Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
“Whiskey. Leave the bottle.”
Theodore dropped into the leather chair in the corner, White’s familiar mahogany and tobacco-scented serenity doing nothing to quiet the howling in his chest.
The waiter set down the decanter and glass without comment, though Theodore caught the flicker of recognition in his eyes. He’d been coming here since he’d inherited the title at seventeen, and the staff had learned decades ago not to ask questions about the Duke of Ashmere.
He poured. Drank. Poured again. But the burn did nothing to alleviate the ache in his chest.
She’d looked at him like he’d struck her. Worse, she’d looked at him like she’d finally understood what he’d been telling her all along—that he was exactly the cold bastard everyone said he was, that hoping for more had been her mistake.
“You’re a contract I signed…”
Christ. The words had tasted like ash even as he’d said them, but he’d watched them land, watched her face close off into that terrible, dignified composure he recognized too well. He’d done that to her, taught her to hide.
“Ashmere.” John’s voice cut through the fog. “Fancy meeting you here at two in the afternoon. On a Tuesday.”
Theodore didn’t look up. “Go away, Whitebrook,” he grumbled.
“Tempting.” John pulled out the chair opposite and sat anyway, gesturing to the waiter for his own glass. “But Harriet would have my head if I left you to drink yourself into oblivion without at least attempting conversation. She’s terrifyingly perceptive about these things.”
“I’m not drinking myself into oblivion.”
“No?” John eyed the bottle, already a third empty. “What would you call it?”
“Estate management.”
It was a load of bull, and even Theodore knew it.
John snorted. “Right. Because the Ashmere ledgers are famously kept at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.” He accepted his glass from the waiter and settled back in his seat. “Want to tell me what happened, or shall I guess? I’m rather good at guessing.”
Theodore refilled his glass. “Nothing happened.”
“Harriet received a letter from your Duchess this morning. Apparently, Her Grace has returned to London rather suddenly and is now residing with her parents. Harriet’s concerned. I’m under strict orders to ascertain whether you’ve done something monumentally stupid.”
Wonderful. Now, the entirety of high society was privy to his marital problems. Splendid, indeed.
“Tell Lady Whitebrook that my marriage is none of her concern.”
“Except it is, because your Duchess is her dearest friend.” John’s tone had lost its teasing edge. “And because, despite your best efforts to convince everyone otherwise, I know you’re not actually made of stone. So, what did you do?”
Theodore’s hand tightened around the glass as he contemplated how he was going to broach the extent of his… blunder.
“I told her the truth.”
“Which truth? There are several varieties. Some helpful, some catastrophically ill-advised.”
“That she’s a contract. A marriage of convenience that satisfied my aunt’s meddling and her father’s greed.” The words tasted worse the second time. “That’s what she is. That’s what this has always been.”
John stared at him. “You said that to her? Those exact words?”
Theodore knew what his friend was going to say even as he replied, “Yes.”
“You’re an idiot.”
Yes. But…
“I’m honest.”
“You’re an idiot,” John repeated, with more emphasis. “A spectacular, self-destructive idiot. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking she needed to stop looking at me like I’m capable of being what she wants.
Like I’m some reformed rake from one of her novels who’ll suddenly discover the redemptive power of love.
” Theodore drained his glass. “Better she understand the truth now than spend years waiting for something that doesn’t exist.”
“The truth.” John leaned forward. “Let me tell you about the truth, Ashmere. The truth is, you’ve been happier these past weeks than I’ve seen you in seventeen years.
The truth is, you smile when you talk about her, even when you’re trying not to.
The truth is, you rode to London instead of spending one more night under the same roof because you’re terrified. ”
“I’m not—”
“You’re terrified,” John continued, his voice sharp now, “that if you let yourself care about her, you’ll end up like your father. Or your uncle. That wanting her will destroy you the way your mother’s wanting destroyed your family.” He paused. “Am I close?”
Theodore said nothing. The whiskey had stopped burning somewhere around the third glass, replaced by a hollow numbness that felt appropriate.
John’s expression shifted, sympathy replacing irritation. “Theodore, what happened to your family wasn’t about desire. It was about betrayal. Your uncle and your mother made choices that hurt people.”
“And those choices were driven by passion. By… by uncontrolled wanting.” Theodore heard his voice flatten. “My uncle was a good man. Everyone loved him. I loved him, and then desire turned him into someone who’d destroy his own brother.”
