They Broke the Duke's Bastard, Now She Is His Only Heir novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Duke's Confession

Liora's POV

I came down the stairs on my crutch with my hair still loose, and the Duke of the river lands stood up from Doran's kitchen chair.

He looked worn through, a man who had not slept in a week.

Doran stayed by the door with his arms folded.

"I'll hear him alone," I said.

"I'll be in the hall."

"Leave it open."

He did, and he did not go far.

The Duke did not sit again until I had.

He set a small cedar box on the table between us and put his hand flat on the lid.

"My name is on a paper in this house that says I owe you nothing," he said. "I came to say I owe you everything."

"Say it, then."

"I married your mother."

He said it to the table.

"Twenty-five years ago, in the abbey, at night. She was nineteen. I was thirty-one and afraid of my father. I told myself I would tell him in a year."

"You didn't."

"My father owed the crown eleven thousand crowns, and the Duchess's family had them. He gave me a month to marry her." His mouth shook. "I did it. I let your mother go on sewing in my father's kitchens, because the day I told him she was my wife, she would have been put out on the road with a child coming."

"With me."

"With you."

I looked at his hands.

They were big, with a heavy ring on each, and they would not stay still.

"Fifteen years ago she died of a fever," he said. "You were nine. I sat outside the kitchen door that night. I never went in."

"Why not?"

"Because I was a coward."

It was the first honest thing he had said to me in my life, and I found I did not want it.

"You sat in the front gallery four years running," I said. "Did you know me?"

"I knew you from the first night. You dance exactly like her." His eyes came up, red-rimmed. "I could not look away. I could not claim you either. So I sat in the front row every Midsummer and watched my wife's daughter dance, and I told myself that was enough."

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