Page 34 of The Feared Duke’s Found Family

Lysander’s eyes tracked down to her lips, a dark, fleeting tension passing over his features before his expression hardened back into granite.

“The boy will return it to the garden before supper,” Lysander declared coldly, stepping around her. He looked down at Peter, who was struggling desperately to fight back tears. “Do you understand me, Peter?”

Peter swallowed hard, his chin trembling violently as he nodded, staring down at his shoes. “Yes, Father.”

Lysander turned his sharp gaze back to Fanny, his broad shoulders squared in victory. “Do not undermine my authority in the nursery again, Fanny. We discussed boundaries.”

He turned on his heel and walked out of the room, leaving a heavy, suffocating silence in his wake. Fanny stood on the rug, her pulse racing with anger and an overwhelming determination. She looked at Peter’s slumped shoulders, then at the dark hallway where Lysander had vanished.

Lysander thought he could govern this house like a military camp. But as Fanny knelt again to pull Peter into a tight, comforting hug, she knew one thing for certain: she was not going to let him freeze the hearts out of these children, nor was she going to let him intimidate her.

The heavy mahogany door of the study clicked shut behind her, cutting off the vast, hollow hush of the Hilgrove corridors.

Fanny kept her spine straight, smoothing the dark olive muslin of her afternoon dress as she took two measured steps into the room. A fire crackled in the hearth, sending embers licking up the black chimney brick, but the warmth did nothing to ease the atmosphere. The air smelled of dried gall-ink, calfskin bindings, and the crisp, cedar-and-clove scent belonging to the man standing behind the massive desk.

Lysander had not looked up. His head was bent over a sprawling estate ledger, a quill gripped in his large, ink-stained fingers as he scratched sharp, rhythmic figures across the parchment. His broad shoulders were rigid under a charcoal coat, his dark hair falling slightly over his brow.

“If this is about the reptile,” Lysander’s low baritone sliced through the scratch of his pen without a second’s hesitation, “the answer is no.”

Fanny paused on the Persian carpet, resting her hands lightly over her waist. She had spent five days within these stone walls, and she was already learning that the Duke of Hilgrove conducted domestic life with the exact same merciless efficiency he applied to his rents.

“His name is not the reptile, Your Grace,” Fanny said, her voice smooth, calm, and laced with quiet amusement. “He is a land tortoise. And Peter was in tears when you ordered him to carry it back to the meadow.”

Lysander dipped his steel-nibbed pen into the inkpot with deliberate precision. “The meadow is where wild creatures belong. A manor house is not a menagerie, Fanny. Hilgrove has order. We do not keep mud-caked vermin crawling beneath the mahogany furniture, knocking into skirting boards, or shedding disease on the carpets.”

“He does not shed disease, nor does he move quickly enough to do battle with the furniture,” Fanny countered, stepping closer until the edge of the desk stood between them. “He is three inches wide. He moves at the pace of a church procession, and he eats dandelions.”

Lysander set the pen down. He lifted his head, his dark gray eyes pinning her with that heavy, unblinking intensity that made the air between them grow suddenly dense. He leaned back in the high leather armchair, his jaw locked like granite.

“The boy is seven,” Lysander said, his tone flat and unyielding. “Peter lacks discipline. He wanders into the woods when he ought to be at his Latin primers, he soils his linen within ten minutes of being dressed, and he allows his imagination to run unchecked. If I indulge every stray beast he drags through the terrace doors, my estate will be overrun with foxes and crows before the Michaelmas quarter.”

Fanny looked at the hard, uncompromising angle of his jaw and refused to shrink. She remembered the sheer terror that had drained the color from Peter’s small face when he had heard those heavy boots approaching in the garden days earlier. The boy was starving for connection, yet running blindly from the only man who could give it to him.

“You are looking at this through the lens of an estate ledger again,” Fanny murmured, tilting her head slightly.

Lysander’s brow rose a fraction of an inch, his lips tightening into a thin line. “A ledger provides structure. It keeps the roof overhead, and the staff paid. It does not allow for chaotic sentiment.”

“And Peter is not a tenant, or a broken carriage axle, Lysander,” she said, using his Christian name, letting the word drop between them like a challenge. “He is your son. And right now, he views you as an executioner.”

A flicker of dark tension crossed his features, his hands tightening on the polished arms of his chair. “I am his father. I provide his food, his roof, his tutors, and his future. It is not my duty to entertain him with stray vermin.”

“It is your duty to teach him.” Fanny stepped in, resting both palms flat against the leather edge of his blotter, leaning forward just enough that the heat of his presence brushed against her senses. “You want discipline? You want order? Then use the tortoise.”

Lysander stared at her, genuine bewilderment cutting through the cold stone of his expression. “Use a tortoise to instill discipline?”

“Precisely.” Fanny met his sharp gray gaze with absolute conviction. “A wild pet requires care. It must be fed fresh greens each morning. It requires clean water in a shallow dish. It needs a secure enclosure, protected from the dogs and the carriage wheels. Make it a joint project between the two of you.”

Lysander remained still, his chest rising and falling in a slow, deep rhythm as he processed the sheer absurdity of her words. “You are suggesting I spend twenty minutes each day inspecting lettuce leaves with Peter?”

“I am suggesting you spend twenty minutes each day letting your son see that your hands can build something for him instead of merely signing orders that hurt him,” Fanny said softly, her eyes softening with raw, unvarnished honesty. “Peter needs to know that his father is not an immovable wall waiting to crush him for dirty fingernails. If you take this creature from him and cast it out, you will not teach him obedience, Lysander. You will only teach him that anything he loves will be taken away the moment he is caught enjoying it.”

The room fell dead silent, save for the rhythmic ticking of the mantel clock and the crackle of wood in the hearth.

Lysander’s gray eyes searched hers, dark and piercing. He was a man who understood trade, contracts, and uncompromising lines of duty. Yet, looking at the fierce, protective determination burning in her eyes, he found himself utterly unable to dismantle her logic. She took the most ridiculous, trivial domestic disturbance and turned it into an unassailable moral campaign.

He let out a low, rough exhale through his nose, running a hand over the back of his neck.

“The creature remains outside,” Lysander said, his gravelly voice dropping into a grudging register of surrender. “In the walled herb garden. If I find it inside the corridors, on the carpets, or anywhere near the linen closets, I will have the head gardener relocate it to the south pond before noon. Am I clear?”