“Violet,” he said again, his voice like velvet, sinful and rich.
If she could choose one voice and one voice alone to speak her name for the rest of her life, it would, without doubt, be his.
But she plowed forward, needing to finish what she had begun. Needing him to understand who she was, where she had come from, needing him to see a part of herself she had never even accepted.
“I fear I am like her now, already, Griffin. What I have done, running away with you, was reckless and selfish. It is something my mother would have done, leaping without a thought for consequences. Once, she jumped from a moving carriage because she wanted to feel the wind.”
There.She had said it. Today, she was freeing all the specters of the past. A shudder passed through her, but she did not shed a tear. The time for crying was long gone, as gone as Mama.
“Your mother was ill,” Griffin said then, tilting up her chin with the faintest of touches so she had nowhere to look but at him.
And she was glad for it. She fell into his brilliant gaze as if it could save her, and maybe it couldn’t, but mayhaphecould. And mayhap she could. Together, theybothcould. “Yes, she was.”
His thumb stroked her skin, softly, reverently. “I understand your fears and your pain. My father suffered from a similar condition, only he did not exhibit wild extremes of mood. His malady was different. It began with forgetting simple things, like wearing a waistcoat over his shirt or the names of old acquaintances. And then it got worse. One day, he went for a ride in the country and could not recall how to find his way back on land that had been in our family for centuries. Eventually, it was everything. He forgot me. Looked at me as if I were a stranger. He did not even know he had a son.”
“Oh, Griffin.” She ached for him, for the pain he must have endured, not unlike hers. And just like that, she was embracing him, throwing both her arms around his lean waist and holding tightly, as if she could absorb some of his pain and heartbreak. “I am so sorry. Did he…”
“In the end, it was his heart.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I tell you not to earn your pity, but so you know you are not alone. I have had similar fears and concerns in the wake of my father’s madness. The fear I will become him. The fear I am already in the process of becoming him. I think it is only natural for us to have these concerns. We are all fallible, are we not? And each of us is vulnerable, horridly so, though we would prefer to think otherwise.”
He was right, of course, and she took strength from him, a calm settling over her. Perhaps it was the soothing reassurance of his deep voice and the words he uttered, or the effortless physical strength he emanated. Mayhap it was his decadent scent—pine and musk and best of all,husband—or the way his arm drew her protectively to his broad body in a way that suggested he would fight for her. Perhaps it was merely him. Merely Griffin.
She did not know.
All she did know, was she felt, for the first time in a long time, the strange, soothing, perfect sensation of being precisely where she was meant to be. She could not shake it. Did not wish to. Being the Duchess of Strathmore, sitting at this man’s side, leaning into his embrace, belonging to him, it felt…
Right.
Oh so very right.
Swallowing down a fresh knot in her throat, she lifted her head from his chest, looking up at him. His handsome face was near, those beautiful, sullen lips within kissing distance. Close enough his warm breath fanned over her mouth in the parody of a kiss.
“I am sorry for running,” she whispered.
“Don’t be.” He lowered his head, pressing his lips to hers in a kiss that was not carnal—a mere, closed-mouthed press—but was somehow one of the most intimate and personal kisses she had ever experienced. It was a kiss of understanding and compassion, a benediction of sorts, a kiss that said he understood her. He lifted his head, ending the kiss as abruptly as it had begun, his gaze burning into hers.
“Wherever you run, from this day forward, I will follow. You are mine now, and I am yours. If you hurt, I hurt. If someone hurts you, I will hurt him. If you are hungry, I will feed you. If you are lonely, I will be by your side. That is the way of it.”
She stared at him, at this beautiful, glorious man, the duke who had fallen precipitously into her lap, felled by her own crocheting, and understanding dawned. It dawned like the sun rising on a glorious summer day, bright and rife with promise and so bold she could scarcely drink it in.
She loved him.
She was in love with the Duke of Strathmore.
And her brother, whom she also loved, was hell-bent upon casting him into prison.
She gathered it within her, the horrible and the hopeful all at once, and she kissed Griffin. She kissed him with everything seething inside her, all the passion, all the longing, every fear. She kissed him until they were both breathless, breaking apart and staring as if they were seeing each other—truly seeing each other—for the first time.
But reality intruded, reminding her they had a wedding breakfast awaiting them, along with their hosts, who were undoubtedly wondering where they had disappeared to, and why.
“Thank you,” she told him simply, instead of confessing all to him.
“I do not want your gratitude, spitfire,” he said. “All I want is you.”
If she had not already lost her heart to him, she would have, then and there. “And all I want is you.”
“You have me,” he swore, before dropping a kiss upon the bridge of her nose. “Christ, but I love your freckles.”
She could have cursed the sun and their lengthy jaunt to Harlton Hall in the rickety cart, but in truth, she would do it all over again just to have the Duke of Strathmore gazing upon her as he was now, as if she were necessary to him. As if she were the loveliest thing he had ever seen.
