Chapter Thirteen
Fiona did not tell him.
She woke the next morning with every intention of confessing everything—Mrs Blackley’s warning, the whispers in the village, the gathering storm—but when she opened her eyes and saw Christian’s face on the pillow beside hers, softened by sleep and utterly at peace, she could not do it.
One more day, she told herself. One more day of happiness before the world intrudes.
It was a coward’s choice, and she knew it. But she made it nonetheless.
The morning dawned grey and mist-laden, the sort of weather that wrapped the castle in cotton wool and hushed the world beyond its walls.
Christian suggested a walk—he wished to show her the old chapel on the far edge of the estate, a ruin he had loved since boyhood—and Fiona agreed, grateful for the distraction.
They set out after breakfast, wrapped in heavy cloaks against the damp.
The mist clung to everything, transforming the familiar landscape into something dreamlike and strange.
Trees loomed out of the whiteness like spectres; the path beneath their feet seemed almost to float, severed from the earth.
“I used to come here as a boy,” Christian said, his voice softened by the hushed air. “When my mother’s silences grew too heavy, or my father’s disappointment too sharp. I would slip out of the castle before dawn and walk until I reached the chapel. It felt like escaping into another world.”
“A world without cruelty?
“A world without people.” He glanced at her, a wry curve touching his mouth. “I was not yet wise enough to understand that the cruelty lived within me as much as beyond. That I carried their voices with me wherever I went.”
Fiona tightened her hand on his arm. “You were a child. You should never have been required to be wise.”
“No. I should have had parents who loved me regardless of my appearance. I should have had a world that did not recoil from difference.” He exhaled softly. “But should and did are rarely the same thing.”
They walked on in silence for a time, the mist curling about them, the only sound the muted crunch of their footsteps on the path. Fiona found her thoughts circling the conversation she continued to avoid—the truth she ought to share—and felt guilt twist quietly in her stomach.
“Tell me more,” she said instead. “About your childhood. About the boy you were before you became the duke.”
Christian was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, he began to speak.
“I was born in the London house,” he said.
“My mother endured a difficult labour—nearly two days, the midwife said—and when I finally arrived, I was not what anyone expected. The birthmark was visible from the first moment, spreading across my chest and up my neck. The midwife screamed. My mother fainted. And my father—”
He paused, his jaw tightening slightly.
“My father took one look at me and left the room. He did not return for three days.”
“Christian…”
“When he did return, it was to inform my mother that the child would be kept out of sight. I was not to be presented to visitors. I was not to be taken into society. I was to be raised quietly, privately, until a solution could be found.”
“A solution?”
“They hoped it would fade. The birthmark. That it was some temporary affliction that would vanish with time.” His laugh held no humour.
“When it became clear that it would not, they turned their hopes to concealment. High collars, careful tailoring, a lifetime of hiding. Physicians were summoned. Charlatans as well—anyone who claimed a cure. I endured poultices, tinctures, and one particularly memorable treatment involving leeches. None of it worked. Nothing ever did.”
Fiona’s heart ached. She tried to imagine him as a child—small and frightened, subjected to painful remedies by adults who regarded his very existence as a defect to be corrected.
“How old were you,” she asked softly, “when the treatments stopped?”
“Twelve. That was when my father died—a riding accident, sudden and quite final—and I became the duke.” Christian’s voice was steady, almost distant, as though he spoke of another boy’s life rather than his own.
“After that, my mother removed herself to the dower house. She did not withdraw from me entirely, but… she struggled. For a long while, she could scarcely bear to look at the mark without flinching. I think she hated herself for it.”
“She was afraid?” Fiona asked gently.
“Yes. And ashamed of that fear.” He drew a quiet breath.
“My father had made it clear what he thought of me, and she lived under the weight of that judgement for years. When he died, she tried—truly she did—to mend what had been broken between us. She visited. Sat with me. Forced herself to meet my eyes even when it pained her. But grief and guilt had worn her thin, and there were days when the effort was more than she could manage.”
Christian’s mouth curved faintly, though the expression held more weariness than amusement.
