charming notion you mentioned.”

Violet chuckled softly, though her cheeks flushed. “Ah, yes. That. It seems rather childish in hindsight, doesn’t it? I apologized already for bringing it up.”

“Not so childish,” he said, “It’s a common enough ideal. I suppose I am interested in knowing what this Prince Charming looks like to you.”

Violet blinked, her teacup pausing halfway to her lips. “You’re interested in that?”

“Why not? It’s not every day one gets to hear a duchess describe her childhood ideals. Indulge me.”

“I’m not sure it would be very interesting to you,” she said carefully, still caught off guard by his sudden curiosity.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he replied smoothly, lifting his coffee cup to his lips. “Go on.”

Violet hesitated, then let out a soft laugh. “Well, I suppose he was everything a Prince Charming ought to be—kind, brave, and impossibly handsome, of course.” She glanced at him, her cheeks tinged pink. “And naturally, he was madly in love with me.”

He paused for a moment. “Naturally.”

She rolled her eyes at his tone. “It was all very typical, I assure you. The sort of nonsense young girls dream up after reading too many fairy tales.”

“But is it nonsense if you still believe in it?” he asked sharply.

She did not know how to respond. His sudden interest in the topic was strange to her. She had only mentioned the vow in passing. Never could she have imagined that he would demand such details from her.

Yet, here he was.

“I suppose both things can be true, Your Grace.”

“Nicholas,” he corrected.

“Both things can be true, Nicholas,” she repeated. “But I do not see the utility in discussing these things at length. If you are feeling curious this morning, you may instead ask me other questions about my life. I would prefer them, actually.”

“What would you have me ask?”

She glanced at him warily, unsure if his sudden compliance was genuine or just another trap. “I don’t know,” she said, her tone guarded. “Something sensible, perhaps. Not something rooted in childhood fantasies.”

He pondered over her words for a moment.

“Tell me about your childhood,” he finally settled on a topic. “I don’t believe we’ve spoken much about it. What was it like for you before… all of this?”

Violet was not sure what brought about this sudden interest, but she did not mind either.

“It was ordinary, I suppose. You have already met my brothers,” she shrugged. “We were close. They doted on me though they never missed an opportunity to tease me mercilessly.”

He nodded. “And your father? That is someone whom you have not mentioned before.”

Violet felt a pinch in her chest at the mention of him. It had been years since she had spoken of him last.

“He loved telling stories at bedtime. Elaborate ones about brave knights and daring adventures,” she admitted. “But I do not have any memories of him in my later years. He, as you know, passed when I was only a child.”

“That must have been difficult—for you and your family.” Nicholas’ expression softened at her words.

“I suppose we managed,” Violet replied. “It has been a long time now.”

Nicholas nodded slowly. “I wouldn’t know about that. I was older when my own father passed.”

“What was he like?” Violet had not expected to have this conversation with him, but now that they had begun, it was hard not to probe.

“He was a complicated man. Very strict, demanding,” Nicholas admitted in a quiet voice. “You had to meet his expectations, no matter how impossible they seemed.”

“I’m sure you must have.”

Nicholas let out a dry chuckle, the sound devoid of humor. “I suppose I did, eventually. But it wasn’t all bad. When he chose to focus on me, I saw glimpses of the man beneath. He just… didn’t let that part of himself out often.”

“And what did it feel like to finally meet his expectations?” Violet asked.

“By the time I’d become the man he wanted, he was already gone,” Nicholas lamented.

Violet blinked, her chest tightening at the quiet resignation in his voice. “I’m sorry, Nicholas.”

He shrugged. “There’s little to be sorry for. It shaped me into who I am now for better or worse.”

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t painful,” she said firmly.

Nicholas’ gaze shifted to her, and for a moment, his dark eyes searched hers. “Pain has its uses.”

Violet’s chest tightened. She wasn’t sure what she had expected him to say, but the starkness of his words left her momentarily speechless. “That doesn’t make it right.”

His openness this morning was refreshing—though she was uncertain about what had spurred it on. It made her want to ask him more .

But Nicholas seemed to have other ideas.

“I didn’t mean to spoil the mood,” he said abruptly, his tone shifting to something lighter. “We’ve already delved into far too serious a topic for a morning conversation.”

“And what is so wrong about that?” she asked, tilting her head as she studied him. “Why must every conversation be lighthearted and inconsequential?”

Why must everything—their marriage included—be not serious?

He took a moment to answer her. “Because mornings are meant for simplicity, Violet. If I gave you a different impression, then I must apologize for that. It was not my intention.”

“Perhaps that’s the problem, Nicholas. You prefer simplicity, but life is rarely so cooperative,” she replied.

He paused for a second, the weight of her words settling in between them. It was at that moment that she realized something important about the Duke.

His life had not been easy. Glimpses that he shared about his childhood with her revealed that much.

Beneath that biting wit was a man who had learned to take everything lightly—not because he didn’t care but because it was the only way he had found to protect himself.

His aura of nonchalance wasn’t a reflection of indifference but of survival.

Her heart ached at the thought though she doubted he would ever admit it aloud.

“Life is never so simple,” he gave her a smile, but it did not reach his eyes. “That’s why you have to create simplicity where you can.”

