Chapter Fourteen
Christian did not come to dinner.
Fiona sat alone in the small breakfast room, pushing listlessly at a meal she could not taste while the candles burned low and the shadows stretched along the panelled walls. Mrs Blackley had offered to send a tray to the Duke’s study, but Christian had declined it with quiet thanks.
“He said he had letters to write,” the housekeeper had explained gently.
Fiona knew what that meant.
He was writing to her father.
The thought should have reassured her. It had been his own proposal, after all—to try again, to explain matters calmly and honourably.
Yet the memory of her father’s letter lingered like a bitter taste.
Words once written could not easily be unwritten, and she feared what further injury they might yet cause.
Still, she forced herself to remain where she was. Christian had asked only for a little time, and she would grant him that much.
She had just resigned herself to another lonely hour when a hesitant knock sounded at the door.
“Miss Hart?”
She looked up to see Thomas lingering in the doorway, his expression apologetic.
“What is it, Thomas?”
“It’s His Grace, miss. He—well—he stepped out a short while ago.”
“Stepped out?” Fiona set down her fork. “Where did he go?”
“Toward the cliffs, I believe. Mrs Blackley thought perhaps you should know.”
The cliffs?
Fiona rose from her chair, a faint thread of concern tightening in her chest.
“Thank you, Thomas.”
She fetched her cloak from the peg near the servants’ entrance and slipped outside.
The night air was cool and damp, carrying the distant sound of the sea. The clouds had thinned since evening, and a faint wash of moonlight silvered the lawns and hedgerows.
Christian had likely come here for the same reason she sometimes wandered the grounds when her thoughts grew restless—to clear his mind beneath an open sky.
Still, she found herself walking quickly.
The path wound through the dark gardens and along the familiar rise beyond them. By the time she reached the cliff path, the open stretch of sea lay ahead, pale beneath the thin light of the clouds.
And there he was.
Christian stood a little way from the edge, his coat draped over a nearby stone, gazing out across the water as though weighing something only he could see.
“Christian.”
He turned at once at the sound of her voice.
“Fiona?” A hint of surprise crossed his face. “What are you doing out here?”
“I might ask you the same.”
A faint smile tugged at his mouth.
“I needed a breath of air. Thornwick can feel… very full of thoughts tonight.”
She came to stand beside him, following his gaze toward the restless sea.
“Have you been writing?”
“Yes.” He exhaled slowly. “Your father will receive a very patient letter tomorrow morning.”
“And?”
“And I have done my best to be civil,” he said dryly. “Though I suspect the man will find fault with civility as readily as anything else.”
Fiona glanced up at him. “My father has always had a particular talent for finding fault.”
Christian’s mouth curved faintly, though the expression did not quite reach his eyes.
They stood for a moment in silence, the wind moving restlessly along the cliffside.
“At any rate,” he said at last, “the letter is written.”
“And that eases your mind?”
He did not answer immediately.
“No,” he said after a pause. “Not particularly.”
Fiona studied his profile. The faint humour that had touched his voice a moment before had faded again, leaving something far more guarded behind.
“Christian.”
He drew a slow breath, his gaze still fixed on the dark water below.
“I thought writing it would settle the matter in my own mind,” he admitted quietly. “That if I laid everything before him plainly—my intentions, my honourable offer—then I might feel… justified.”
“And you do not?”
He shook his head once.
“Your father believes I have corrupted you. That I have taken advantage of my position to compromise you and bind you here.” His voice remained calm, but there was a strain beneath it now.
“When I first read those words, I dismissed them as the anger of a man who does not know me. But the more I have considered them…” He exhaled slowly.
“The more difficult it becomes to dismiss them entirely.”
“That is nonsense.”
“Is it?” He finally turned to look at her. “You came here under my protection. You stayed under my roof. The world will say exactly what your father has said—that I used my influence, my title, my isolation here to place you in a position from which your reputation cannot recover.”
“I stayed because I wished to stay.”
“Yes.” His voice softened. “But the world will not believe that.”
“I do not care what the world believes.”
Christian’s gaze dropped briefly to the ground between them.
