But the blood on his hands never washed away no matter how many times he scrubbed them clean, and the memories of that night never ceased, and the scar would never go away. And now Amelia would be his wife forever, never knowing the sweetness of new love, of a courtship.
He gasped for breath before wrenching away from his place in the hallway.
How could he have let his guard down?
And yet…
There had been warmth in her embrace. There had been desire in her eyes, and her readied mouth.
Let lips do what hands do, he thought, quoting Romeo and Juliet.They pray.
Graham would pray a thousand times over if it meant he couldchange into a man who carried no curse—if he could be the very man Amelia deserved. Who could sweep her off her feet. Who might be stronger and not only defensive. Who would let her into his life rather than keep her on the fringes of it. Catching his reflection in the window, he winced. He would never be that man no matter how hard he tried.
It was always better to have his walls up—that way neither of them got hurt.
***
“Do you think he is all right?” Amelia worried, sat in the armchair either side of the large window in the library.
She was trying to focus on the remaining items on Felicity’s list for the Blackthorn ball but she could not entirely keep her attention where it needed to be. Why had the duke turned so suddenly? Had she done something wrong? Should she have stayed distanced from him when he had leaned in? But that would have been seen as a rejection, surely.
Fretting, Amelia replayed in her mind how he had looked at calling Lord Owen’s and Eleanor’s courtship perfect, when it had not even begun. It was as though he was jealous—or perhaps upset that they had not had that.
“My brother is fine,” Daphne sighed. “As I have said, he gets into these moods. He is not angry with you, that is what you must remember. He is angry at himself, at the world, at the ton, mostly. I believe his moods have gotten worse since he broke his five year self-imposed exile?”
“Exile? People have said he attended events on and off. Is that not true?”
“It is.” Daphne nodded. “He retreated into our countryside estate, away from the townhouse and London’s social scene, but he came back for celebrations. My birthdays, Christmas, my mother’s birthdays. During those times he attempted a ball or two but always ended up leaving early.” Daphne’s face pinched with empathy. “I always begged him to give the rumors time to die down but he never could endure it long enough. I do not blame him, of course. But I said that the way he disappeared for months and months and then would come back, it would only stir up the gossip. If the ton saw he was not afraid and simply attended more events, they would soon grow tired. But they like scandal—they like speculation, and new things. He inadvertently gave them that every time he came back, for they questioned why. They spoke of the duel. They spoke of his involvement.”
Amelia’s chest tightened as she listened. “And Graham… has he ever courted a lady?”
Daphne shook her head. “There was one girl, several years ago. Her name was Lady Charlotte Winthrop.”
Amelia sat up in her chair, intrigued by another lady who may have lowered the duke’s defenses.
“He did not like her in such ways,” Daphne said, shattering Amelia’s hopes of finding a way to reach her husband. “He had two best friends who both liked her. There was something of a rivalry. I should not go too deeply into it, but I think a part of him, as much as he did not like Lady Charlotte in that way, was envious of how they courted her. Our father, as kind as he could be, primed Graham to be the perfect duke. While that came with finding a wife and producing an heir, it did not necessarily mean grand, wooing courtships. He envied his friends’ abilities to have a little more freedom than he did. They, of course, still had rigid societal rules, but none quite so drastic as Graham’s.”
Amelia nodded, her face tense. “But he has never directly courted?”
Daphne shook her head, her blonde curls swinging. “Nobody has ever caught his attention, especially since our father died. Yet as he has grown older, already into his thirtieth year, we feared he would continue into his isolation. Until you.”
“I do not think I would be here if it was Graham’s choice only,” Amelia confessed, afraid of it being confirmed.
“Mayhap. But perhaps he only needed to look beyond the borders of his own guarded walls and realise that everybody has a different circumstance. It does not mean your marriage is any less than his friend’s courtship—if that happens, of course. Marriage can be about courting, too, if he were to make it so.”
Those words snagged on Amelia, and she could not help but lapse into thought, humming. Nobody had caught the duke’s eye in all these years, and yet, their marriage aside, she had managed to do that at the Smith ball and then the garden party.
Even if she could still not fathom why—perhaps even Graham did not know, perhaps neither of them needed to know—she could still use that to her advantage and ignitesomething. She could bring him back to her, try to recapture that closeness they had felt moments ago in the library, and the way they had danced together.
She wished to break down his defenses, and she believed she could do so.
There was a kind man behind the mask but he placed that mask so very securely over his true emotions. However there would be cracks. Even the hardest, smoothest surface, possessed a chipsomewhere. A weakness. Something she could delve into and undo, to show him that a world withoutthose masks was a world worth embracing.
For she had begun to realise it, too.
As doubt niggled in her, she questioned if she was strong enough to withstand his moods and outbursts. She was quiet and had been raised in a household loud with affection and love, rather than loud with anger. Graham’s mannerisms were new to her, and if he was so intent on pushing her away every time they got close, she needed him to know that she would not retreat.
She would not abandon or fail him.
