CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Heavens, he thought. How could I have ever thought that you would betray me?
They were words he should have said aloud but they would not push past his lips.
Instead, he could only keep his focus on her, his hand cupped to Amelia’s face, as he moved closer.
Around them, the library held its breath, as though the walls were sentient, and watched another set of lovers, caught in a moment of deciding.
Graham’s mind was conflicted, yet his body knew what to do.
He leaned in close to her, his lips parted, ready to take hers beneath his own in a kiss.
Nerves fluttered through him but he swallowed them back.
Faces inches apart, he could not help but look at the green and brown flecks in her eyes. Had they ever been so close?
Her eyes were wide, fixed on his, and she did not pull away yet he could not figure out what she thought, what she felt.
A beat of paranoia passed through him—who would want to be desired by the beastly duke?
—until he saw her lift her face slightly more towards his.
Her pulse fluttered at her neck, and he yearned to press his thumb to it, to feel if her heart raced as fast as his own did.
He lowered his mouth to hers. Their lips were a mere breath apart—
—only for his sister’s cheerful voice to ring out, forcing them apart.
“Graham! Brother, where are you? You are not still brooding are you?”
He jerked away from Amelia, and felt a twinge of disappointment dropping through him.
A look flickered in his wife’s eyes as he quickly moved away.
For a moment, he was back in the maze with her, trying to protect her reputation.
It was as though, now that she was his wife, he still had to be careful.
As if he wished to protect her from being physically wanted by a man like him, scarred and ruined.
Clearing his throat, he moved to pick up a random book. “This one is rather tragic, if you wish to read such a book—ah, Daphne.”
His sister rounded into the doorway, immediately grinning at the sight of them together. “Well, well,” she said. “I am happy for your reconciliation after this morning’s outburst.” She cut a meaningful glare at Graham, and he cringed. “I do not believe you have ever come around so fast.”
“And I do not believe you were blessed with a mouth that knows when to quieten down,” he answered sharply.
“Amelia, are you quite all right?” Daphne pressed. “You look rather flushed. It is peculiarly warm in here. Graham, do you believe she looks flushed?”
He took the opportunity to look at Amelia in full appreciation. Her cheeks flushed with pink, and her lips still lifted in a small pout as if awaiting her kiss. Her chest heaved slightly as if she could not quite catch her breath. It hit him with a great force: she had truly wanted to kiss him.
I believe she looks beautiful, he thought.
Out loud, he said, “rather flushed, indeed.”
“I must have someone bring you lemonade, Amelia,” Daphne still said.
“We still have much to discuss regarding the ball. It is a mere week away! Have you invited your family? It will be lovely to see them again. Oh, and we cannot forget the Fairfax family. I did not realise Graham’s friend, Lord Owen, and your friend, Lady Eleanor, have a courtship!
Oh, how wonderful! I do love when friends may connect through others. ”
“They are not courting,” Graham said quickly, his voice too hard.
Both of the women turned to look at him sharply.
He cleared his throat, unsure why he was so defensive.
Perhaps he envied his friend for being able to take his time through his attraction to Lady Eleanor.
“All I mean is that I know he has affections for her but he has not yet acted on them so pointedly.”
“Well he must do soon! The ton has often speculated with how many suitors Lady Eleanor has danced with yet none has offered her a courtship.”
For some reason, that wounded Graham. He watched as Amelia’s head dipped, as if in a moment of sadness and… regret? She had deserved a courtship. It ached him to know he had not been able to give her that.
“Amelia,” he said quietly but she only smiled brightly—perhaps too bright—and hugged herself.
“I am well,” she told him. “And I am sure if Lord Owen’s affections are strong he will ask her soon.”
Look at how you wound her, his thoughts raged. Look at how saddened you have made her. Your wife must now pretend in order to please you. Look at what you have damned her to—an eternity of only ever settling in this marriage, never knowing a true, slow courtship of love that blossoms over time.
A peculiar nauseous feeling overtook him, and he stumbled back.
All he did was bring hurt and pain, and even if she had tried to comfort him otherwise, he knew it to be true.
The red curtains in the library blurred in his vision, and when he looked, he swore his hands were stained with the same color.
He made a strangled noise in his throat.
“I am sure,” he said, his voice hard, changed.
He could feel himself retreating into a place that kept him safe, that kept Amelia at arms’ length.
“I am sure it will be perfect and our friends shall receive the most perfect courtship. It will all be perfect.” The last part was all but growled as he stormed past her. “Excuse me.”
Ignoring his sister’s cry of dismay, Graham shouldered past them both, and stopped halfway down the hallway, gasping for breath.
How had he gone from such tenderness in one moment, to only existing in thorns and barbs in the next?
If Daphne had not interrupted would he have clung onto that gentleness he had found with Amelia?
The curse had taken over, reminding him that he could only ever bring her misery, even if she claimed otherwise.
He only ever brought pain and suffering.
He had seen it on Daphne’s face, Felicity’s, and now he was growing to know it on Amelia’s.
He braced himself on a hallway side table that held an ornament his father had brought his mother. His breaths came out in staggered gasps. He heard voices from the library as if far away, yet he knew they got closer.
“... think he is all right?”
That was Amelia’s, but the sound of her concerned voice only brought more tightness to his chest. Pressing his forehead into his upper arm, he clenched his jaw, trying to work some sense into himself.
He was there, in Blackthorn, and he was a duke, for Heavens’ sake.
It was true—he could see it now. She had never, ever tricked him, for a woman who had schemed her way into being his wife would never look so miserable at being married to him.
He had hurt her by doing this. In saving her he had only made everything worse.
“Stop it,” he told himself through clenched teeth. “Stop this nonsense.”
