Page 22 of A Widow for the Beastly Duke (The Athena Society #1)

CHAPTER 22

“T ristan!” Emma cried out, panic clawing at her throat as she gathered her skirts and rushed toward the woods.

Victor was already moving, his long strides carrying him swiftly toward the tree line.

“Stay with your maid,” he commanded over his shoulder. “The ground is uneven, and the light is dimming.”

“He is my son!” Emma retorted, ignoring his instruction as she plunged into the shadowy underbrush behind him. “Tristan! Where are you? Answer me this instant!”

The woods seemed to swallow her voice, returning nothing but the rustle of leaves and the distant calls of villagers beginning to gather for the promised fireworks.

Her heart thundered against her ribs, her imagination conjuring horrific scenarios with each passing second: Tristan lost and alone, Tristan injured, Tristan encountering some unsavory character lurking in the shadows.

“He saw a fox,” Martha panted, struggling to keep pace behind them, “and just bolted after it.”

“That blasted boy!” Emma hissed.

Victor paused, scanning the ground with practiced efficiency. “There.” He pointed to a nearly invisible disturbance in the fallen leaves. “Small footprints heading northeast.”

They followed the trail deeper into the woods, the last remnants of daylight barely penetrating the dense canopy above. Emma tripped over an exposed root, but Victor’s hand was instantly on her elbow, steadying her.

“Careful,” he murmured, his grip lingering a moment longer than necessary.

A cry pierced the gathering darkness. It was unmistakably Tristan’s voice, edged with pain and fear. Emma’s blood turned to ice in her veins.

She didn’t have time to swoon over the Duke’s touch!

“This way,” Victor urged, guiding her toward the sound, with one hand pressed protectively against the small of her back.

They broke into a small clearing dominated by a massive oak tree. Emma’s gaze shot upward to where Tristan clung precariously to a branch some fifteen feet above the ground, one arm streaked with blood.

“Mama!” he called, his voice trembling. “I’m sorry! The fox went up, and I thought I could—” He let out a startled yelp as the branch beneath him cracked ominously.

“Don’t move!” Victor commanded, already shrugging out of his coat and moving toward the trunk of the tree. “Hold perfectly still.”

Emma pressed her hands to her mouth, paralyzed with terror as he began to climb, moving with surprising agility for a man of his size. The branch gave another sickening crack.

“I can’t hold on much longer,” Tristan whimpered, his injured arm clearly weakening.

“Look at me,” Victor instructed calmly, now just a few feet below the boy. “When I tell you, let go. I’ll catch you.”

“No!” Tristan cried, clinging tighter to the branch. “I’ll fall!”

“Trust me,” Victor insisted, positioning himself directly beneath the boy. “I won’t let you fall.”

Emma watched in horrified fascination as her son’s gaze locked onto Victor’s. Something in the Duke’s steady expression seemed to calm him.

“Now, Tristan!” Victor ordered, just as the branch made a final, splintering protest.

Tristan released his grip, plummeting through the air with a strangled cry that pierced Emma’s heart. Victor’s arms shot out, catching the boy’s slight form against his chest with enough force to knock them both back against the trunk of the tree.

For one terrible moment, silence reigned in the clearing. Then, Tristan’s sobs broke the stillness, and Emma found herself released from her frozen state. She rushed forward as Victor carefully descended the last few feet, her son clutched securely against him.

“Let me see him,” she demanded as soon as they reached the ground, her hands already examining Tristan for injuries.

“It’s my arm,” Tristan hiccupped through his tears. “I cut it on the branch when I was climbing up.”

The wound was a jagged tear along his forearm, deep enough to cause concern but not life-threatening. Emma tore a strip from her petticoat to bind it temporarily, her hands remarkably steady despite her inner turmoil.

“What were you thinking?” she asked, her voice sharper than intended as relief gave way to fear.

Tristan’s shoulders hunched. “I wanted to see if I could track the fox to its den. To show I could be a good hunter like His Grace was in the army! I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Victor knelt beside them, his expression grave as he examined the makeshift bandage. “That will need proper cleaning and dressing. The wound is deep but clean. If treated promptly, it should heal well.”

