Chapter Seventeen
The first day, Christian did not leave his chambers.
He sat in the armchair by the cold fireplace—the same chair where Fiona had brushed his hair. The servants knocked from time to time, bringing trays of food and making discreet enquiries after his comfort. He dismissed them all.
He was not hungry. He was not tired. He was not anything, really, except empty.
The emptiness was a relief, in its way. It was better than the agony that waited at the edges of his consciousness, the grief that lurked like a predator in the shadows of his mind.
As long as he stayed empty, stayed numb, he could survive.
He could sit in this chair and breathe in and out and not think about the way she had looked at him from the carriage window, her face wet with tears, her eyes full of a sorrow that matched his own.
He could not think about that. If he thought about that, he would shatter.
So he sat, and he stared, and he let the hours crawl past like wounded animals.
Night fell. The room grew dark. He did not light a candle.
In the darkness, with no distractions to occupy his mind, the memories came.
Fiona storming his study with a fireplace poker, offering him an apology with all the fierce sincerity of a woman who refused to let pride stand in the way of what was right.
Fiona touching his birthmark for the first time, her fingers gentle, her eyes full of wonder rather than revulsion.
Fiona in his arms, in his bed, in his heart—laughing, arguing, loving him with a ferocity that should have been impossible.
Fiona walking away from him, her spine rigid, her shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs.
What we have shared is not so easily undone.
He pressed his palms against his eyes until he saw stars, but the memories would not stop. They poured through him like water through a broken dam, each one a fresh wound, each one a reminder of what he had thrown away.
He had done the right thing. He had to believe that.
He had protected her from the scandal that would have consumed her, from the cruelty of a society that would never accept her as the wife of the Beast of Thornwick.
He had set her free to find a better life, a better man, a future that did not include hiding in a crumbling castle with a monster who did not deserve her.
He had done the right thing.
So why did it feel like dying?
The second day, Mrs Blackley forced her way into his chambers.
She came armed with a tea tray and an expression of grim determination, and she did not flinch when Christian snarled at her to leave.
She simply set the tray on the table beside his chair and stood before him, hands on hips, looking for all the world like a governess confronting a recalcitrant child.
“You ought to eat something, Your Grace.”
“I have no appetite.”
“That may be so,” she replied calmly, pouring a cup of tea, “but appetite is not always the point.” She placed the cup in his hands before he could refuse it. “Miss Hart would not wish to hear that you had neglected yourself in this fashion.”
The sound of Fiona’s name struck him like a blow.
“Do not speak of her.”
Mrs Blackley’s brows drew together slightly. “And why should I not, Your Grace? Because the subject is uncomfortable?” Her tone sharpened, though she did not raise her voice. “I daresay it ought to be.”
“You forget yourself—”
“Perhaps,” she said evenly. “But I have served this family for thirty years, and I have earned the right to speak plainly when it is needed.”
She folded her hands before her and continued.
“I watched your late mother withdraw from the world, and your father grow harder with every passing year. I watched you grow up in this house with very little kindness shown to you. And then Miss Hart came here, and for the first time in many years, I saw this place come alive again.”
Christian stared into the untouched tea.
“She deserved better than me.”
“Perhaps,” Mrs Blackley allowed gently. “But that was not the question before her. She wanted you, Your Grace. She chose you freely.”
Her voice softened, though her gaze remained steady.
“And you chose fear.”
Christian said nothing.
“You are not the first Hale to do so,” she continued quietly. “But I had hoped you might be the last.”
Christian said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Mrs Blackley straightened her apron. “Drink your tea. Eat your toast. And when you are prepared to set aside this indulgence in misery and consider how matters might yet be mended, you know where to find me.”
She left, closing the door firmly behind her.
Christian stared at the tea in his hands. It was growing cold, a skin forming on the surface, steam no longer rising from the cup.
He drank it anyway.
It tasted like ashes.
The third day, he began to destroy things.