But the blood on his hands never washed away no matter how many times he scrubbed them clean, and the memories of that night never ceased, and the scar would never go away. And now Amelia would be his wife forever, never knowing the sweetness of new love, of a courtship.
He gasped for breath before wrenching away from his place in the hallway.
How could he have let his guard down?
And yet…
There had been warmth in her embrace. There had been desire in her eyes, and her readied mouth.
Let lips do what hands do, he thought, quoting Romeo and Juliet. They pray.
Graham would pray a thousand times over if it meant he could change into a man who carried no curse—if he could be the very man Amelia deserved.
Who could sweep her off her feet. Who might be stronger and not only defensive.
Who would let her into his life rather than keep her on the fringes of it.
Catching his reflection in the window, he winced.
He would never be that man no matter how hard he tried.
It was always better to have his walls up—that way neither of them got hurt.
***
“Do you think he is all right?” Amelia worried, sat in the armchair either side of the large window in the library.
She was trying to focus on the remaining items on Felicity’s list for the Blackthorn ball but she could not entirely keep her attention where it needed to be.
Why had the duke turned so suddenly? Had she done something wrong?
Should she have stayed distanced from him when he had leaned in?
But that would have been seen as a rejection, surely.
Fretting, Amelia replayed in her mind how he had looked at calling Lord Owen’s and Eleanor’s courtship perfect, when it had not even begun. It was as though he was jealous—or perhaps upset that they had not had that.
“My brother is fine,” Daphne sighed. “As I have said, he gets into these moods. He is not angry with you, that is what you must remember. He is angry at himself, at the world, at the ton, mostly. I believe his moods have gotten worse since he broke his five year self-imposed exile?”
“Exile? People have said he attended events on and off. Is that not true?”
“It is.” Daphne nodded. “He retreated into our countryside estate, away from the townhouse and London’s social scene, but he came back for celebrations.
My birthdays, Christmas, my mother’s birthdays.
During those times he attempted a ball or two but always ended up leaving early.
” Daphne’s face pinched with empathy. “I always begged him to give the rumors time to die down but he never could endure it long enough. I do not blame him, of course. But I said that the way he disappeared for months and months and then would come back, it would only stir up the gossip. If the ton saw he was not afraid and simply attended more events, they would soon grow tired. But they like scandal—they like speculation, and new things. He inadvertently gave them that every time he came back, for they questioned why. They spoke of the duel. They spoke of his involvement.”
Amelia’s chest tightened as she listened. “And Graham… has he ever courted a lady?”
Daphne shook her head. “There was one girl, several years ago. Her name was Lady Charlotte Winthrop.”
Amelia sat up in her chair, intrigued by another lady who may have lowered the duke’s defenses.
“He did not like her in such ways,” Daphne said, shattering Amelia’s hopes of finding a way to reach her husband.
“He had two best friends who both liked her. There was something of a rivalry. I should not go too deeply into it, but I think a part of him, as much as he did not like Lady Charlotte in that way, was envious of how they courted her. Our father, as kind as he could be, primed Graham to be the perfect duke. While that came with finding a wife and producing an heir, it did not necessarily mean grand, wooing courtships. He envied his friends’ abilities to have a little more freedom than he did.
They, of course, still had rigid societal rules, but none quite so drastic as Graham’s. ”
Amelia nodded, her face tense. “But he has never directly courted?”
Daphne shook her head, her blonde curls swinging. “Nobody has ever caught his attention, especially since our father died. Yet as he has grown older, already into his thirtieth year, we feared he would continue into his isolation. Until you.”
“I do not think I would be here if it was Graham’s choice only,” Amelia confessed, afraid of it being confirmed.
“Mayhap. But perhaps he only needed to look beyond the borders of his own guarded walls and realise that everybody has a different circumstance. It does not mean your marriage is any less than his friend’s courtship—if that happens, of course.
Marriage can be about courting, too, if he were to make it so. ”
Those words snagged on Amelia, and she could not help but lapse into thought, humming. Nobody had caught the duke’s eye in all these years, and yet, their marriage aside, she had managed to do that at the Smith ball and then the garden party.
Even if she could still not fathom why—perhaps even Graham did not know, perhaps neither of them needed to know—she could still use that to her advantage and ignite something.
She could bring him back to her, try to recapture that closeness they had felt moments ago in the library, and the way they had danced together.
She wished to break down his defenses, and she believed she could do so.
There was a kind man behind the mask but he placed that mask so very securely over his true emotions.
However there would be cracks. Even the hardest, smoothest surface, possessed a chip somewhere.
A weakness. Something she could delve into and undo, to show him that a world without those masks was a world worth embracing.
For she had begun to realise it, too.
As doubt niggled in her, she questioned if she was strong enough to withstand his moods and outbursts.
She was quiet and had been raised in a household loud with affection and love, rather than loud with anger.
Graham’s mannerisms were new to her, and if he was so intent on pushing her away every time they got close, she needed him to know that she would not retreat.
She would not abandon or fail him.
“How about black and red?” Amelia asked suddenly. “For the ball. We could create a very striking space. Black drapes, red furnishings, candlelight glowing in the darker space.”
“It could cause for a very dramatic space,” Daphne mused, her eyes already lighting up. “We cannot do masks but this would add a sense of mystery and tension, for everybody shall be searching the shadows for their partners.”
“Candlelight would cast the guests in the most emphasizing lights.”
“I adore this idea!” the other girl squealed, clapping her hands. “What an enchanting idea.”
Amelia nodded, thinking aloud even as she kept some thoughts to herself. The duke had always hid in the shadows. What better way for him to feel at ease with the ballroom bedecked in those shadows, allowing him to be another face in the crowd, comfortable as much as he could be, in his own home?
And when the ton knew how the shadows felt perhaps they would be more lenient and welcoming to her husband.