Chapter Ten #2
“He’s also trying,” Marianne said softly. “In his own way, he’s trying to live again. Yes, our marriage was sudden. Yes, there was scandal. But, Catherine, I need you to understand something.”
She leaned forward across the expanse of white tablecloth, past the abandoned plates of barely touched breakfast, her voice taking on an intensity that made Catherine look up sharply.
“I chose him too. Not the title, not the fortune, and certainly not the safety marriage was meant to offer me. Him.”
Catherine blinked, her brows knitting. “After a few short days?”
Marianne’s gaze did not waver. “Days, hours, minutes—it hardly signifies. When one soul recognises another, time ceases to matter.”
“That’s romantic nonsense.” But even as Catherine said it, there was a wistfulness in her tone, a longing for that kind of certainty.
“Is it? Or is it the same instinct that made your brother throw himself in front of a carriage without thinking? Sometimes we just know.”
Catherine was quiet for a long moment, her fingers playing absently with the edge of the handkerchief, twisting the delicate fabric. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked steadily, marking the seconds of silence. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely audible. “He plays for you?”
“No, not yet—but I think he might, one day.” Marianne could almost see it in her mind’s eye—Adrian at the pianoforte, his long fingers moving across the keys with a grace that belied their strength, his whole body yielding to the rhythm as though the music might quiet something restless within him.
“He stopped playing after the accident. Said music was for people who could still feel beauty.” Fresh tears spilled over Catherine’s cheeks, tracking silver paths down her pale skin. Her next words came out choked, heavy with five years of accumulated guilt. “I took that from him.”
“No.” Marianne’s voice was firm, brooking no argument.
She reached across the table, her hand stopping just short of Catherine’s, giving her the choice of contact.
“The accident took it. Guilt took it. His choice to isolate himself took it. You were seventeen years old, walking in a park. You bear no responsibility for what happened.”
“He does not see it that way.” The resignation in Catherine’s voice spoke of years of trying to convince herself of the same thing and failing.
“He does not see many things clearly when it comes to that day.”
Catherine studied Marianne’s face for something—understanding, perhaps, or judgment. “You know. About the carriage, the sacrifice.”
“Yes.”
“He told you?” The shock in Catherine’s voice was evident, her eyes widening with disbelief.
“Eventually.”
“He never tells anyone.” Catherine dabbed at her eyes again, the handkerchief now thoroughly damp. Her voice softened, threaded with wonder. “Perhaps you’re good for him after all.”
“I’m trying to be.” The simple honesty of the admission seemed to settle between them, fragile but true.
Catherine’s face crumpled once more, shame rising to colour her cheeks. “I’m sorry. For what I said earlier. I was just... seeing you both together, so comfortable, when he can scarcely endure to be in the same room with me...”
“Give him time. He’s learning to let people close again. But it isn’t easy for him.” Marianne’s tone was gentle but unflinching. Catherine needed truth, not platitude.
“It has been five years.” The words carried the weight of all those lost days, all those silences that had stretched into years.
“And you have been gone for most of them.” Marianne kept her voice soft but steady, watching as the truth landed. “You cannot expect to walk back in and have everything mended at once.”
“I suppose not.” Catherine rose slowly, smoothing her skirts with restless hands. “I should go and apologise.”
“No. Let him cool first. Adrian doesn’t manage emotion well when cornered. He needs time to think.”
Catherine paused, tilting her head in a gesture that so resembled her brother’s it startled Marianne. “You know him well—for so brief an acquaintance.”
“I’m learning.” Marianne stood too, the chair legs whispering against polished wood.
The morning light caught the gold of her wedding band, throwing a glint across the table.
“Catherine, may I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“What really happened in India? He’s told me his version, but I should like to hear what you know, if you’re willing.”
Catherine’s expression darkened like storm clouds gathering over a clear sky, her whole body tensing. “I don’t know everything. He won’t speak of it. But I know he went there to die.”
“What?” The word escaped Marianne as barely more than a breath, shock coursing through her.
“Not immediately, perhaps. But he took every dangerous assignment, every suicidal mission. The East India Company used him as their weapon because he didn’t care if he survived.”
She met Marianne’s eyes, and the pain there was almost unbearable to witness. “There are rumours—dark ones. About things he did, people he killed. They say he became something monstrous there.”
“He’s not a monster.” The defence was immediate, instinctive, fierce.
“No? Then what is he?”
Marianne considered the question, thinking of the man she’d married—his scars both visible and hidden, his careful control that masked such deep pain, the way he held her like she might disappear. “A man carrying too much guilt and pain who doesn’t know how to set it down.”
