The last barrier gave way. The final shard of ice splintered and dissolved. And Dominic Vane, Duke of Ravenswood—who had not wept, truly wept, since the night his friend died in his arms—came apart.
He pulled her to him and held her fast, his body shaking as the grief tore free—great, wrenching sobs drawn from some deep and long-buried place within him. Four years of silence, of restraint, of sleepless nights and too much whisky—four years of bearing the weight of one-and-twenty ghosts—all of it broke loose within the shelter of her arms.
She held him.
She did not speak. Did not hush him. Did not attempt to still the storm. She only held him—her arms about him, her cheek pressed to his hair, her presence steady and warm against his trembling frame.
He wept for the men he had lost. For William. For the child who would grow without a father. For the letters never sent. For the man he had once been—the one who laughed easily, who danced, who brought flowers to Mrs Potter—and for the man he had become.
And when at last the storm abated—when the tears ran dry and left him hollow, shaken, spent—he did not release her. Could not. She was the only fixed point in a world that had long since come unmoored, and he clung to her as a drowning man clings to shore.
“Stay,” he whispered against her hair. “Please. I cannot—I cannot be alone tonight.”
“I am not going anywhere.” Her voice was thick with tears, her hold tightening about him. “I am here.”
They shifted without words, moving together to the settee by the fire, where there was room for them both. He lay with his head in her lap, her fingers threading gently through his hair, and she leaned back against the cushions, watching as the fire burned low.
He told her of the letters—one-and-twenty, written each October, sealed and never sent. She listened, and when he finished, she said softly, “Send them. They deserve to know they are remembered.”
He told her of the nightmares—the ravine, the crossfire, William’s face. The newer dreams, where Thomas stood in the darkness, and Dominic could not reach him. She listened, and when he finished, she said, “You are reaching him now. Every day. He knows.”
He told her of the boy he had once been—the child who collected wooden horses, who watched kestrels wheel in the sky, who believed the world to be aplace where goodness was rewarded. She listened, and when he finished, she said, “He is still there. I see him whenever you smile.”
The fire sank to embers. The wind outside fell still. And slowly—so slowly he scarcely dared trust it—the trembling eased, the tightness in his chest loosened, and something that felt perilously like peace settled over him.
“Lorraine.” Her name, spoken into the dimness, soft as a breath.
“Yes?”
“I do not deserve you.”
Her fingers stilled briefly in his hair, then resumed their gentle motion.
“That,” she said quietly, “is not yours to decide.”
He closed his eyes. Her heartbeat was steady beneath his ear, her breath warm against his temple, her touch gentle and unyielding.
And for the first time in four years, the silence of Rovewood Hall did not feel like emptiness.
It felt like shelter.
They remained thus—entwined, breathing as one, suspended in that fragile space between grief and hope—until the pale light of dawn crept through the library windows, and the fire faded at last to ash.
Chapter Fourteen
“You are humming again, miss.”
Lorraine’s mouth snapped shut. Jenny stood in the nursery doorway with a stack of freshly laundered linens, her round face arranged in an expression of poorly concealed delight.
“Am I?” Lorraine turned back to the slate upon which she had been writing vocabulary words and endeavoured to ignore the warmth rising in her cheeks. “I had not noticed.”
“You have done so all morning. A very pretty tune, too—what is it?”
“Nothing of consequence. A song I heard once.” She set down the chalk with more force than was strictly necessary and smoothed her skirts. “Has Thomas finished his luncheon?”
“Nearly. He is asking for you, miss. Wishes to show you a drawing of a fox. Lord Julian’s visit has left him quite taken with foxes.”
Lord Julian.