Emma nodded, too emotionally drained to assign blame. “We need to get him home.”

“My carriage is closer,” Victor offered. “Allow me to tend to his wounds. I have some skill in treating such wounds from my military days.”

* * *

Victor worked methodically, cleaning Tristan’s injury with a gentle thoroughness that belied his powerful frame. The boy, exhausted by fear and the lingering effects of heightened emotion, was already drifting off, his eyelids fluttering despite his best efforts to remain awake.

“Will it leave a scar?” Tristan mumbled drowsily.

“Perhaps a small one,” Victor replied, wrapping clean linen around the now-disinfected wound. “But scars are merely reminders of lessons learned.”

“Like yours?” Tristan’s gaze fixed momentarily on the faint white line visible on Victor’s forearm, where his shirtsleeve had been rolled back.

“Precisely like mine,” Victor confirmed with a small smile, although there was a hint of sadness in his tone. “Though I hope you’ll acquire your life lessons through less painful methods in the future.”

Emma hovered anxiously beside them, her face still alarmingly pale. She had barely spoken during the carriage ride to Cuthbert Hall, her hand clamped tightly around Tristan’s uninjured one as though afraid he might vanish if she loosened her grip.

“There,” Victor announced, securing the bandage. “Keep it clean and change the dressing daily. He should avoid using his arm excessively for at least a week to prevent the wound from reopening.”

Tristan’s eyes had finally closed, his breathing deepening into the rhythm of sleep. Victor carefully adjusted the boy’s position against the pillows before stepping back.

Once Emma had ensured that the boy was fast asleep, they quietly left the room, closing the door behind them gingerly.

“Thank you,” she whispered as they stood in the corridor, the words seemingly wrenched from someplace deep within her. “If you hadn’t been there?—”

“But I was,” Victor interrupted gently. “And he is safe now.”

Emma’s composure, held together by sheer will through the crisis, suddenly fractured. “He might not have been! He could have fallen before you reached him, broken his neck, bled to death from a more serious wound?—”

The flood of words halted abruptly as she pressed trembling fingers against her lips.

“Emma—” Victor began, reaching for her.

“No,” she cut him off, stepping back. “You don’t understand. You can’t possibly understand what it’s like—to think, even for a second, that you might lose your child.”

The words hung in the air between them, sharp as shattered glass. Victor’s expression shuttered, something cold and ancient flashing in his eyes.

“No,” he replied, his voice deceptively even. “I do not. But I know exactly what losing one feels like.”

The stark declaration struck Emma like a physical blow.

Victor turned on his heel and strode down the corridor before she could respond, his footsteps echoing like distant thunder.

Emma started to follow him but then hesitated, glancing back at Tristan’s sleeping form. With a sigh that seemed to come from her very soul, she returned to her son’s bedside, collapsing into the chair positioned near his head.

She could not leave the boy yet, but her heart… It yearned to comfort the Duke of Westmere, who carried shadows in his eyes that she could not begin to fathom.

* * *

The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed midnight as Emma descended the stairs, her shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders against the chill that seemed to emanate from within.

Sleep had proven elusive, her mind replaying Victor’s parting words in an endless, torturous loop.

She was startled to discover a dim light still glowing in the drawing room. Pushing the door open cautiously, she found Victor seated in a chair before the dying fire, a glass of brandy untouched at his elbow.

“You’re still here,” she said, her words falling clumsily into the silence.

Victor looked up, his features cast in harsh relief by the amber firelight. “I couldn’t leave without knowing if Tristan was truly well. How is he?”

“Sleeping peacefully,” Emma replied, moving further into the room but stopping short of approaching him directly. “The physician came and agreed with your assessment—the wound is clean and should heal without complications.”

Victor nodded, his gaze returning to the glowing embers. An uncomfortable silence stretched between them, weighted with unspoken words.