Catherine moved closer and touched Marianne’s arm gently, the contact brief but warm. “Help him. Please. I can’t—he won’t let me. But you... He looks at you as though you are air and he’s drowning.”
“I’ll try.”
“Good.” Catherine turned toward the door, resting her hand on the polished brass handle. She paused, glancing back with a faint, rueful smile. “I am glad he married you. Even if it was in typical Adrian fashion—impulsive and absolute.”
When the door closed softly behind her, silence pressed in.
The breakfast room, so bright and orderly, felt strangely hollow.
The morning she had expected—mundane, domestic, perhaps even affectionate—had splintered into something far more fragile.
Catherine’s words lingered like smoke: Using me as a wall between himself and the world.
Was that what she was? Another barrier between Adrian and society? The thought settled cold in her stomach.
She found him in his study—a room steeped in shadow and the scent of tobacco, leather, and solitude. He stood at the tall window, his back to her, shoulders tense beneath his black coat. Morning light cut through the glass, throwing his shadow long across the Persian rug.
“You shouldn’t have interfered,” he said without turning. His tone was even, too even—the kind that masked fury.
“You were about to say something unforgivable to each other.”
“Perhaps it needed saying.”
“Perhaps. But not in anger.” She stepped closer, her voice calm though her heart beat unevenly. In the reflection on the window, she saw his face, rigid, his control stretched thin. “She’s hurt, Adrian. You shut her out.”
“I protected her.”
“From what? From knowing her brother is human? From seeing you struggle?”
He turned then, so suddenly she flinched. His face was a study in torment, his eyes bright with pain. “From knowing what I became. What I did in India. The blood on my hands.”
“She knows,” Marianne said quietly. “Not everything, perhaps, but enough. She’s heard the whispers.”
“Whispers,” he echoed, his laugh hollow. “Whispers are merciful. The truth is not.”
He ran a hand through his hair, pacing, voice unravelling with each word. “You already know the worst of it. What I did there, what I became."
“Adrian—”
He cut her off sharply. “She’s right, you know. Catherine. I married you too quickly. I saw you at the opera and became obsessed. Had to have you. Didn’t matter how.”
Understanding dawned, and with it, a flash of anger. “Are you trying to drive me away?”
“I’m trying to be honest.”
“No,” she said softly, stepping forward.
“You’re trying to wound me before I can wound you.
” Her hands rose to his face, cool against the heat of his skin, forcing his gaze to meet hers.
“Too late. You’re already attached. So am I.
Whatever you were in India—whatever you did—it doesn’t change what we are now. ”
His voice cracked, stripped of its usual armour. “And what are we?”
“Married,” she said simply. “Bound. Learning how to be partners.”
“I don’t know how to be a partner. I only know how to possess—or to be alone.”
“Then you’ll learn. We both will.” She kissed him, steady and sure, an act of faith more than passion.
He pulled her close, as though he feared she might vanish if he loosened his grip. His heart thundered against hers, his breath ragged. “Catherine hates me.”
“Catherine loves you,” Marianne murmured. “She simply doesn’t know how to reach you anymore.”
“I don’t know how to let her.”
“Then start small. Have dinner together. Speak of safe things. Build from there.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Nothing worth healing ever is.” She cupped his cheek, thumb brushing the rough edge of his scar. “But it’s still worth trying.”
For a moment, the study held only the sound of their breathing and the rhythmic tick of the clock on the mantle. He searched her eyes, seeking something—absolution, perhaps, or a reason to believe in one.
“I don’t want to be human,” he said finally, the words scarcely a whisper. “Humans feel too much—guilt, fear, pain. I was better as a monster.”
“No,” she said gently. “You were merely surviving as a monster. Now you’re living.”
“Living hurts.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice breaking with compassion. “But it’s still better than the alternative.”
He kissed her then—desperate, hungry, a plea more than a claim. His hands tangled in her hair, undoing the careful order of the morning. “Make me forget,” he whispered against her mouth. “Just for today.”
She understood. He wasn’t asking for passion; he was asking for peace. “I can’t make you forget,” she whispered back. “But I can remind you why remembering matters.”
What followed was unlike any of their encounters so far. It was slower, deeper, with an emotional intensity that left them both shaking. Every touch was reverent, every kiss a promise.
Adrian clung to her like she was the only solid thing in a collapsing world, and perhaps for him, she was. His hands mapped her body with desperate precision, as if trying to memorise every curve, every response.
When at last they lay tangled together in the shadows of his study, he pressed his face into her hair and spoke in a voice barely audible.
“I’m broken, Marianne. Fundamentally, irretrievably broken.”
“Then we’ll be broken together,” she whispered back, her fingers tracing soothing patterns on his chest.
“That’s not a marriage.”
“It’s our marriage.”