Chapter Nine
The letter arrived at breakfast five days later.
Adrian went completely still as he read it; the colour draining from his face. Without a word, he stood and left the room, the letter crumpled in his fist.
Marianne found it later, smoothed out and abandoned on his desk.
Adrian,
I’m returning to England. I know you’d rather I stay away, but I can’t hide forever. The physicians in Rome say I’m well enough, and I’m tired of being a ghost.
I’ll be in London by month’s end. Please don’t try to stop me. I need to come home, need to try to be your sister again, even if the sight of me still causes you pain.
I heard you married. A merchant’s daughter, they say. I hope she makes you happy. I hope she can forgive what I never could.
Catherine
Marianne stared at the letter, understanding flooding through her. Catherine blamed herself. Not Adrian for his scars—but herself, for causing them. The weight of that guilt had driven her away, kept her away, leaving both siblings trapped in their solitude.
She found Adrian in the music room, standing before the window, rigid as stone.
“You read it,” he said without turning.
“You left it on your desk.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“I know.” She moved closer, carefully, as though approaching a wounded creature. “She’s coming home.”
“She can’t.” His voice was raw. “I won’t—I can’t see her.”
“Adrian—”
“You don’t understand.” He turned, and the devastation on his face stopped her cold. “The last time she saw me—really saw me—she screamed. Screamed and ran from the room. My own sister couldn’t bear the sight of what I’d become.”
“What you’d become saving her life.”
“That doesn’t matter!”
“It’s all that matters!” She caught his arms, forcing him to face her. “You threw yourself in front of that carriage for her. You were willing to die for her. And she’s been carrying that guilt ever since—”
“She has nothing to feel guilty about.”
“Neither do you.”
He pulled away, laughing bitterly. “I have everything to feel guilty about. Do you know what I did in India? The things I became capable of? The monster everyone thinks I am—they’re not wrong.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Adrian—”
“I said no!” He rounded on her, eyes wild. “You want to know what your husband really is? I was a weapon, Marianne. The East India Company’s convenient shadow. They pointed; I obeyed. Men, women—anyone deemed a threat to British interests.”
The words fell heavy between them, brutal and bare.
“Why?” she asked softly.
“Because I was already dead inside. Catherine’s scream—her horror—it killed something in me. So I went where dead men go to be useful.” His laugh was bitter. “Turns out I was very good at it. The Beast of Belgravia became the Shadow of Bombay. Children would cross the street to avoid me.”
“Adrian—”
“I have blood on my hands that will never wash clean. I’ve done things that would make you run from me if you knew the details. And now Catherine wants to come home, to pretend we can be siblings again, when she can barely look at me without remembering—”
“Without remembering that you saved her life.”
“Without remembering that I’m a monster!” He seized a vase from the mantel and hurled it against the wall, where it shattered spectacularly. “She saw it that day—saw what I truly was beneath the polite veneer. And she was right to run.”
“You’re not a monster.”
“No?” He stepped toward her, dangerous, almost daring her to disagree. “Then what am I?”
“You’re a man who sacrificed everything for someone he loved. Who bore her fear and society’s scorn and never once defended himself. Who went to India and became what they demanded because he thought he had nothing left to lose.”
“Pretty words—”
“Truth.” She held her ground as he loomed over her. “You want to play the beast? Fine. But beasts don’t feel guilt. They don’t lose sleep over the past. They don’t protect merchants’ daughters from scandal or worry over their wives’ comfort or—”
He kissed her then—savage, desperate—backing her against the wall. She let him, knowing he needed the contact, the proof that he was still more man than monster.
“This doesn’t change anything,” he said against her mouth.
“It changes everything.” She looked up at him, unflinching. “Let her come home, Adrian. Let her try.”
“I can’t see her. I won’t.”
“Then don’t. But don’t stop her either. She has as much right to heal as you do.”
He stared at her for a long moment before stepping back. “When did you become so wise?”
“Sometime between being compromised at a dinner party and marrying a duke with more scars of the heart than of the flesh.”
Despite himself, he laughed. “I’m going to ride. Clear my head.”
“Adrian—”
“I need space, Marianne. Please.”
She let him go, though every instinct screamed to follow. He needed time to face the ghosts he’d buried; she needed to learn how to help him fight them.
He didn’t come to dinner. Or to her bed that night.
***
The next morning, she found him in the library, surrounded by empty brandy bottles, still in yesterday’s clothes.
“You look dreadful,” she said.
“I feel worse.” He didn’t look up from the book he clearly wasn’t reading. “Go away, Marianne.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
“I don’t care.” She stepped closer, wrinkling her nose at the scent of stale brandy. “You’re being a coward again.”
His head snapped up, eyes blazing. “Careful.”
“Or what? You’ll push me away as you do everyone else? Too late.” She knocked the book from his hands. “Your sister is coming home whether you wish it or not. You can either face her like the man I married, or hide in a bottle like a child.”
“The man you married is a killer.”
“The man I married is a survivor. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” He stood, unsteady. “I’ve taken lives, Marianne. More than I can count.”
“And saved at least one. Catherine’s.”
“Stop saying her name!”
“Why? Because it hurts? Good. You should hurt. You should feel something beyond this… this numbness you’ve wrapped yourself in.
” She caught his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her.
“You’re not dead inside, Adrian. I know because I’ve felt your heart race when you touch me.
I’ve seen you laugh. I’ve watched you care—despite yourself. ”
“You don’t know—”
“I know enough.” She kissed him, tasting brandy and despair. “I know you’re mine. And I don’t give up what’s mine.”
He broke.
His arms came around her, crushing her against him as he kissed her with desperate hunger. But when he tried to deepen it—to turn it into something physical—she pulled back.
“No.”
“No?” He stared at her in disbelief.