“That is because you have not yet had to live with the consequences.”
Fiona’s temper stirred.
“I am not a child, Christian. I understood the risks perfectly well.”
“And yet I asked you to take them.”
She stepped closer. “And I agreed.”
“That does not absolve me.” His jaw tightened slightly. “I should have been the stronger one. I should have insisted you leave before matters went this far.”
“Leave?” Fiona repeated sharply. “You cannot possibly mean—”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I do.”
The wind swept across the cliffside, lifting the edges of his shirt.
“I have been asking myself a very simple question since this afternoon,” he continued. “Whether loving me is worth what it will cost you.”
“It is.”
“You say that now.”
“I say it because it is true.”
Christian looked out again toward the sea.
“I spent most of my life believing that happiness was not meant for me,” he said slowly. “That if I kept to myself, harmed no one, demanded nothing of the world, then perhaps I could pass through it quietly enough to avoid further damage.”
“And then I arrived,” Fiona said softly.
“Yes.”
A faint, bittersweet smile touched his mouth.
“And I forgot that rule entirely.”
“Christian—”
“I allowed myself to believe, for the first time, that I might deserve something better than solitude.” His voice had grown rougher now. “But your father’s letter is a useful reminder.”
“A reminder of what?”
“Of what the world sees when it looks at me.”
Fiona’s heart clenched.
“Do not say that.”
“A man who lured an innocent woman into ruin,” he continued quietly. “A man who corrupted her reputation and cut her off from her family. A man selfish enough to keep her beside him despite knowing the price she will pay.”
“That is not what happened.”
“Is it not?”
She seized his arm.
“And so your solution is what? To surrender to their opinion?”
“To prevent it from becoming the truth.”
Her breath caught.
“What do you mean?”
Christian met her eyes then, and the pain she saw there struck deeper than anger ever could.
“I mean that perhaps we should end this,” he said. “Before the damage becomes permanent.”
The words hung between them, sharp and impossible.
“No,” Fiona said at once.
“It would be the sensible course.”
“I do not want the sensible course.”
“You deserve better than a lifetime of whispers.”
“I deserve the life I choose.”
Christian shook his head faintly.
“You think this is bravery. But it may simply be youth.”
“And you think this is nobility,” she shot back, “but it is cowardice.”
His expression tightened.
“You would be free to return to London. Your father would forgive you in time. The scandal would fade if it were not sealed by marriage.”
“And what of you?” she demanded.
“I have survived worse.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
Fiona stared at him, disbelief and fury rising together.
“You cannot simply decide this for both of us.”
“I am trying to protect you.”
“By breaking my heart?”
He flinched.
Silence fell between them again, broken only by the distant crash of waves against the rocks below.
At last, Christian spoke, his voice quieter than before.
“Perhaps I was foolish to believe that someone like me could build a life that included happiness,” he said. “Perhaps the curse is not the birthmark at all, but the stubborn belief that I might deserve something better than what I was given.”
“Stop it.”
The word came out sharp.
Fiona stepped directly in front of him, forcing him to meet her gaze.
“Stop speaking of yourself as though you are something monstrous,” she said fiercely. “You are not cursed. You are not a danger to me. And I will not stand here and listen while you dismantle the very happiness we fought to build.”
He did not reply.
But the storm in his eyes had not yet passed.
“I don’t know how,” he said at last, and his voice broke on the words. “I don’t know how to fight. I have only ever known how to hide.”
“Then let me teach you.”
She stepped closer, pressing her forehead to his, feeling the uneven warmth of his breath against her lips.
“Let me be your courage, the way you have been my shelter. Let me carry you when you cannot walk. Let me love you, Christian—even when you cannot love yourself.”
For a moment, neither of them moved. The wind swept around them, carrying the sharp scent of salt from the sea below, and the clouds shifted enough for a thin wash of moonlight to spill across the cliff.
Christian closed his eyes.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, Fiona. I can’t.”
Gently—almost tenderly—he lifted her hands from his face and stepped back, as though she were something fragile he feared he might break.
“Go back to Suffolk,” he said quietly. “Forget you ever came to Thornwick. Forget me.”
