Chapter 30 #2
“Find me when you’ve got your sense back.” John dropped a hand briefly on his shoulder. “Before you’ve destroyed something you can’t rebuild.”
Then he was gone, leaving Theodore alone with the whiskey and the hollow ache in his chest that felt suspiciously like grief.
Five days passed.
Theodore didn’t return to Ashmere. He told himself it was estate business keeping him in London: meetings with his solicitor, correspondence with his steward, ledgers that needed reviewing.
But the truth sat in his rooms at Ashmere House like an unwelcome guest—he couldn’t face the castle empty of her.
It had felt alive with her in it. He’d come home from morning rides to find her in the breakfast room, reading with that little crease between her eyebrows that meant she was working through some argument in whatever book she’d chosen.
He’d find her in the library, pulling volumes from high shelves with a determination that would have been amusing if it hadn’t been so endearing. He’d catch glimpses of her walking the grounds with that ridiculous maid who’d somehow become her confidante, laughing at something he wasn’t privy to.
He’d gotten used to her presence. The way she’d look up when he entered a room, her face lighting up with something that had made his chest tight.
The questions she’d ask at dinner about estate matters, proving that she actually cared about the tedious details of land management.
The warmth of her asleep beside him, fitting against him like she belonged there.
It was gone now. All of it was gone because he’d been too much of a coward to let her stay.
His study at Ashmere House offered no comfort. He’d opened the ledgers three times that afternoon and absorbed nothing. The numbers blurred into meaninglessness, replaced by the memory of her face in that gallery, hurt crystallizing into cold dignity.
He might be the one who couldn’t trust her, but she was the one who should never have trusted him.
She’d been right. He’d demanded honesty from her, openness, vulnerability, all while keeping himself locked behind walls he’d convinced himself were necessary.
The whiskey bottle on his desk was half-empty. He didn’t remember opening it.
He pushed back from the desk and crossed to the window. London’s evening spread before him, amber lamplight beginning to glow in windows across Mayfair. Somewhere out there, Cressida was sitting in her parents’ house… away from him.
He should feel relieved. He’d done his duty. They could live separately, meet for required social functions, and maintain the appearance of civility. It was what he’d planned from the beginning.
Except the plan had been constructed before he’d known what it would feel like to have Cressida’s fingers tangle in his hair while he kissed her.
Before he’d heard her laugh at one of his dry observations, the sound surprised and genuine.
Before he’d watched her convey the tenants’ needs with passionate eloquence that had made him want to pull her into his study and lock the door.
Before he’d learned what happiness felt like.
The admission settled in his chest, heavy and undeniable.
He’d been happy. For perhaps the first time since his father’s death, he’d woken up looking forward to the day instead of simply enduring it.
Had found himself staying at breakfast longer than necessary just to hear her opinions on whatever book she’d been reading.
Had made up excuses to ride past whatever part of the estate she’d mentioned wanting to see, then acted surprised when he encountered her there.
Had started imagining a future that looked less like duty and more like life. And he’d destroyed it because she’d done exactly what he’d been too frightened to allow: tried to know him completely.
Theodore turned away from the window, his gaze landing on the small table near the fireplace. He’d been avoiding looking at it, but there was no escaping it now.
Charles’s portrait sat propped against the wall, wrapped in its velvet curtain.
He’d had it sent from Ashmere two days ago, along with a terse note to Mrs. Agnes that she was to pack anything related to his uncle and have it delivered to London.
Her reply had been even more terse, her disapproval evident in every efficient line of script.
Now the portrait waited, still covered, challenging him.
Theodore crossed to it and pulled the curtain away.
Charles gazed back at him with that warm, open expression that had made everyone love him.
Theodore could remember with painful clarity what it had felt like to worship this man.
To think his uncle was everything his cold father wasn’t: generous, kind, interested in his opinions and dreams. He’d been fifteen when Charles had started spending more time at Ashmere, and Charles had treated him like an equal rather than a burden.
Theodore had loved him more than his own father.
And Charles had used that love to manipulate him into silence while he destroyed the family.
“You were a bastard,” Theodore said to the painted face. His voice sounded strange in the empty room. “I thought you were a good man. Honorable. I would have done anything for you.”
The portrait didn’t answer, but then, it never had. Charles had died without apologizing, without explaining, without expressing a moment’s remorse for what his choices had cost.
Theodore had spent seventeen years blaming himself. Seventeen years convinced that his silence had killed his father, that his attachment to Charles had blinded him to the truth. Seventeen years certain that caring about anyone was the surest path to destruction.
But looking at the portrait now, he saw what he’d been too young to see at seventeen, too damaged to see in all the years since.