“Yes. I believe that now. As a boy, I could not understand it. I thought her distance meant disappointment—that I was a constant reminder of what my father believed she had failed to give him. But she was grieving, and trying, in her own imperfect way, to love a son the world had taught her to fear.”
He stopped walking then and turned to face Fiona.
“I tell you this not to invite pity,” he said quietly, “but because you deserve to know the history of the man you are about to marry. The wounds that shaped him.”
“I know what I am marrying.”
She lifted her hands and cupped his face, feeling the rough warmth of stubble beneath her palms.
“I am marrying a man who survived cruelty without allowing it to harden his heart. A man who built a life in spite of everything that tried to diminish him. A man who learned kindness even when kindness was not always easy to find.”
“You give me too much credit.”
“I give you exactly the credit you deserve.”
She rose on her toes and kissed him—softly, tenderly, a promise rather than a demand.
“Your past does not frighten me, Christian,” she murmured. “It only makes me love you more.”
He closed his eyes, leaning into her touch. For a moment, they remained there, wrapped in mist and silence, two souls holding one another against the long shadow of the past.
Then he took her hand and led her onward, toward the chapel.
The ruin emerged from the mist like something out of a fairy tale.
It had once been a small church, Fiona realised—a single nave, a crumbling bell tower, walls that had once been stout stone but were now more ivy than masonry.
The roof had long since collapsed, leaving the interior open to the pale sky, and wildflowers pushed bravely through the cracks in the flagstones.
“It was built in the twelfth century,” Christian said as he guided her through the gap where the door had once stood. “A chapel for the family. But the Hales of that era were not especially devout, and it gradually fell into neglect. By the time I was born, it was already a ruin.”
“It is beautiful.”
Fiona turned slowly, taking in the fallen stones, the wildflowers, the soft light filtering through the mist.
“It feels… peaceful. As though the world cannot quite reach this place.”
“That is exactly how it felt to me as a boy.”
He settled upon a fallen pillar and patted the space beside him in invitation.
“I used to imagine that if I remained here long enough, I might become invisible. That the stone would absorb me, and I would become part of the ruin. Then no one would ever be forced to look at me again.”
Fiona’s shoulder pressed against his. “And now? What do you imagine when you come here?”
For a long moment, he did not answer. His gaze lingered on the quiet ruin.
“Now,” he said at last, “I imagine bringing our children here. Teaching them the names of the wildflowers. Telling them the stories I invented as a boy—about knights and dragons and princesses who rescued themselves. Watching them explore the ruins as I once did, but without the loneliness. Without the shame.”
Fiona’s breath caught.
“You want children?”
“I—” He hesitated, uncertainty flickering across his features. “I had never allowed myself to want them before. I feared passing on the birthmark… feared condemning another soul to the cruelty I endured. But with you…”
He turned toward her, his expression open in a way that still astonished her.
“With you, I find myself imagining a future I once believed impossible. A family. A house filled with laughter rather than silence. Children who are loved without condition, no matter how they come into the world.”
“And if one of them bears the birthmark?”
“Then we will teach them it is beautiful.” His voice hardened with quiet conviction. “We will raise them to see it as a mark of distinction rather than a curse. We will surround them with such love that the world’s whispers cannot wound them.”
Fiona felt tears sting her eyes.
This man—this remarkable, wounded, extraordinary man—who had been taught from the moment of his birth that he was monstrous, now sat beside her dreaming of children he would teach to love themselves.
“I want that,” she whispered. “All of it. Children and wildflowers and stories about princesses who rescue themselves. I want to grow old with you in this castle, watching the mist roll across the hills and the seasons change. I want to be your family, Christian. The family you should have had from the beginning.”
He drew her into his arms, holding her close against his chest. She felt the steady beat of his heart and the warmth of his breath against her hair.
“I love you,” he said softly. “I cannot say it enough. I fear I never shall.”
“Then do not merely say it.”
She lifted her face to his.
“Show me,” she murmured. “For the rest of our lives—show me.”
He kissed her then, slow and searching, and for a while the world slipped quietly away.
They lingered at the chapel for hours, talking, kissing, and simply existing together in the mist-softened stillness.
Christian told her more about his childhood—moments of warmth as well as sorrow.