“Simplicity is not the solution to everything, Nicholas. Some things in life must be felt, experienced deeply, or they lose their meaning,” she argued stubbornly.

Of all the things he had admitted to her, this felt like one she opposed the most.

He shrugged his shoulders, as though he cared for none of it.

“Is that what your Prince Charming would be like, then? A man who feels and experiences things very deeply?” he asked pointedly.

The question caught her off guard, and she hesitated. “I… I wouldn’t know.”

“Well, then I must confess to being an unfit candidate,” he admitted finally. “I am quite incapable of such things.”

Violet blinked at him, unsure how to respond. She had never intended to make him draw comparisons like this and least of all in ways that made him seem ill-equipped.

A silence hung between them. She opened her mouth to speak but stopped herself, the words refusing to form.

It was awkward, but Nicholas didn’t seem inclined to fill the silence. Instead, he reached for his cup, unbothered.

There it was again—that carefully crafted nonchalance. But Violet couldn’t shake the thought that it might be yet another layer of armor, something he wielded to shield himself, just as he had admitted to her before.

When he finally broke the silence, his voice was casual. As though they had just been discussing the weather before.

“Well, the ball is over,” he noted. “What do you plan on doing with your time now, Violet?”

The abrupt change in topic startled her.

“I—” She cleared her throat, gathering herself. “I’ve decided to go horseback riding today.”

“Horseback riding?”

“It will give me something to do,” she replied, perhaps too quickly.

Her fingers toyed with the edge of her napkin. The truth was, without the ball preparations to keep her mind occupied, her thoughts had been drifting already. If she didn’t find a distraction, she feared she’d spend far too much time thinking about Nicholas.

“Well, then,” he smirked, “I wish you good luck. Do try not to fall.”

Violet’s brows knit together at his teasing tone, but she didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, she offered him a polite smile. “Thank you. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

As he stood and left the room, Violet remained seated, her thoughts swirling.

The more she got to know him, the more confused she felt. His sudden shifts left her questioning everything she thought she understood about him.

How can one person be so infuriatingly guarded yet so disarmingly candid in the same breath?

One moment, he was challenging her, prodding at her with pointed questions; the next, he was shutting down entirely, as if nothing they’d discussed held any weight at all.

He was impossible; that’s what he was.

She wondered just how long it would take for her to figure him out.

Nicholas sat at his desk. As usual, he was too distracted to get any real work done.

Violet’s words from breakfast lingered in his mind, stubborn and unyielding. He hated to admit it, but he had thought about ridiculous notions of true love more often than he would have liked.

It was stuck, like a thorn in his mind.

Someone who feels things deeply and experiences things deeply.

He was a man of practicality, of reason. Feeling things deeply had never been part of the equation for him. And yet, when she had said those words, it had stirred something in him.

The truth of it was painfully clear—Violet was the opposite of him. Open, hopeful, yearning for a world filled with dreams and ideals. And he? He was a man who had long ago learned to suppress, to defer, to survive.

Funny that they had been thrown together like this, then. Fate was a strange thing.

But their differences were precisely why he needed to put an end to whatever strange dynamic was forming between them.

He could not be the Prince Charming that he knew she still yearned for. His own limitations that gnawed at him. She deserved someone who could meet her where she was, someone who could give her what she dreamed of. Someone who could feel deeply.

Nicholas leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk and running a hand through his hair.

“I would not even know where to start,” he admitted grimly to himself.

He wondered how she would have reacted if he told her how he had dealt with the news of his father’s passing.

He had been twenty-two, standing in the drawing room of their country estate. The butler had entered with his unusual stiffness.

Your Grace, I regret to inform you…

Nicholas had stood perfectly still, his hands clasped behind his back, his face impassive. He’d nodded, dismissed the butler, and gone straight to his study. He hadn’t cried. He hadn’t raged. He had done nothing.

It wasn’t that the news hadn’t struck him. Of course, it had. His father, for all his flaws and coldness, was still his father.

But Nicholas had understood instinctively that to crumble under the weight of grief would achieve nothing. Feelings were messy, unpredictable. They clouded judgment. And a duke could not afford to be clouded.

Instead, he had sat at his desk—just as he was doing now—and written the necessary letters, arranged the funeral, and resumed his responsibilities.

That was the extent of how deeply he felt things.

He could not be that man Violet spoke of.

He did not know how. And the last thing he wanted was for her to fall into some misguided notion of love, only to find herself disappointed.

He would ensure that she never fell for him, never mistook his fleeting moments of softness for something more.

It was kinder this way. Better for both of them.

And yet, even as he resolved this, the memory of her smile lingered in his mind.

God. What was happening to him?

Nicholas shook his head, standing abruptly. He needed air. What he didn’t need was Violet occupying every corner of his mind, weaving herself into places he’d long since closed off.

But as luck would have it, as he stepped toward the window and gazed out at the expanse of the estate, he spotted her again.

Violet was on horseback. She had mentioned her plans at breakfast, of course, but seeing her like this was something entirely different.

She looked carefree, and he found himself staring again. There was a freedom in her now, an unguarded joy that left him transfixed.

And then, in an instant, her horse reared. He watched in horror as Violet’s grip faltered, and she tumbled down to the ground.

Before he realized what he was doing, he was already moving towards the door.