“Or,” John said quietly, “he was never as good as you thought. And your mother made a choice that had nothing to do with your father’s worth and everything to do with her own selfishness.”
Theodore refilled his glass with hands that weren’t quite steady.
The crystal decanter caught the afternoon light slanting through the club’s tall windows, fracturing it into pieces that reminded him distantly of the way the sun had caught in Cressida’s hair that morning in the gallery. Before everything had splintered.
“She uncovered Charles’s portrait.”
John’s eyebrows rose. “Ah.”
“I specifically told her not to touch it. Seventeen years, John. Seventeen years, I’ve kept that curtain in place, and she—” Theodore cut himself off. “She thought she had the right. Because we’re married. Because I’ve let her into my bed, she thinks she’s entitled to every corner of my past.”
“Or,” John countered, “she cares about you and wants to understand what hurt you.”
“She wants to… fix me.” The words came out harshly.
“Turn me into whatever fantasy she’s constructed about reformed dukes and happy endings.
But I can’t be fixed, Whitebrook. What broke in me when my father died—when I watched Charles manipulate me into silence, when I saw what unchecked passion could do—that doesn’t heal. It isn’t meant to.”
John studied him with an expression Theodore couldn’t quite decipher. “Do you actually believe that?”
“I know that.” Theodore gestured with his glass. “The evidence is compelling. My father loved my mother, and look where that got him. Charles loved her too, enough to betray his own brother. And I—” He stopped.
“You what?”
Theodore stared at the amber liquid in his glass. Easier to focus on that than on John’s too-perceptive eyes.
“I cared about them both. My mother and Charles. Trusted them. Believed what they told me.” The old shame crept up his throat. “They convinced me to keep quiet about their affair. Said it would hurt the family if it came out. I was seventeen, and I believed them. I kept their secret.”
“You were a boy.”
“I was old enough to know better.” He’d told himself that for seventeen years. “If I’d told my father immediately—if I’d exposed them when I first discovered them—he might have divorced her quietly. Sent Charles away. They’d both still be alive.”
“Or your father might have challenged Charles anyway.” John’s voice was careful. “From what you’ve told me, the former Duke wasn’t exactly known for measured responses.”
“The point,” Theodore said, “is that I let myself be manipulated. Let emotion override judgment. Let attachment blind me to what was happening. That’s what caring about people does, John.
It makes you stupid. Weak. Vulnerable to exactly the kind of destruction I’ve spent seventeen years learning to prevent. ”
John was quiet for a long moment. Then: “I used to think like that.”
Theodore glanced up.
“Before Harriet.” John turned his own glass slowly, watching the light catch in it.
“I told myself attachment was weakness. That caring too much about anything—anyone—was a liability in a world that would take advantage of it. I was quite committed to my rakish existence. Gambling, drinking, bedding women whose names I wouldn’t remember. It was safe. Empty, but safe.”
“And then?”
“Then I met a woman who refused to let me hide.” John’s expression softened in a way that made Theodore’s chest constrict.
“Who saw through every defense I’d built and decided I was worth the trouble of breaking them down.
She made me furious at first. Absolutely incandescent with rage at her presumption. ”
“What changed?”
“I did.” John met his eyes. “Not because she fixed me. Not because she’s some magical cure for my damage.
But because she made me realize the safe life I’d built wasn’t actually life at all.
It was just… existing. Going through the motions.
Never risking enough to get hurt, which meant never risking enough to feel anything real. ”
Theodore wanted to dismiss it. Wanted to explain how John’s situation was different, how his friend hadn’t watched his family destroy itself, hadn’t spent seventeen years building walls designed specifically to prevent this exact kind of weakness.
But the words wouldn’t come.
“Go home, Theodore.” John pushed back from the table. “Go back to Ashmere. Stop running from the one person who’s actually willing to see you as something other than the duke everyone’s afraid of.”
“She left me.”
“No.” John’s voice was firm. “You drove her away. You said vicious things designed to hurt her badly enough that she’d leave.
And she did. Which means you succeeded.” He paused.
“Is that what you wanted? To prove you were right about yourself? To confirm you’re the monster you’ve decided you have to be? ”
Theodore’s jaw clenched.