Chapter Text
She invites Titus to dinner. it’s just Sarah and Hector and they are both so sickeningly in love with each other and themselves that neither one of them pay it any mind. She doesn’t entertain them. Sarah flirts with Titus who openly flirts back and she grips her knife and fork and thinks that the fucker knows what he is doing, knows that he is tapping into the side of her that is getting worse and worse with each passing day. The side of her that until this man crashed down in her life she didn’t think herself capable off. This jealousy, this bloodlust, this rage that ensnares and grabs her and fights the rational side of her.
Then again she has never known love like this before.
Titus might be what he thinks is a monster but she disagrees. Arguably her mother has dropped the ball with him, he is one of the richest men in Europe. The only saving grace being that he had not graced New York shores before this snivelling toad. Hector is less than Titus in every way imaginable. He is worth four times the price of Sidmouth castle alone. He could easily outspend her father. The only thing that would be a turn off to any society bride is the lack of a title and the fact that he is…well…violent.
It’s not a violence to her, not like how she met him. When Hector first backhanded her for being rude to Sarah, Gladys had been left stunned, when he had smacked her again for daring to come down to dinner with a black eye she had mostly ignored it. the man didn’t touch her, the nature of his relationship with his sister so insidious that it bought her some skin in the game. He needed a wife because it dispelled the proof that he was sleeping with his sister in some sick relationship she had no idea about and never wanted too. it was the best of a very, very bad situation.
And she was alone. Adelheid had gone, after the disastrous first time she didn’t invite her mother back and Hector refused to let her go to New York even though Larry’s nuptials were coming up soon, a criss cross of drama where her mother had said no, Larry had effectively disowned her and it had taken a three hour row—according to Adelheid who wrote as if they were best friends and not Duchess and employee—between their mother and father in which nearly every bit of China was shattered, there had been tears and then finally what sounded like a fantastic making up session in which Church had found them entangled on the floor of the sitting room having taken it apart…literally.
The thought of her mother and father having a monstrous drawn out row and then a fantastically long and very arduous sexual marathon was enough to make her both shudder in disgust and also laugh in amusement. In truth her parents are two sides of the same coin, for all one of them might have the strength to walk away they are never going to fully break up. Her father had chosen their mother time and time again and to be honest now she understands that borderline obsession turned love, now she has that for herself she thinks she can understand. After all…she knows what she is going to do tonight, put into place tonight.
Titus smirks over a glass of wine at her and then turns to Sarah. She puts her hand on top of his and he doesn’t push her off and Gladys raises an eyebrow. She is going to fucking kill that bitch she thinks as she turns to her soup.
Sarah still decides when they are done eating, what they are eating…she has pulled out no stops tonight. She is either making Hector jealous or proving a point it’s hard to tell but both of them are doing something. Hector offers her a quick twist of the smile. She doesn’t know if he can see the way she is feeling. Not sure if there is a way that she can hide it to be honest.
She meets Titus Danforth when they go to Scotland, he owns a large castle up there that he hardly ever uses, a large estate that he inherited from his father and lurks about sometimes to scare off the tourists as he calls his tenants.
Hector had gone hunting and she had slipped away from him and Sarah and the constant sycophantic servants that have known about them for years and done nothing to stop it. She slips into a small room feeling around stone from where she can still feel Hector’s hands on her throat and she can only see out of one eye with the blurred vision and she—
She sees him.
Gutting a stag. Covered in blood. Dark hair curling soft to the touch, eyes dedicated on the task at hand, hands coated in blood, up to his neck and chin in it. laugh lines at his eyes and then—
He looks at her as if he is suddenly aware someone is there and…
She is lost.
It’s hard to describe to be honest, that feeling of being head over heels in love. That feeling of something behind your navel jerking so tight…of living day to day until you can see that person again. She’d thought she knew what love was with Billy, had resigned herself with Hector to never knowing it. And then along came Titus, filthy rich, possessive, unlocking the dark parts of herself that she didn’t know that he had and inviting himself to stay with them with a smooth charm and threats, promises mingled in with flirtation and Hector’s hand in a cast for three weeks when he dared to raise a fist to her in his presence.
Titus is a master manipulator she knows that, and master manipulators are toxic. to anyone outside of their fucked up dynamic she knows what it must look like, a man like that moving into Sidmouth, her refusing to leave the castle walls. Sarah moving back in, Hector refusing to take his seat for the Lords or any of the events. Titus makes it so easy, like he is not slowly holding the two Vere’s hostage, charming his way into their lives and their business and then into Gladys’s bed. To anyone else, to the two most stupid, entitled people she has ever met it looks like he is there to court Sarah, certainly Sarah seems to think so, she preens at the chance to make Hector jealous. Titus has a way of just toeing the line, quietly ruining her reputation in a way that not even she can see in a way to preserve Gladys own.