“What you said earlier,” Emma began, her voice barely above a whisper. “About… about knowing what it feels like to lose a child. What did you mean?”

For several long moments, she thought he would not answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was distant, as though the words emerged from some deep vault rarely opened to the light.

“My wife, Caroline, died in childbirth ten years ago,” he said without preamble. “Our son lived barely an hour after.”

Emma sank into the chair opposite him, her shock evident. “I had no idea.”

“Few do,” Victor replied, finally lifting the glass of brandy but merely swirling the amber liquid rather than drinking it. “I have not made it a topic of drawing-room conversation.”

“Were you… were you married for long?” Emma ventured when it seemed he might not continue.

Victor’s expression remained carefully neutral. “Nearly a year. It was an arranged match—both families considered it advantageous. I was twenty-one, barely more than a boy playing at being a man.”

“And your wife?”

“Caroline was nineteen. Beautiful, accomplished. She would make an excellent duchess.” His voice held no inflection. “She performed her household duties admirably.”

Emma recognized the careful distance in his tone. In fact, she understood it.

“But… there was no love between you?”

She knew enough of what that felt like, for she had experienced the same with her late husband.

Victor’s eyes met hers directly for the first time since she had entered the room. “There was respect. We were partners in the enterprise of continuing the line.” A bitter smile crossed his face, and her heart twisted in her chest. “We had separate chambers, separate lives that intersected primarily at dinner parties and social functions. When the duty to produce an heir required it, we shared a bed.”

Emma felt heat rise to her cheeks at the blunt assessment, but she did not look away, for she knew, despite his clinical words, just how passionate the Duke of Westmere could be.

“I was in York on estate business when the messenger found me,” Victor continued, after draining his glass in a single swallow. “Caroline had gone into labor a month early. By the time I returned to London, it was too late. The physicians had failed to stop the bleeding, and Caroline was already slipping away.”

His voice remained steady, but Emma noticed how his hands had tightened around the empty glass, and her heart broke for him.

“She asked to see the child—our son. The nurses brought him, and… I remember how silent the room was. No infant’s cry.” Victor set the glass aside with careful precision. “She touched his face once, then looked at me and said she’d failed me.”

“Oh, Victor,” Emma breathed, her heart constricting.

That he still remembered those words meant that that day still haunted him, even up until this very moment. Indeed, he looked as though he were still living in the moment, his expression far too tortured for a man merely recounting a story.

“She died moments later. Our son followed within the hour. We never even had the chance to name him.” Victor’s gaze returned to the dying fire. “I arranged the funerals. I endured the condolences. And then I left England, unable to remain in a house haunted by what might have been.”

“The navy,” Emma said softly.

Victor nodded. “War seemed a fitting purgatory. I welcomed its brutality, its indifference. I saw men blown apart by cannon fire, watched friends succumb to fever, witnessed the kind of cruelty only humans can inflict on one another.” His hand rose unconsciously to the grotesque scar that marred his jawline. “I earned this three years ago during a boarding action off the Spanish coast.”

“And the others?” Emma asked, sensing there was more.

“Are less visible,” Victor replied simply. “Some on the body, most elsewhere.”

Emma rose, crossing the small distance between them to kneel beside his chair. With tentative fingers, she reached out to trace the scar on his jaw.

“I’m sorry for what I said. I had no right?—”

Victor caught her hand, his fingers caressing hers for a brief moment before releasing them again—albeit reluctantly.

“You could not have known. I have shared this with no one since returning to England.”

“So… then… why…” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “Why tell me?” she asked, the question barely audible.

Victor’s eyes, when they met hers, reflected a vulnerability that stole her breath. “Because… I also…” Now, his voice was gruff, and he closed the distance between them in an instant. “I want to know you, too.”

Emma sucked in a breath, her eyes widening. “Wh-What?”

Yes, she was well aware that she sounded like a fool, but his words… She did not know whether to believe them or not.

“Emma.” Her name fell like a prayer from his lips, and she shuddered.

His eyes darkened, as though her reaction was all the concession he needed.

He claimed her lips between one breath and the next.