Chapter 7 #2
“I know,” Oscar said, but it took him another few moments and another gulp of drink to be able to.
“She is a… a refined lady. She wishes for happiness, and life, and brightness, and I cannot match up to her. I am just the beast she is now shackled to because I told her our marriage would protect our reputations, and she needs that.”
“And what if she needs you?”
“She does not.”
“What if she does, Oscar?”
“I am not a man she should need,” he said under his breath, but of course Edmund caught the retort.
“She needs the marriage,” Edmund noted. “But you could become the man she needs as well as the mere husband, the person the ton wishes to see her alongside. You are saving your reputation, but what about saving her?”
“I do not save people.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” he cut himself off. “Because I am who I am.”
“And you can always change,” Edmund countered. “If she is worth it, if you care enough, Oscar, then you can become better for her.”
Oscar scoffed. “Better.” He scowled. “What does that even mean?”
“I think you know exactly what it means, and you would not be sitting here speaking to me about it otherwise.”
Oscar went to argue the point but found he had nothing to say. He frowned, looking askance at his friend.
“Merely think it over, stay an hour or so. Get some space from your castle, and your wife, if you need it.”
He nodded at Edmund, his mouth set into a grimace, and he finished off his brandy.
Perhaps space was the exact thing he needed. Still, his thoughts strayed to Isabella, and the feel of her mouth on his, reciprocating his kiss, if only for a moment, before the horror on her face had been clear.
How could she be attracted to and want to kiss such a monster of a man?
It had not even been two nights since Isabella had visited Mary when she was jolted from her sleep, groggy from the sharp awakening.
However, she swore she had heard something.
No, not just something.
A scream. A man’s scream.
At once, she was upright and looking around herself, as if she expected the man in question to be there.
Had she dreamed it?
Right as she was still questioning it, she heard that ear-piercing shout once more. She was on her feet in an instant, looking at the door of their connected chambers.
Stilling, she heard a calling out—and she knew it was her husband. While the words were incoherent, the tone of them had her moving.
She had the adjoining door open in a second, her breath coming fast. It was open in a moment, and she rushed to her husband’s bedside.
She had seen him drenched in sweat from exercise, but this was different.
This was a cold sweat, and she could feel it radiating when she dared to hover her touch over him.
At his side on the bed, Morris sat, whining, his deep brown eyes on her. She held the hound’s gaze, wondering if he protected his master or begged for help from the man’s apparent nightmare. It seemed as though the room darkened several shades deeper, and Isabella felt helpless for a moment.
But when the Duke gave another pained cry, Isabella jolted into action, shaking him awake.
“Oscar,” she whispered, daring to use his name so casually. It rebelled against everything in her, but she still did it. “Oscar. Wake up—please, please, wake up.”
At her first touch, the Duke woke with a start, his body sharply snapping upright. His eyes were wild, fixed on her, as his breaths came ragged. His hand reached out, already clawed, but it didn’t get anywhere. It was nowhere near her, even as Isabella remained standing over him, unafraid.
Still, she could not help but step back, her own eyes wide.
“Oscar?” she whispered, startled and unsettled.
Her shock curled deep in her stomach at the state he was in, so lost in whatever haunted his mind that he dared not speak to her about it.
But those screams.
She knew they would haunt her, even when she slept, even when she lived through the next several days.
“Isabella?” His voice was rough and crackled from sleep, from screaming, and she noticed how, in his sleepy state, he forwent her own titles.
“I am here,” she told him, though her voice shook.
Her husband looked around himself, frowning, as if confused about where he was. He slowly dragged his gaze back to her, his scowl deepening as he seemed to slowly recollect himself.
“What are you doing in here?”
“I… I heard you,” she stammered. “From my room.”
In comfort, she reached out to pet Morris’s head, who still had not moved from his master. The Duke’s eyes dropped to the movement. The dog didn’t seem bothered by her being there at all. If anything, he seemed more relaxed and nosed into her palm.
“You,” Oscar muttered, “are a terrible guard dog.”
Morris merely whined and ducked his head, huffing. Isabella smiled a little, petting the dog’s head more.
“On the contrary,” she countered.
“Isabella…” Oscar trailed off. “You… you called me by my name.”
“I did not know how else to wake you,” she confessed quietly.
Silence fell between them, and only then did she realize how chilly it was in his chamber, and that she was only in her thin nightgown. Her shoulders immediately hunched, as if that would help, and she felt her husband’s searing gaze drop to her attire.
She swore the pupils of his eyes grew—the way she only ever read that a man’s did when he was wanting.
But then his expression shut down, and his mouth tightened in the way it often did, and he turned his face away.
“Leave,” he told her.
“What?” she murmured.
“Leave. Leave me be, Isabella. The… the night terrors are not uncommon, so you must get used to them.”
She drew back, her mouth opening to protest, but the glare she received anchored her resolve to keep backing away.
“Fine,” she snapped. “But know I only came in here because I feared your screaming.”
“Everybody fears me in one way or another,” he ground out, even though that was not what she had meant.
Opening her mouth to protest, Isabella stopped herself. It was pointless anyway. Glaring back at him, Isabella finally turned on her heel and left his chambers.
Only after she had done so, she heard footsteps echoing through the hallway. Cocking her head, she listened further at the main door of her chamber.
“No,” she heard a low command, and stiffened.
Oscar.
She listened closer, but after a moment, she could not resist her own curiosity.
She opened her door slowly, watching as Oscar walked down the hallway to the left, carrying a pillow under his arm. Behind him, Morris whined louder.
She whistled quietly to him once Oscar had left the hallway, and Morris looked her way, immediately bounding into her room. She dropped into a crouch, ruffling behind his ears.
“Did he tell you to stay away?” she asked softly. “Such a good boy as you should not be told such a thing. You guard him well, do you not? Yes, you do. Good boy, Morris.”
Morris let out a pained noise as he nuzzled into her palm again.
“Come,” she beckoned, jerking her head for the dog to enter her chambers. “If he will not have you around, then I will. Get comfortable, Morris.”
At first, Morris was hesitant, but as she stepped aside to give him entry, he quickly bolted inside, leaping up onto her bed.
She had always wanted a pet, but her mother had never allowed a dog in their residence.
She had complained about shedding and the inevitable mess, but she had never talked about the joys a pet could bring.
Isabella returned to her own bed, curling around Morris, who cuddled up into her side. She was petting him immediately, smiling.
“Your master certainly is a confounding man, is he not?” she asked sleepily, her eyes growing heavy.
Morris gave a long sigh as if he agreed, and she soon fell asleep, wondering where on earth her husband had retreated to with his pillow.
Groggy and exhausted, Oscar dragged himself to the northern turret.
There, he had a chamber set up, a threadbare thing, really—but it was far enough away from the main castle that he knew his wife would not hear his nightly terrors. The fact that she had already heard one unsettled him.
I must protect her from the horrors I have done and witnessed, he thought, as he tried to get comfortable in the small setup he had made for himself there.
It had been some time since he had retreated to the northern turret.
There was a reason why he kept so many locked doors from his wife.
Settling down onto his pillow and bed, Oscar closed his eyes and tried to chase away the memories that still haunted him from his past. It was not a lack of care that had him pushing Isabella away, but the fact that he had done too many things he could not undo.
The fact that his past was a dangerous, dark thing—that was why he chose to brood in his castle.
He could not escape it anyway; why not make everything the same?
Shadows were a comfort. He could not escape the past, and so, Isabella’s efforts were wasted on him and his abode.