Reborn: The Duke's Obsession-Chapter 79 - Seventy Nine

The Grand Albion inn was quiet in the middle of the afternoon. Delia walked into the main dining hall, her steps confident, her expression carefully neutral. She saw him sitting at a table in the most secluded corner of the room, a glass of untouched wine before him. Duke Philip looked up as she approached.

"I thought you didn’t want to meet. I even thought you wouldn’t come." He said as soon as she sat down, his voice a smooth, silken challenge. He was testing her from the very first sentence. "What made you change your mind?"

Delia placed her hands calmly in her lap. "You were the one who was so insistent on meeting, Your Grace," she replied, her own voice even and direct. "I thought it would be rude to ignore a second invitation from a Duke."

A small, tight smile touched Philip’s lips. "I see." He leaned back in his chair, studying her. "I thought we might be able to understand each other, you and I. Perhaps because we find ourselves in a rather similar situation."

Delia’s brow furrowed slightly. "A similar situation?"

"Yes," Philip replied, his voice taking on a sad, confidential tone. "No family. No real home. That kind of situation." He looked down at his wine glass, as if recalling a painful memory. "My own mother died when I was very young. An illness, they said. It was all very sudden. And then my stepmother, the Duchess Lyra, came into the picture right away. My father really loved him, saying she made him heal. She had Eric, and then Amber, before my father... before he died in the last war between Albion and the forces on the eastern border."

He looked up at her, his eyes full of a carefully crafted sorrow. "In that house, I was always half the person the others were. I had a different mother. And then the one person we all had in common, my father, was dead. I was an outsider in my own home."

He was trying to build a bridge between them, a bridge made of shared tragedy. But Delia was not interested in crossing it. She had lived a life of real pain, and she could recognize the hollow performance of it in others.

She let out a short, unimpressed chuckle. "I did not come here to share sad stories about our backgrounds, Your Grace."

Philip’s tight smile returned. He lightly tapped his left leg with his fingers, drawing her attention to it. "Then you must be curious about what happened to my leg," he said, his voice dropping low. "Eric must have given you some idea of the story. I am sure it was a very convincing one." He leaned forward. "Did you agree to see me today because you couldn’t quite believe him? Because you wanted to hear the truth from the one it happened to?"

His words were a clever trap, designed to make her admit she doubted Eric. Delia let out a long, slow breath, and a small, knowing smile touched her lips. She stood up.

"What are you doing?" Philip asked, surprised by her sudden movement.

"I am leaving," Delia replied calmly. She looked down at him, her expression no longer guarded, but filled with a clear, sharp certainty. "I don’t believe Eric would do the terrible things that people like you and George Pembroke paint him as doing. It’s true that I wanted to hear from the person who was directly involved in the incident, but I find that I do not like your attitude, Your Grace."

She continued, her voice gaining strength. "You are the type of person who tries to manipulate another on the sly. You try to use sympathy and secrets as your weapons. That already tells me that I shouldn’t trust anything you have to say." She gave him a final, dismissive look. "You have wasted my time."

She curtsied, a gesture that was both perfectly polite and utterly final. "I should be on my way now, Your Grace."

As she turned to leave, her back straight and her head held high, his voice called out, stopping her in her tracks.

"Delia Ellington."

She stopped, but she did not turn around.

"Why are you getting married?" Philip asked, his voice now devoid of its earlier self-pity, replaced by curiosity. It was a question that cut through all the pretense, a question that aimed directly at the heart of her own secrets.

She slowly turned to face Philip again, her plan to make a swift, decisive exit completely ruined.

Philip, now having regained her full attention, relaxed back in his seat. He folded his arms across his chest, a look of smug satisfaction on his face. He was the one in control of this conversation now.

"Think about it, Lady Delia," he began, his voice taking on a reasonable tone. "Carson textiles and Ellington textiles. One is a wealthy, powerful establishment. The other is an establishment that, forgive me for being blunt, desperately needs money."

He let the statement hang in the air. "On the surface, it is not a bad match. But it makes me wonder, why is the Ellington family so desperate? More specifically... why is your grandfather, Baron Edgar Ellington, offering what amounts to bribes just to make this marriage happen by all means?"

He looked at Delia, who was now completely confused. She had no idea what he was talking about. "What do you mean?" she asked, her voice a little shaky.

Philip answered her, his tone that of a teacher explaining a simple concept to a slow student. "Your grandfather, Baron Edgar, recently met with my grandmother, the Dowager Duchess. He returned all the money he apparently stole from her years ago. A truly massive sum." He saw the genuine shock on Delia’s face and knew he had her hooked. "If a man as notoriously proud and tight-fisted as Baron Edgar Ellington is willing to do that, he must have a very clear and very important objective in mind."