Page 31 of The Beast’s Unwanted Duchess (Icy Dukes #1)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

" Y ou look terrible." Andrew commented as Victor stepped into their makeshift boxing ring. "And you smell like a cellar. Have you been drinking?"

When hadn’t he?

He had found it hard to sleep since he’d left Alice two days prior and had hoped the drink would rid him of the memories of the hurt look he’d put on her face, but he was only left feeling worse with each glass he took.

You’re a coward, Victor.

Her words had stung, but he couldn’t deny the truth of them.

He was afraid of the feelings for his wife that had rapidly taken root in his heart, which had previously housed the darkness of his past. Knowing she was quick to trust, he didn’t want to give any more fuel to the flame that had begun to spark between them.

He wasn’t selfish to resign her to that fate. Placing his things down at the edge, he turned to his friend.

"I still look better than you." He tried for humor to mask his pain, but his friend, damn him, saw right through it.

"You look like you haven’t slept for days." Andrew scoffed. "What happened?"

"I didn’t come here to talk," he answered, rolling his neck and shoulders.

His friend scoffed, shaking his head and taking on a stubborn stance.

"As much as I enjoy senseless violence and beating you to a pulp, it wouldn’t be fair to do so now," he retorted. "Talk."

"Andrew."

"Victor."

"Don’t be a cad. I need this."

Why, of all times, the man would decide he would rather talk than fight, would the man choose now?

They had decided many years prior that boxing would be the outlet by which they communicated when they had issues they would rather not discuss.

It was a much better outlet and more respectable than starting brawls in inns of low repute and had worked just as well for years.

He could barely understand the man’s insistence on talking now.

"You’re drunk and you have a crazed look in your eye," Andrew explained, stepping closer with cautious steps the way one would when approaching a frantic horse. "You need a warm bed and some sleep from where I’m standing."

"I can get some sleep after I beat you," he bragged, but seeing the stubborn look in his friend’s eye, he sighed. "Please, Andrew."

He sighed and shook his head, muttering under his breath.

"I’ll humor you, but I warn you, I won’t be merciful."

"I have never needed you to be."

The words were barely out of his mouth when a blow struck him square across the jaw. His head whipped to the side from the force. If he had used a little more force, Victor was sure his neck would have snapped.

"Damn you," he cursed, spitting out the blood that had pooled in his mouth.

He was lucky the blow had taken none of his teeth.

"You didn’t come here to talk, did you?" the bastard quipped, looking smug.

He returned the favor with a blow his friend dodged easily. He grinned broadly, a wolf excited by the prospect of the kill, and squared up. Now, they were both ready for an actual fight.

Andrew struck out again, and perhaps it was due to the whiskey in his blood, he was too slow to dodge, and this one met him in his abdomen, winding him.

"Shite," he spat.

He tried, blow after blow, to land one on his friend, but the man moved fast, not wasting a single movement and returning blows with rapid succession.

Victor would have given in and called the match off, but pride held him in the ring.

The pain was excruciating but at least distracted him from the memory of Alice’s hurt eyes.

This was exactly what he had needed and what he had deserved. Perhaps his father had been right all along. He was always going to be lacking. He was never going to be able to do anything right. No matter how hard he tried.

He had done the right thing, leaving Alice to live her life free of his influence. She deserved better than a man who failed at everything he set out to do.

"God. Victor," Andrew groaned. "You are ruining this match for me."

He returned to the present, still feeling the clouds of the darkness he had begun to sink into hovering strongly over him.

He hadn’t even realized just how much damage his body had taken until now.

His face and body ached in several places, and he knew there would be a new collection of bruises to deal with.

"I didn’t say we could stop," he complained, noticing Andrew had removed his shirt and was wiping at his face.

"You didn’t need to," Andrew replied with a frown. "If I didn’t, I could have killed you and I have a sinking feeling you were hoping I would."

He accepted the water pitcher and drank greedily, not realizing how thirsty he was.

"I would have stopped you before you could."

"I highly doubt you would have," Andrew spat. His chest still heaved with the exertion of the exercise. "I know you are burdened by whatever foolish thing you’ve done now but this isn’t the way to handle things. I don’t like you using me as punishment."