“Not like this. Not when you’re drunk and trying to use me to forget.” She stepped back. “When you’re ready to remember—to feel, to talk to me instead of drowning yourself—I’ll be here. But not like this.”
She left him there, stunned and swaying, and returned to her own chambers for the first time since their wedding. Let him come when he was ready. If he ever was.
That night, she lay alone in the too-large bed, listening to the house settle around her. She’d pushed him hard—perhaps too hard—but someone had to. Someone had to make him see he was more than his scars, more than his sins.
A soft knock broke her reverie.
“Come in.”
Adrian entered, bathed and changed, but still pale and drawn. He lingered by the door, uncertain in a way she’d never seen him.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“For?”
“For drinking. For breaking things. For being a brute.”
“You forgot pushing me away and trying to use passion as an anaesthetic.”
His lips quirked slightly. “Those too.”
She sat up, studying him. “Are you ready to talk? Truly talk?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps.” He moved closer, stopping at the foot of her bed. “May I… may I stay? Only to sleep. I don’t want to be alone.”
The vulnerability in his voice broke her heart. She drew back the covers in invitation.
He climbed in fully clothed, lying stiffly beside her, unsure where to put his hands. She rolled her eyes and nestled against him, resting her head on his chest.
“Tell me about India,” she said softly.
He was quiet so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. Then, haltingly, he began to speak. He told her about the heat and the dust, the colour and the cruelty. About the things he’d done, the lives he had taken, and how it had hollowed him out.
“I thought I was already dead,” he said into the dark. “After Catherine ran from me, after society whispered that I was a monster, I believed there was nothing left to lose.”
“But?”
“But then I came back. And there you were at the opera, refusing to look away. Making me feel things I’d thought long since burned out of me.”
“Is that why you pursued me?”
“Partly. Also, because you were beautiful and defiant, and I wanted you with a ferocity that terrified me.” His arm tightened around her. “I still do.”
“I know.”
“Catherine will come, and I’ll have to face her.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You can.” She pressed a kiss to his chest. “And I’ll be with you.”
“Why?” The question seemed torn from him. “Why do you care what happens to me?”
Because I love you, she thought, but didn’t say it. Not yet. It was too fragile.
“Because you’re mine,” she said instead. “And I protect what’s mine too.”
He was silent for a moment, then tilted her chin up to meet his gaze. The kiss he gave her was soft, almost reverent—nothing like their usual passion.
“Thank you,” he murmured against her lips.
“For what?”
“For not letting me vanish into the dark.”
“Never,” she promised. “You’re stuck with me now, Your Grace. For better or worse.”
“Worse seems more likely.”
“Then we’ll make it better. Together.”
He kissed her again, and this time there was heat in it—promise rather than desperation.
“Can I show you something?”
“Now?”
“Now.”
He led her through dim corridors to a room she’d never seen. When he lit the lamps, she gasped.
It was an artist’s studio. Canvases crowded every wall, the scent of oil paint and turpentine thick in the air. The paintings were extraordinary—landscapes of India, portraits of strangers, turbulent abstractions that seemed to breathe emotion.
“You painted these?”
“It helped. After India. Gave me something to do with my hands that wasn’t… destructive.” He looked almost shy. “No one knows. Not even the servants.”
She moved through the room, studying each piece. They were beautiful but dark, full of shadows and sharp edges. Except for one.
It was her. At the opera, that first night, her green dress and defiant chin captured in bold strokes. But it was her eyes that caught her attention. He’d painted them looking directly at the viewer—challenging, alive.
“When did you paint this?”
“The night after the opera. I couldn’t sleep—couldn’t stop thinking about you. So, I painted what I remembered.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful. I only captured what was already there.”
She turned to him, this complicated, broken, extraordinary man she’d married.
“Paint me again.”
“What?”
“Paint me. Now. Like this.”
“Marianne—”
“You’ve shown me your darkness. Let me be your light.”
He studied her for a long moment, then nodded, moving to prepare a canvas. “Sit by the window. The moonlight…”
She sat where he directed, watching him work. The change in him was astonishing—his posture eased, his expression softened, his movements fluid and sure. This, she thought, was the man he might have been without the pain, without the ghosts.
“Tell me about Catherine,” she said as he painted. “Before.”
He hesitated, then resumed his brushstrokes. “She was light to my shadow. Always laughing, forever in trouble. She wanted to marry for love—drove our father to distraction.”
“What happened to her? After the accident?”
“She blamed herself. Said if she’d been more careful… I tried to tell her it wasn’t her fault, but she couldn’t bear to look at me. Mother sent her to our aunt in the country. After Mother died, Catherine left for the continent. We’ve spoken only through letters since.”
“She wants to reconcile.”
“She wants to ease her guilt.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps she wants her brother back.”
“That brother no longer exists.”
“No,” Marianne agreed softly. “But this one does. Changed, scarred, but still her brother. Still the man who loved her enough to die for her.”
He set down his brush, moving to kneel before her. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Make me believe things might be different. Better.”
“Because they can be. If you let them.”
He kissed her hands, paint-stained fingers against her skin. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Probably not. But you have me anyway.”
They made love there in the studio, surrounded by his art, the moonlight soft upon their skin. It was unlike their other encounters—slower, deeper, walls giving way to something fragile and real.
Afterwards, as they lay tangled on the floor, Marianne traced the scar upon his cheek.
“When Catherine comes,” she said, “I’ll be with you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
He pulled her closer, his breath warm against her hair. For the first time since their marriage, she heard something almost like hope in his voice.
“Mayhap,” he murmured. “Maybe it will be all right.”
“It will,” she whispered, though her heart trembled. Because Catherine’s return would either heal old wounds—or tear them open beyond repair.
Only time would tell which.