It’s raining, and I forgot a hat, which you would find funny if you were here. Your father’s footman nearly threw me bodily out of the hall.
I’ll say it plainly, since subtlety never got me anywhere with you: I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t even tie my cravat straight. I am not myself without you, and I do not wish to be.
If you read this, I beg you—speak to me. Let me fix it.
I know you are angry. You are allowed. But I am allowed to be sorry.
Rhys.
The penmanship on this one looked worse, as if he’d written it while pacing, or kneeling on a bench, or holding the page against his knee. Her breath caught in her chest, and she shoved the letter under the first one, as if they might contaminate each other.
She reached for the third letter, her hands trembling now, and broke the seal.
My Duchess,
If you are determined to hate me, at least tell me so in person. The not-knowing is worse than any verdict.
If you recall Penelope’s book—the one you insisted I read, A Lady’s Secret Vow—the hero only redeemed himself because the heroine gave him a chance to make it right. I am not that man, but I would try to be, if you would let me.
There is more to say, but I know you never read long letters.
Yours, in stubborn misery,
Rhys.
Celine let the paper fall. She covered her face with both hands, fighting the urge to scream or sob or simply burn all three letters to ash and start again. But the words would not leave her. They ran circles in her mind, taunting and aching and raw.
“That hero loved his wife, Rhys,” she whispered to the empty room. “I do not know if you love me.”
Her voice broke, and for a moment, so did she.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Iwill see my wife, and there is nothing anyone can do about it,” Rhys announced to the marbled entryway, his voice ricocheting off stone and paneling.
He shouldered past the startled butler and ignored the cluster of servants that materialized in the wake of his arrival, their faces registering a mixture of horror and awe. No one moved to stop him. By now, the entire staff knew better.
He took the main staircase two at a time, his boots striking like the tolling of a death knell. Celine’s father—the Earl of Woodsworth, scholar and gentleman, but never quite a warrior—appeared at the landing, his spectacles askew.
“Your Grace—” he began, already reaching for the banister as if it might shield him.
“Not now,” Rhys snapped, never breaking stride. “I’ve been patient, and it’s gotten me nowhere. Unless you’d like to wrestle me to the floor, do us both a favor and stand aside.”
He brushed past, leaving the Earl clinging to the banister as if he’d been dashed against the rocks.
Two turns of the hall, and then her door—her childhood door, newly painted and shining in the lamplight, as if the past two decades could be polished out by elbow grease alone.
He didn’t knock. He pushed the door open, not even bothering with the pretense of propriety.
She was curled up in the window seat, her knees drawn to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around a dog-eared volume ofThe Sorrows of Young Werther. A halo of late sun and firelight made her hair look almost blue.
For a heartbeat, Rhys felt the urge to shut the door and leave her alone, to preserve her in that moment of impossible stillness.
But he was too desperate for mercy.
She started at the noise, nearly dropping her book. “What are you?—”
“Don’t,” he said, his tone softer than he’d meant, but every bit as urgent. “Don’t hide from me.”