"I’m not…"

"You forget I know you, Victor," he spat.

His forest green eyes were alight with rage, showing that Victor had hurt him deeply.

"You are not much different from Benedict, and I would rather see you here in pain than have you chase physical punishment to some other continent."

"Is there still no word from him?" he inquired.

Benedict was Andrew’s cousin who enlisted in the army after his betrothed had jumped into the Thames when she discovered his affair.

He had started by drinking himself into a guilty stupor and, unable to bear the guilt of her death, decided that he deserved punishment.

The three of them had been close since their school days, but as Andrew’s cousin, his disappearance weighed heavier on him.

"No, but we are not discussing him now. What has you in such a state? Why aren’t you at your estate?"

Victor sighed in preparation for the scolding that would come with his revelation of the truth of what he had done, and he was not mistaken. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, his friend nearly punched him again.

"Why would you do that?" he asked, near yelling.

"I can’t be with her like a regular man," he answered.

"I do not understand. Are you impotent?"

"That is not what I mean," he sighed, rising from the floor to pace. "I cannot feign happiness when deep down I am not. I cannot live as though I have no cares."

"I still do not understand what you mean," Andrew insisted, rising also. "Why would you have to feign happiness or live without a care? You like her, do you not?"

If he were honest, he liked her more than he could accurately describe, and that was what scared him.

If he were to voice it out, it would be as though asserting it, and there would be no forgetting her, as he intended to, with time.

He had never felt the way he did for Alice for any other woman, and the magnitude of it scared him to no end.

"I cannot say that, but I do care for her happiness."

"That is utter rubbish, and you know it." Andrew scoffed. "You like her, otherwise you would never have kissed her or set yourself on this supposed righteous path."

"I care for her and that’s the truth of it," he answered stubbornly.

"There is nothing more than concern for her. She was basically gifted to me by her father who didn’t want an unmarried daughter and had made her life miserable.

Now that she has my name and lives in my estate, she has nothing to worry about. I have played my role."

"You are unbelievable." Andrew laughed. "I didn’t think you had it in you to say ridiculous things.

You have never let yourself converse with a woman, even your household staff, but you not only kissed this one, you let her take you on a tour of your own home and discuss literature. You are smitten by all standards."

"Do not…"

"What’s worse? The girl is equally smitten and now will be forced to live her days lonely because you choose to hang yourself on a cross for naught."

"I am trying not to hurt her."

"By hurting her?" he asked. "She will live her days in misery and will come to resent you. Doesn’t that story sound familiar? The only difference is that you haven’t put a child in her that she would hate."

"Don’t liken me to my father, Andrew. I will not stand for it," he warned. "I am nothing like him. He was a monster."

"Why not?" Andrew mocked. "You’re doing the exact same thing to Alice that he did with your mother."

"You have no right!" Victor glared. "No right! You weren’t there. You didn’t see what happened."

"No I wasn’t, but I can tell from how you act that you have stepped into the shoes of the man you claim to hate."

Victor lunged at him but missed and was shoved into the corner.

"You push away any and everyone who shows even the slightest hint of concern for you. Hell, the only reason we’re still friends is because I’m the only one who gives you the pain you continue to feel you deserve," Andrew continued.

"I will no longer serve as your purveyor.

You have grown past letting his sick words keep you in this prison. You are not what he said you are."

"I am worse, Andrew. I ruin everything I touch, and I do not want to harm her. She doesn’t have to suffer being bound to me," he argued. "I am trying to save her from my family’s curse. From me. I have no love to give her."

"You keep saying that, yet she loves you anyway."

"She doesn’t love me."

"Why else do you think she has stayed despite your conflicting attitude?" Andrew questioned. "I saw how you looked at her at the garden party. You are taken with her also. I watched you nearly lose your head over her speaking to another man. It is more than possession you feel."

"You’re being ridiculous."

"And you’re being a coward."

"For someone who doesn’t believe in love, you’re a staunch advocate of it."

"I am tired of seeing you this way," Andrew sighed, chest deflating with the act. "You deserve happiness, Victor. For once in your life I need you to see that."