It started small—a glass hurled against the wall, a book torn in half, a chair overturned in a fit of sudden rage. But the rage, once unleashed, would not be contained. It fed on itself, growing larger and wilder, until Christian found himself tearing through his chambers like a madman.
He ripped the curtains from the windows, sending dust motes swirling through the sudden flood of light.
He swept the contents of his desk onto the floor, sending papers and inkwells and quills scattering across the carpet.
He seized the mirror above his washstand and hurled it against the wall, watching it shatter into a thousand glittering shards.
The sound of breaking glass was satisfying. He wanted more of it.
He stormed through the castle, leaving destruction in his wake.
In the library, he pulled books from shelves and threw them across the room, their pages fluttering like wounded birds.
In the drawing room, he overturned tables and smashed vases, china and flowers exploding across the floor.
In the yellow parlour—their parlour, the room where they had taken tea and fallen in love—he seized the settee where she had sat and dragged it to the fireplace, intending to burn it, to erase every trace of her presence from this wretched house.
But when he lifted the settee, something fell from beneath the cushions.
A hairpin. Simple, unadorned, the kind any woman might wear. It must have slipped from her hair during one of their afternoon conversations, lost and forgotten in the upholstery.
Christian stared at it.
Such a small thing. Such an insignificant object. And yet, holding it in his hand, he felt all the rage drain out of him, replaced by a grief so vast and overwhelming that he could not breathe.
He sank to his knees on the parlour floor, surrounded by the wreckage of his own temper, and pressed the hairpin to his chest as though it were a talisman.
“Fiona,” he whispered hoarsely. “Fiona… I am sorry. So very sorry.”
But she was not there to hear him.
And she would not be there again.
After that, the days began to blur together.
Christian stopped keeping track of time.
He stopped leaving his chambers, stopped eating unless Mrs Blackley forced him, stopped doing anything except existing.
He slept fitfully, plagued by nightmares in which Fiona walked away from him again and again, each repetition more painful than the last. He woke sweating and gasping, reaching for a body that was no longer beside him, and the emptiness of the bed was a fresh agony every time.
He stopped shaving. Stopped bathing. Stopped caring about his appearance at all. His hair grew wilder, his beard thicker, his clothes more dishevelled. He caught a glimpse of himself in one of the remaining mirrors and saw a creature that barely looked human—hollow-eyed, gaunt, more beast than man.
The Beast of Thornwick, he thought bitterly. At last, I look the part.
The servants whispered. He heard them through the walls, through the doors, their voices carrying in the stillness of the castle.
They worried about him. They feared for his sanity.
They wondered, in hushed tones, whether the Duke had finally succumbed to the madness that had always lurked beneath his surface.
Let them wonder. He did not care. He did not care about anything anymore.
One night—he had lost track of which night, lost track of everything—he found himself in the library, holding a glass of brandy and staring at the spot where he had once kissed her.
The bookshelves still bore the marks of his destruction, books scattered across the floor, spines cracked and pages torn.
He had not allowed the servants to clean it up.
He wanted the reminder. He wanted to see, every day, the physical manifestation of what he had become without her.
A monster. A beast. A man who destroyed everything he touched.
He raised the glass to his lips and drank deeply, feeling the brandy burn its way down his throat. It was not his first glass of the evening. It would not be his last.
“To Miss Fiona Hart,” he said aloud, his voice echoing in the empty room. “The only woman who ever loved me. The only woman I ever loved. The woman I was too cowardly to keep.”
He drained the glass and hurled it at the fireplace, watching it shatter against the marble.
“To the Beast of Thornwick,” he continued, pouring another glass. “The monster who convinced himself that loneliness was safety. The fool who believed he was protecting her by pushing her away. The coward who—”
His voice broke.
He pressed a hand to his eyes, feeling the sting of tears he had thought he no longer possessed.
He had wept so much in the days after her departure that he had assumed the well had run dry.
But the grief, it seemed, was inexhaustible.
It renewed itself constantly, fed by memories and regrets and the inescapable knowledge that he had done this to himself.