Page 36 of His Scandalous Duchess (Icy Dukes #4)

Valentine had begun to think she might have drifted off when Cecilia stirred slightly in his arms. Her fingers traced slow, absent patterns over the back of his hand, and her voice came low, almost hesitant, as if she hadn’t meant to speak it aloud.

“Valentine?” she called him softly.

“What is it, Cecilia?” he asked drowsily.

“I think I want children.”

Valentine’s eyes shot open.

“I’ve never really thought about having children,” she continued.

He didn’t move, didn’t speak. Just listened.

“I used to think that I had no desire for it,” she went on. “Not because I dislike children, I don’t. I practically helped raise my siblings. I just couldn’t imagine it, and when you said you didn’t want children, it didn’t matter to me. We had Abigail.”

She paused, and he felt her swallow. Her thumb gently pressed against the inside of his wrist. “But I suppose that’s changed. I’ve changed. You changed me.”

That caught him. He blinked at the ceiling, his breath shallow, trying to understand why those simple words had struck so deep.

“I’ve been thinking about it lately,” she continued softly. “Just…little thoughts. A child who looks like you. Abigail with a younger sibling to boss about. This house with more laughter in it. A family that’s ours. Real, and flawed, and a little bit loud.”

She turned slightly to look up at him, her voice lower now. “I wouldn’t want that with anyone else. Just you.”

Valentine’s throat tightened. Her head rested against his shoulder, her fingers woven through his now.

He had never imagined more children. Never let himself imagine it.

After everything that had passed in his first marriage, after the grief, the silence, the hollow routine of duty performed without joy, he had made a decision.

Abigail would be his only child. The only one he would raise.

The only one he could protect. He hadn’t wanted to risk giving more of himself, hadn’t wanted to open a door that loss might one day walk through again.

He’d never even considered it. Not once.

Until now.

He didn’t know when he’d stopped guarding his heart so tightly, but somewhere along the way, Cecilia had slipped inside without asking, settled into the hollow spaces, and made herself at home.

She had rewritten the quiet of his house, the sluggishness of his days.

Even now, with just her hand in his and her warmth at his side, he felt a kind of steadiness he hadn’t known he was missing.

He kissed the top of her head, his mouth resting there for a moment longer than necessary.

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

She didn’t reply, but her body softened in his arms, and he knew she understood.

The thought of starting a family, a real, functional family, didn’t scare him that much in that moment.

He welcomed the thought and decided that when he was less drowsy…

when he could think with a clear head, he would give it some thought.

They lay in silence for a while longer, their breaths gradually syncing, the hush of the room wrapping around them like a second coverlet.

She shifted slightly, nestling closer, her back snug against his chest, her head tucking beneath his chin.

He tightened his arm around her waist, just to keep her there, warm and close and real.

He let his eyes close as the warmth of her body lured him toward sleep. It was the second night in a row that they had slept in the same bed, and he was starting to enjoy the thought of this being his normalcy.

With her breathing steady beside him, Valentine drifted off to sleep. At first, it was nothing more than shadows. A field, perhaps, or a corridor stretched too long. He wasn’t sure where he had drifted off to. His footsteps sounded far away.

Someone was laughing. A high, lilting sound, but he couldn’t place it. He turned, trying to follow it, but the air shifted. The corridor narrowed. The laughter changed. Became wrong.

He tried to speak, but the walls pressed in tighter, and he couldn't see. Something was wrong; he felt it rising in his chest, the way dreams did when they stopped making sense and began to pull.

“Valentine.”

That voice. His chest tightened instantly. He knew Helena’s voice all too well. It haunted his dreams for years.

“Valentine...”

The corridor narrowed with every step, the walls bent inward, and the cold air pressed against the back of his neck.

Valentine moved forward, though he wasn’t sure why.

The floor beneath him felt like stone, but it echoed as if it were hollow.

Each footfall sounded too far away, and when he decided to stop walking, he came face to face with a door, opening into a room.

He knew it instantly. He knew then where he was.

The wallpaper was a faded floral, pale and familiar. The curtains were half-drawn. A basin stood by the hearth, the water inside stained pink. The fire flickered weakly, casting long shadows against the worn rug. On the bed, Helena laid, grunting.

