Cecilia’s brow furrowed. She took a step back, unsure whether it was his words or the way he said them that unsettled her more.
“What?” was all she could manage to say.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Ido not intend to have more children,” he said simply.
This was definitely not a subject that Cecilia had intended to broach that evening. Certainly not while the air between them still felt crisp from their awkward wedding that morning. But the moment hung, charged and very uncertain, and she found herself watching Valentine as he discarded his coat and loosened his cravat.
Cecilia faltered, her chest tightening. “Surely,” she added. “You do not mean to exclude our duty to produce an heir. That cannot be ignored, no matter how coldly you feel about the rest of this arrangement.”
“I have an heir,” he said to her, returning to her side when he was done loosening his clothing.
He stepped closer to her, his voice infuriatingly calm. “Who told you it must be done?”
She stared at him. “Everyone.”
“Well, apparently, everyone seems to be wrong about the subject.”
Cecilia squinted her eyes slightly, unsure whether he was jesting or truly serious. Surely, one of her key responsibilities as the new Duchess of Ashbourne was to provide an heir. To secure the line. It had been whispered into her ear from the moment she came of age, discussed with maddening certainty by her aunt and her tutors alike, as if motherhood were an inevitable condition of different titles. To hear him dismiss it so casually felt… disorienting.
She stood a little straighter and took in a sharp breath. “I see,” she said, even though the heat rising in her throat made it almost impossible to stay polite. “You mean to break with tradition. How very modern of you.”
Valentine didn’t so much as flinch. He reached behind him for the glass he had been drinking from and then turned back to her, standing only a few inches away now. “That is not the case here, Duchess.”
“Then what is the case?” she questioned, feeling her patience wear thin. “Explain it to me so I understand, Your Grace.”
He arched a brow, not with irritation, but with the faintest gleam of amusement, as though she were an unruly pupil testing her tutor’s endurance. “You appear very determined to understand matters you have only the faintest grasp of.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He took a deliberate sip, and she hated how calmly he did it, as though she were a fluttering sparrow pecking at the edges of a feast she had no business approaching. “This sudden interest in marital obligations, is it curiosity, or are you merely eager to check off a duty from your long list of duchess duties?”
Her cheeks burned. “I assure you, Your Grace, I don’t go about ticking off lists when it comes to–”
“To what? Intimacy?” he asked, a single brow rising as he took a step forward. “You came into my study, indignant, muttering about heirs and wedding nights without the faintest idea what you were proposing. So I ask again. Did I obsess you so thoroughly in the past few days that you’ve begun fantasizing about fulfilling your duties?”
Cecilia’s mouth dropped open, and something sharp and wild twisted in her chest. “Obsess me?” she repeated with a laugh that held no humor. “I came in here to have a rational conversation. A practical one. Forgive me if I thought it prudent to address the rather large elephant in the room, one you seem determined to pretend does not exist.”
“You call marching in and asking me to lie with you practical?”
“Lie with me?” she questioned with eyes, unable to believe her eyes. “Your Grace, pardon me, but that is not at all what I came here to propose. I came here because I was under the very clear impression that something of consequence was meant to happenon one’s wedding night. Or have I gravely misunderstood what all of London means when it speaks of consummation?”
He exhaled slowly, but not without the twitch of a smile. “The word is correct, Duchess. But the assumption was yours.”
“Then enlighten me,” she said, arms folded tightly across her nightdress. “What exactly did you mean when you said you had no desire for an heir?”
Valentine’s eyes flicked to hers, and for a moment, she thought he might deflect again. But instead, he took a step back and walked toward the sideboard, where he poured himself another glass of brandy. “I meant precisely what I said,” he replied at last, swirling the amber liquid in the glass. “My brother, Norman, is my heir. He always has been. I have no wish to change that.”
Cecilia blinked, not quite certain she had heard him correctly. “You… you mean to say that you would rather your brother inherit everything than–?”
“Yes.”
“But that makes no sense!” she snapped, unable to stop herself from advancing a step. “Why go through the trouble of marrying again if not for a legitimate successor? Surely, you don’t imagine society will let it rest with that explanation.”
“Let society imagine what it will,” he said flatly. “I am not beholden to its expectations.”
Cecilia stared at him as a deep unease bloomed in her chest, not from fear, but from something more disquieting. Disappointment. Even now, she could not entirely name why it stung so much. She had never dreamt of becoming a mother. She had never imagined a household full of children, not for herself. Yet, to be denied the possibility so summarily...to be cast aside so easily as irrelevant to his legacy, chafed more than it should have.
