Yet she had married again, straightaway, because he’d lacked the will to resist temptation.
She’d never had a chance to be courted by other men.
She’d never had a chance to decide for herself which of them she truly wanted.
He’d wanted her, and he’d had to have her, and that was that.
Still, he’d hardly condemned her to a life of misery. Being married to him offered more freedom than most other women had, including other aristocratic women. No doors were closed to the Duchess of Marchmont. She would never lack for money to buy whatever she wanted. She could still flirt with other men and dance with them.
And she could go where she pleased, to a point.
Until tonight.
I want fun, she’d told him that day in Hyde Park after she’d raced with Lady Tarling.I want alife.In Egypt I was a toy,a game. I was a pet in a cage. I vowed never to endure such an existence again.
He watched her enter her apartments, then he walked on to his.
He told Ebdon he would not be going out this evening, and ordered a bath. The odor of Bow Street seemed to cling to his skin as well as his clothes.
The bath should have calmed him. It didn’t.
The new valet had laid out a clean shirt, pantaloons, and stockings. The duke stood and gazed at them for a long time. He felt so weary, suddenly, not in his body but in his mind and heart, as though he’d carried a great burden, inside, for an endless time.
“Give me my dressing gown,” he said.
He didn’t bother with the clothes readied for him, to be worn under his damask dressing gown: the full costume of “undress.” He shrugged his naked body into his dressing gown and slid his bare feet into his slippers. The maroon leather mules had pointed, upturned toes, in imitation of Turkish fashion.
Like a pasha’s. Like the men in another world, who kept their women caged.
“Plague take me,” he said.
“Your Grace?” Ebdon was obviously baffled. He bore his confusion like a man, however. No weeping or fainting or trembling. Merely a slight crease between his brows.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Marchmont said.
He left the dressing room, crossed his bedroom to the connecting door, and walked in.
He found his wife in her bath, her face on her arm, resting on the linens draping the tub. She was weeping.
“Oh, Zoe,” he said.
She’d been so lost in misery that she hadn’t heard him approach—another bad sign. She was losing her old skills. She didn’t care. She was too wretched to care. She loved him, and she wanted to be a good wife. She knew he only wanted to protect her—but she couldn’t bear this, to have the walls close in on her again, so soon.
She wiped her eyes and looked up at him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s mad to feel this way, but I can’t help it.”
He simply reached down and lifted her up, out of the bathtub. He grabbed a towel and wrapped it about her, then he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. He buried his face in her damp hair.
“You’re all I have left,” he said. “You’re all I have left.”
His voice was hoarse, broken.
“Lucien,” she said, her face against his chest.
“You’re all I have left, Zoe,” he said. “They’re all gone—everyone I ever loved. Gone forever. You, too, I thought. But you weren’t. You came back from the dead—and if I lose you, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
She held him tightly, as tightly as she could.
His parents. His brother. Gone.
