Page 49 of The Feared Duke’s Found Family

“On what grounds?” Lysander demanded, stepping forward until his shadow fell over her. “Because you find her demeanor unpleasant?”

“Because of his injuries,” Fanny said, the words cutting clean and cold through the air. She looked straight into his dark gray eyes. “Have you ever looked closely at the marks on Michael’s skin, Lysander? Have you ever noticed the bruises on his neck and back?”

Lysander went completely rigid.

“I have not inspected him, stripped to his skin, no,” Lysander growled defensively, his hands dropping to his sides. “I know only that he sleepwalks violently in the dark and occasionally has accidents during that time.”

“They were not scrapes from a stumble, Lysander,” Fanny said, her voice dropping to a desperate, urgent whisper. “They are deep, mottled bruises on his neck and along his spine. They look like the marks of cruel, gripping fingers. When I asked him who had done it, he began to shake. He wept, Lysander. He pleaded with me not to say a word, terrified he would be punished, and he refused to sleep in Peter’s room because he swore Peter would not be safe.”

A dark, chaotic panic surged through Lysander’s veins.

Michael.

His mind raced violently, trying to fit the pieces together against the rigid framework he had relied on for four years. He remembered the sound of Michael’s nightly shrieks, the bruised forehead on the nursery floorboards, the endless cycle of broken sleep and hollow apologies. The thought that someone under his own roof might be deliberately harming his flesh and blood was a monstrous, unbearable concept. It threatened to shatter the very foundation of the sanctuary he believed he had built.

“What are you implying?” Lysander demanded, his voice rising in harsh, defensive friction as he stepped toward her. “Who could possibly hurt him? The staff has served this house for decades! Veronica has watched over him night after night! You are taking the disjointed terrors of a traumatized, sleepwalking child and conjuring a conspiracy from the shadows!”

“I am not inventing the marks on his flesh!” Fanny shot back, her small hands clenching into fists at her sides. “I saw them, Lysander! And until I know he is safe, I have promised Michael he will sleep in my bedchamber.”

Lysander froze, staring at her in sheer, stunned disbelief. “You did what?”

“I moved his bed to my room,” she said firmly. “He will sleep under my direct supervision tonight.”

“Without consulting me?” Lysander’s anger flared white-hot, his broad chest heaving against his linen shirt. “You take a child from his assigned quarters, alter the entire structure of the nursery wing, and make unilateral decisions regarding my heir without uttering a single syllable to his father? By what right?”

“By the right of a mother who refuses to watch a child suffer!” Fanny took a defiant step into his space, her amber eyes blazing with an unyielding fire. “You think rules and ledgers will save them, Lysander, but what those children need is affection! They need warmth! Look at what occurred on the terrace with Emily! That poor girl threw herself onto the stones to protect her brother’s pet, and the moment she stood up bleeding, you gave her a lecture on skull fractures!”

Lysander flinched, the accusation striking the raw, bleeding wound of his own shortcomings. “She was reckless! She could have been grievously injured!”

“She was terrified of disappointing you!” Fanny’s voice broke with raw passion. “Emily is seven years old, yet she holds herself like an old general because she believes your love depends on her perfection! She did not need a reprimand, Lysander! She needed her father to take her into his arms, tell her she was brave, and reassure her that he was on her side!”

“Discipline is what keeps them alive!” Lysander growled, his jaw clenching so hard it ached. “Children cannot be allowed to grow up unchecked and spoiled by constant indulgence! A father’s duty is to prepare them for a cruel world, not coddle them into weakness!”

“Affection is not spoiling them!” Fanny shouted, stepping so close that he could see tears of fury shimmering in her eyes. “Love is not weakness, Lysander! It is the only thing that gives a child the strength to face the world at all! If you continue to lock your heart behind walls of stone, you will raise three broken strangers who will leave this house the moment they are grown and never look back!”

Silence crashed over the garden path, heavy, suffocating, and absolute.

Lysander looked at her, his hands trembling as he tried to contain the raging storm in his chest. The gulf between them felt vast and insurmountable. Her warmth, her unyielding instinct to nurture, clashed violently with the cold, rigid fortress he had spent four years building to keep pain at bay.

He drew a long, ragged breath through his nose, forcing his features back into a mask of iron.

“It is clear,” Lysander murmured, “that we possess fundamental, irreconcilable differences in how these children must be raised.”

“Yes,” Fanny whispered, holding his gaze with sorrowful resolve. “It appears we do. I still believe the child will be better off in my rooms. At least until you verify that no one is harming him.”

Lysander turned his head toward the gray stone facade of the manor, his voice dropping into a flat, authoritative register that brooked no argument.

“We will discuss whether there is any manner of resolving those differences at a later time,” Lysander stated coldly. “Until then, there will be no further alterations to this household, no moving of rooms, and no changes to the nursery without my express approval. Nevertheless, I cannot doubt your sincerity. Michael may remain with you.”

Nineteen

Lysander strode down the quiet corridor of the east wing, his heavy boots making muffled, rhythmic thuds against the carpet runner.

He had spoken with unyielding sharpness to Fanny in the garden, wielding his authority like a shield to keep her from overturning the remaining structure of his home.

Yet her desperate, burning words remained lodged in his mind. The dark marks on Michael’s neck, the boy’s trembling terror, the sheer conviction in her eyes—he could not dismiss them, no matter how fiercely his pride had fought against her accusations.

He stopped outside the nursery sitting room and turned the brass latch.