The cook who slipped him sugared biscuits when his mother was not looking.
The old hound, long since gone, who had been his constant companion through the lonelier years.
“His name was Brutus,” Christian said, a fond smile touching his lips. “He was enormous, perpetually flatulent, and utterly devoted to me. He slept at the foot of my bed even when my mother forbade it. I think he was the first creature who ever loved me without reservation.”
“I wish I could have met him.”
“He would have adored you. He had excellent judgement in people.” Christian glanced at her with a teasing sidelong look. “Perhaps, when we are settled, we might acquire a dog for the castle. It has been far too quiet here for far too long.”
“I would like that.” Fiona smiled. “A whole pack of dogs, if you wish. And cats. And horses. And that biting donkey.”
“Bartholomew is not for the faint of heart.”
“Neither am I.”
He laughed then, the sound echoing warmly against the ancient stones, and for a moment everything was perfect.
But perfection, Fiona knew, was a fragile thing.
The walk back to the castle felt longer than the walk out.
The mist had begun to lift, revealing glimpses of the world beyond—the rolling hills, the distant gleam of the sea, the grey mass of Thornwick rising against the sky.
Fiona’s legs ached from the long ramble, but she found herself reluctant for the journey to end.
When they reached the castle, reality would be waiting.
She had to tell him. She could not delay it any longer.
“Christian,” she said, her voice catching on his name. “There is something I must tell you.”
He glanced at her, his expression shifting from easy contentment to quiet concern.
“What is it?”
“I spoke with Mrs Blackley yesterday. She told me…” Fiona swallowed, forcing herself onward.
“She told me the talk in the village has grown worse. Specific. Ugly. Someone has been spreading stories about us—about what happens in the castle after dark. The vicar’s wife has organised a boycott of any merchant who supplies Thornwick.
And the tenant farmers’ wives have begun shunning your staff. ”
Christian went very still.
“I should have told you at once,” Fiona continued. “But you were so happy, and I could not bear to—” She faltered, shame rising hot in her chest. “I was a coward. I am sorry.”
For a long moment, he said nothing, his jaw tightening.
Fiona braced herself for anger, for reproach, for the cold withdrawal she had once known so well.
Instead, he took her hand.
“You were not a coward,” he said quietly. “You were trying to spare me. Just as I have tried to spare you.”
He lifted her hand to his lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles.
“I am not angry, Fiona. Only… tired. I had hoped—perhaps foolishly—that we might have a little more time before the world intruded.”
“I am sorry,” she whispered again.
“Do not be.”
She hesitated, then looked up at him. “What do you mean—you tried to spare me?”
Christian was silent for a moment before answering.
“I received a letter from your father this morning,” he said at last. “A reply to the one I sent announcing my intentions. The words were… not kind.”
Fiona’s stomach tightened.
“Oh.”
“I had not meant to tell you yet,” he continued. “Not today. I thought—selfishly, perhaps—that we might have a few more hours of peace before we were forced to confront it.”
They walked on a few paces in silence.
“What do we do now?” she asked quietly.
“We do what we planned.” His voice steadied, gathering quiet resolve. “I shall do everything in my power to earn your father’s favour. We will announce our engagement. We will present a united front to the world and dare them to challenge us.”
His expression hardened slightly.
“I am the Duke of Thornwick. I will not be cowed by gossip and small-minded cruelty.”
“And if my father refuses? If he forbids the marriage?”
“You are of age. You do not require his permission.” Christian’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “I would prefer to have his blessing—for your sake. But his letter has made it quite clear that blessing will not be easily given.”
Fiona looked up at him. “Was it truly so bad?”
He hesitated.
“Bad enough,” he said at last, “that I wished to spare you the reading of it for as long as I could.”
A cold knot formed in her stomach.
“May I see it?”
They had reached the castle steps by then. Christian did not answer at once. He led her inside, across the entrance hall, where the morning post still rested upon the silver salver.
After a moment’s silence, he picked up the folded letter he had placed there earlier.
“I should not have hidden it from you,” he said quietly.
Fiona’s heart began to beat faster as he handed it to her.
She unfolded the paper.