His breath caught. Valentine had been here before. Five years ago. The day Abigail was born.

Helena writhed in the center of the bed, limbs tangled in soiled linen, her nightdress stained dark with blood at the hem.

Her golden hair, once so polished, clung to her cheeks in damp ropes.

Her eyes were wide, too white, too bright, rolling between the ceiling and him as if tethered to some invisible thread of fury.

When they landed on him, her lips curled back like a snarl.

“Don’t you dare stand there,” she spat, her voice raw from screaming. “You! You did this to me.”

He tried to move, to speak, but his legs refused him. His throat burned with unshed words. The air tasted of metal. The walls of the room beat like a heart, breathing in tandem with Helena’s anguish.

“You and your horrible father!” she sobbed. “I begged my family not to do this. I begged them! I didn’t want this, I didn’t want to be with you. I didn’t want any of this.”

He took a step forward, trembling as her nails scraped against the headboard.

“You wanted an heir,” she hissed, baring her teeth in agony as her body convulsed. “So take it. Take it!”

Her bloodied hand lifted off the bed, trembling as she pointed toward the wailing infant cradled in the midwife’s arms. Her face twisted into something almost inhuman with hate.

“You can take it to your father,” she spat, voice rising into a near scream. “Take it to that cold bastard and show him what a good son you are. Tell him ‘Look, Father, I’ve done as you asked. I’ve broken her, bled her out, torn her open like a sacrifice.’ Take it!’”

“Helena–”

“I hate you!” she cried, voice cracking. “I hate every inch of you, Valentine Price. You took my life and handed it to your father like a gift.”

Her eyes, red-rimmed and full of venom, met his. “I curse you.”

Valentine flinched.

“I curse you to never be happy. Ever. You don’t deserve it.

Not after what you have done to me. I hope you live with the fact that you don’t deserve to live a happy life, knowing that you ruined my chances of one.

I hope this child grows up to despise you for what you and your father did to its mother. I hope–”

Valentine woke with a start as a strangled sound caught in his throat.

His chest heaved as though he had been drowning, and only now broken through the surface.

He dragged in a breath that didn’t satisfy, and then another that burned.

The air felt thick, poisoned, like it carried the bitter smoke of Helena’s last words.

Valentine wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep, but he was panting and almost drenched in sweat. His hands were shaking.

He pressed a palm to his heart, but the hollowness there gaped wide, deeper now than ever.

That same black void he had spent years building walls against, years pretending he could ignore, had returned.

He was certain of it. It felt freshly carved, raw, and howling as if Helena herself had clawed her way through time and flesh to remind him that some sins could not be outrun.

He blinked. Beside him, Cecilia slept. Her breath was slow, even. One hand curled near her cheek, peaceful and soft. In that moment, he hated himself.

Who are you kidding, Valentine?

He turned his face away from Cecilia with worry knitted in his forehead. His throat tightened. He had forgotten so quickly the hurt that had defined the last five years of his life.

Helena had been right.

He had ruined her life. Whether or not he had known, whether or not it had been arranged or expected, it didn’t matter.

He hadn’t seen her pain. He hadn’t stopped long enough to ask what she wanted.

He’d been so eager to please his father, to secure the dukedom’s future, that he’d never once questioned the cost.

Even now, all these years later, her words hadn’t faded. They echoed louder the happier he became, like joy itself was an affront to her memory. Now, looking at Cecilia, who had crept past every wall and taken up quiet residence in his soul, all he could think was no. No, he couldn’t allow it.

He had to stop.

Before he ruined another life with the misery that crowded his own. Before he let her give her heart to a man who was too broken to give anything whole in return.

Valentine swung his legs off the bed. He sat for a moment, hunched over, elbows on his knees, his hands tangled in his hair like he might pull the guilt out by force.

He needed air. to breathe something other than the ghost of Helena’s voice.

So, quietly and carefully, in order not to wake Cecilia, he rose from the bed.

Thankfully, they had not gone too far. It would still be possible, painful, perhaps, but possible to put distance between them before Cecilia’s expectations of him spiraled into something he could never fulfill.

Before she began to believe he was capable of offering her the very things he had long ago buried with his first wife.