When Hector and Sarah go to bed he pretends he does not see and Hector in an effort to stamp a claim on the one person that he has always had at his back doesn’t seem to notice that he leaves his wife in the company of a man who is as dark as the night sky and who always seems to find a way to her bed.
Loving him, loving him in that way keeps her alive. He is gentle with her, soothes her, only once does he tell her he loves her, she doesn’t even think he means to do it, he is buried inside of her cock to the hilt and on the verge of their fourth climax of the night the sheets gone both of them on the floor fucking like a pair of animals and it’s only on a whim when she sits astride him and gasps for air that she grabs his knife, puts it to his chin and nicks his throat a little that he thrusts his hips up, his eyes roll back in his head and he tells her that he loves her.
She keeps the secret to herself and then three weeks later puts the knife to his throat and asks him to tell her again.
“I do” he says conversationally. “The Devil help me I love you.” he puts one arm under his head and watches her. “I am going to kill your husband, I am going to kill his lover, I am going to burn this place to the ground and take you and make you my wife and then I am going to fucking steal you away from anyone who wants to take you from my arms. I mean it, I am going to burn the whole fucking world to the ground for you. And you are going to be mine…”
“I might not be able to give you an heir”
He rolls his eyes.
“Yeah” he says throwing the knife away and flipping her over so she is on her back. “Yeah honey that’s the thing you take from that, not the killing your fucking husband—” he fucks her lowly and slowly and she sighs her eyelashes fluttering with pleasure as her hands drag patterns down his back.
“You will make it very bloody?”
“Hmm?”
“Because he bruised my hip yesterday”
As it turns out that is exactly the right thing to say to him.
She thinks that night about maybe telling him about Billy and how he hurt her and then unspoken is the thought of telling him, this dark and dangerous demonic man, about what her mother made her feel…
Titus wakes up half an hour later to her mouth on his cock and though he doesn’t complain he clearly doesn’t know what brought this on.
He will…eventually.
It takes this dinner tonight to realise that he has been guiding her to this moment, that both of them have rendered the Vere’s hopelessly docile to them. Hector needs her father’s money but he has not the skill for dealing with it Titus offers advice on sound investments and slowly but surely inch by inch drips the fortune into his own pockets so instead of paying off her husband her father is really paying off her lover.
That does make her smile through her teeth around her wine glass.
It’s not that her relationship with her father is bad per say. It’s took a bump of course. Gladys doesn’t think honestly she will ever be able to trust him, but it’s not the sad acknowledgement that it’s failed, which is how she feels about her mother. For the past six months of her one year marriage her mother is asking her why she is not out in society, why the London papers report that she is never seen in the company of other ladies, why she is not at court, why she does not host balls or parties or has made any kind of friendships in her new country. Her last letter broached the subject of why there was no children…and all the letters end with a hopeful request to stay, to see what she can do to help.
Gladys throws them all in the fire and doesn’t reply. In truth she doesn’t know what else she can say. Her mother got the Duchess. She is the mother of the Duchess of Buckingham. What more does she want? She’s not going to be the grandmother of the Duke of Buckingham Gladys knows that. So what can she say?
And to be honest…really honest…her mother is an exhausting person to be around. The expectations, the constant never ending pressure to be perfect, to have all the decisions made…to have no freedom, to go back to that pressure…she doesn’t think she can do that. Even when her mother came here she was quick to assert dominance and Gladys tired to tell her that she didn’t want her to do that only to be told that to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs…
Titus laughs when she tells him that.
“And what the fuck were you supposed to do with that bit of advice?” he asks chin on her hipbone.
“Don’t know” she says truthfully. “But then she told me that her goal was to see me happy…and if not that then properly treated. I just…” she stretches out in the bed and Titus moves his mouth so it is inches away from where she wants it most.
“Well…I treat you properly don’t I?” he says softly and then before the sudden softness can cause her to question just what the fuck is going on his mouth is back down between her legs and she sighs into the pleasure.
She is shaken from her moment of remembrance by Sarah standing. It appears they are to leave the men for coffee. Accustomed to being ordered in her own home she pauses this time and shoots Titus a look. He nods at her and she nods back. This is what they agreed upon. He would handle Hector and she would handle Sarah. The staff are mostly taken care off. The ones that could be spared this fate are gone for the night, the ones conflict, the housekeeper, the butler, the cook, the ones who are loyal to Hector and Sarah are desert.
Sarah sweeps into the drawing room that has been refurbished at her father’s expense and Gladys sees the knife there on the table innocuous, not out of place at all really but glinting in the silver firelight and she smiles. Of course the possessive bastard would want her to use his knife.
Sarah pours herself a drink (she does not pour one for Gladys) and then turns.
She doesn’t get to say what she is going to say next. Gladys is a practical woman. The smug look leave her face, the glass falls to the carpet ruining the rug and Gladys smiles this time as smug as…well…a Duchess.
She went straight for the throat.
She learnt from the best after all…