Charles had been a weak man. Not evil, perhaps, but selfish. A man who’d wanted what he wanted and had been willing to sacrifice everything—his brother, his nephew, his honor—to have it. Theodore’s love hadn’t destroyed his family. Charles’s choices had.
And his mother’s.
The realization should have brought relief. Instead, it brought a wave of grief so powerful that he had to grip the edge of the table.
He’d wasted seventeen years. Seventeen years of building walls that kept out every person who might care about him.
Seventeen years of refusing to let anyone close enough to hurt him.
Seventeen years of convincing himself that he was protecting himself from becoming like Charles, when in reality, he’d been protecting himself from facing the truth—that the people he’d loved had betrayed him, and that betrayal had nothing to do with how much he’d cared.
“I’m not asking for anything anymore, Theodore. That is my point.”
Cressida had given him everything. Her trust, her body, her patience. She’d let him into her bed and her thoughts and her carefully guarded heart. She’d shared her fears about her family, her embarrassment over her time at her aunt’s house, her worry that she wasn’t enough.
And he’d told her she meant nothing.
Theodore sank into the chair facing Charles’s portrait, whiskey glass still in hand.
The painted eyes gazed back at him with that same charismatic warmth that had fooled everyone, and he felt something shift in his chest—the lock he’d built around himself, the certainty that isolation was safety, cracking apart.
He’d thought keeping people away would prevent him from being destroyed. Instead, he’d destroyed himself.
The whiskey tasted bitter now. He set the glass down and looked at Charles’s face one more time.
“You don’t get to define me anymore,” he said quietly. “You don’t get to make me into someone afraid to feel. Afraid to want. Who drives away the best thing that’s ever happened to him because he’s convinced himself it will end in tragedy.”
The portrait offered no response. It never would.
Charles was dead, had been for seventeen years. The only person keeping him alive, giving him power, was Theodore himself.
He took a slow breath. Then another.
“I will not make myself into that.”
He stood and moved to his desk, pulling out paper and pen. Then he paused, staring at the blank page.
What should he say? How did he explain seventeen years of damage, of self-imposed exile, of convincing himself that being alone was strength rather than cowardice?
The words wouldn’t come.
Theodore set down the pen and returned to the window.
The evening had deepened into night, the city a sprawl of lights that reminded him achingly of standing beside Cressida on the terrace at Ashmere Castle.
She’d pointed out constellations she’d learned from her grandmother, her enthusiasm making the familiar stars seem new.
He missed her.
The admission was simple, devastating.
He missed the sound of her voice in the breakfast room.
Missed her laughter. Missed the way she’d touch his arm when she wanted his attention, casual and trusting.
Missed waking beside her, watching her sleep with her hair spread across the pillow in auburn tangles.
Missed the particular quality of her silences, comfortable in a way he’d never experienced with anyone.
Missed her.
And he’d driven her away because facing the fear of losing her had seemed less terrible than the vulnerability of admitting he loved her.
The thought stopped him.
Loved her.
Christ. He loved her.
The knowledge settled in his chest with the weight of truth too long denied.
He loved her wit, her stubbornness, her refusal to accept his walls as permanent features.
He loved how she read with that crease between her eyebrows.
How she forgot propriety when she was passionate about some argument.
How she’d looked at him after they’d made love, her eyes soft and trusting, like he was someone worth that trust.
He loved her. And he’d done the completely foolish thing and told her she was nothing but a contract.
Theodore gripped the window frame, bile rising in his throat.
What had he done? What had he destroyed because he’d been too frightened to face seventeen years of grief and finally learn that loving someone wasn’t weakness?
The hours stretched ahead, empty and accusing.
He couldn’t write to her; words on paper were insufficient for the magnitude of what he’d done, what he needed to say. He couldn’t go to her parents’ house at this hour, couldn’t pound on their door and demand to see his wife like some character from the Gothic novels she loved.
He could only stand there, whiskey-sick and exhausted, staring out the window and finally understanding what John had tried to tell him.
The safe life he’d built wasn’t life at all.
It was just existence. Cold, careful existence, designed to protect him from pain by ensuring he’d never risk feeling anything real.
And Cressida had threatened that existence simply by being herself. By being kind, and passionate, and determined to see past his defenses to whatever remained of the man he’d been before his family had destroyed itself.
She’d made him want things he’d sworn never to want. Made him imagine a future he’d convinced himself was impossible. Made him happy.
And he’d repaid her by breaking her heart.
Theodore turned away from the window and looked at Charles’s portrait again. Alone in his study, he let himself feel the full weight of what he’d lost and what he might never get back.
And for the first time in seventeen years, Theodore Yeats, the Duke of Ashmere, allowed himself to weep.