“Christian—”
He had already turned away, striding back toward the narrow path that led up from the cliffs, toward the distant lights of Thornwick and the life he had just decided to tear apart.
“Christian!” Fiona hurried after him, stumbling on the uneven ground as her ankle twisted against a stone. “Christian, please—don’t do this! Don’t walk away from us!”
He stopped at the edge of the path.
For a moment, she thought—hoped—he might turn back.
Instead, he stood with his back to her, shoulders bowed slightly against the wind.
“There is no us,” he said quietly. “There never should have been. I am sorry, Fiona. For everything.”
And then he walked on.
Within seconds, the darkness swallowed him, leaving her alone on the cliff with the wind roaring in her ears and the hollow ache of his absence spreading through her chest.
Fiona did not know how long she remained there.
The cold seeped slowly into her bones. The wind tangled her hair and snapped at her cloak. The sliver of moon vanished again behind the clouds, and still she stood, staring at the empty path where he had disappeared.
He had left her.
After everything—after the confessions and the stolen mornings and the whispered promises—he had left her. Chosen fear over love. Solitude over the fragile, frightening possibility of happiness.
She should have been furious.
Part of her was.
A fierce, burning anger wanted to chase him down, seize him by the shoulders, and shake sense into him.
But beneath that anger was something deeper. Something that felt painfully like grief.
Because she had seen his face before he turned away. Seen the anguish there, the terrible certainty that he was doing the only thing he believed was right.
He was not fleeing from her.
He was fleeing from the voice inside his own mind—the one that had whispered to him all his life that he was monstrous, that he was unworthy, that everything he touched would eventually be ruined.
He believed he was saving her.
That was the cruellest part of all.
And she did not yet know how to convince him otherwise.
Eventually, Thomas found her.
He emerged from the darkness carrying a lantern and a blanket, his expression tight with worry. Without asking questions, he wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and guided her back along the path toward the castle.
Mrs Blackley was waiting in the entrance hall when they arrived, pale and anxious.
“Miss Hart—thank goodness. We were beginning to worry.”
“Where is he?” Fiona asked.
The housekeeper hesitated.
“His Grace has retired to his chambers,” she said carefully. “He has given orders not to be disturbed.”
“Of course he has.” Fiona’s voice sounded strangely distant to her own ears. “He is very good at that. Giving orders. Closing doors.”
“Miss Hart—”
“I am tired, Mrs Blackley.” She gathered the blanket more tightly around herself. “I am going to bed. If His Grace… changes his mind—if he decides he wishes to speak to me—you know where to find me.”
She did not wait for a reply.
She climbed the stairs slowly, each step heavier than the last, and walked the length of the corridor to her room—her room, not his, not anymore.
Molly was waiting inside, her face crumpling with concern the moment Fiona entered.
“Oh miss—what has happened?”
“Not tonight,” Fiona said softly. “Please. I only want to be alone.”
“But miss—”
“Please, Molly.”
The maid withdrew reluctantly, closing the door behind her.
Fiona remained standing in the centre of the room for a long moment, staring at the bed she had not slept in for days.
It looked unfamiliar now. Cold. Untouched.
Everything felt cold.
She undressed without thinking, shedding her damp cloak and muddied gown where they fell. Then she climbed into the bed and pulled the covers up to her chin, staring at the ceiling above her.
She did not cry. She was too tired for tears.
She simply lay there in the darkness and waited for the dawn.
Tomorrow, she would fight. Tomorrow, she would find some way to reach him, to break through the walls he had rebuilt around himself. Tomorrow, she would refuse to surrender the life they had begun to build.
But tonight—
Tonight, she would allow herself to grieve.
For the happiness they had found. For the future he had just cast aside.
And for the man she loved, who was too afraid to believe he deserved to be saved.
Outside, the wind howled along the cliffs, and the sea broke restlessly against the rocks far below.
And somewhere within the depths of the castle, Christian Hale sat alone in the darkness, the old, familiar voices rising again—the ones that had long insisted he was a man best kept apart from happiness, and that loving him could only ever end in ruin.