“She resides in Chelsea,” Blackstone said abruptly as the carriage turned westward. “In a small but comfortable house that I…arranged for her.”
“I see,” Lucien replied neutrally, careful not to betray any surprise or judgment.
“She has been pursuing an education,” the duke continued, seemingly compelled to justify his arrangement. “Languages, literature, music. She has a remarkable aptitude for learning.”
“That speaks well of her character,” Lucien offered.
“She is…” Blackstone hesitated, searching for appropriate words, “…exceptional in many respects. Her circumstances before our acquaintance were not of her choosing. Her father’s death left her without protection or resources.”
The defensiveness in his tone revealed more than any direct confession could have. This was not merely a convenient arrangement between a wealthy nobleman and a beautiful woman—the Duke of Blackstone was in love with Kitty.
“We often have little control over the paths life forces us to walk,” Lucien observed quietly, thinking of his own journey from amnesia-stricken farmer to reclaimed viscount. “True character reveals itself not in the absence of hardship, but in how one navigates it.”
Blackstone studied him with new interest. “An unusually philosophical perspective for a peer of the realm.”
“My time in Ireland altered many of my perspectives,” Lucien replied with a wry smile. “Amnesia has a way of stripping away pretensions.”
The carriage slowed as it entered a quiet, respectable neighborhood of Chelsea—not fashionable by aristocratic standards, but certainly genteel. They stopped before a modest brick house with gleaming windows and a well-tended front garden. Despite its modest size, the property spoke of comfort and care rather than ostentation.
“Wait here,” Blackstone instructed the driver before turning to Lucien. “I should speak with her first, to explain the situation.”
Lucien nodded his agreement, recognizing the protective instinct driving the duke’s request. As they approached the door, both men noted the unusual silence. No servants appeared to take their hats and coats, and the house had an unsettling stillness about it.
“Something’s wrong,” Blackstone said sharply, his hand moving instinctively to the walking stick he carried—one Lucien now suspected might conceal a blade. The duke tried the door and found it unlocked, swinging open at his touch.
“Kitty?” Blackstone called, his customary reserve cracking as concern flooded his voice. “Are you here?”
The silence that answered chilled Lucien’s blood. They moved swiftly through the entrance hall toward the drawing room, where a faint sound—a weak moan—drew them forward.
Blackstone’s hand trembled as he turned the brass doorknob. The silence that greeted them was wrong—all wrong. In the months he’d been visiting, Kitty’s house had always hummed with gentle activity: the soft scratch of her pen as she practiced her letters, the melodic Irish lilt of her voice as she read aloud, the whisper of silk as she moved through her daily routines.
“Kitty?” Blackstone called again, his voice cracking despite his efforts at control. “My darling, are you—”
The words died in his throat as they stepped into the drawing room.
The scene that greeted them would haunt Lucien for years to come, but for Blackstone, it shattered something fundamental in his soul. This room—their sanctuary, where he had taught her to read, where she had laughed at his stuffy pronunciations, where they had planned a future that society would never accept—lay in ruins.
The small writing desk where she practiced her letters had been overturned, ink spreading like black blood across scattered pages. Her careful penmanship—“I love you, Raven” written over and over in increasingly confident script—now trampled underfoot. The delicate porcelain tea service he’d given her lay shattered, the painted roses he’d chosen because they matched her complexion now broken fragments glinting in the morning light.
But it was the larger destruction that made both men’s breath catch. The heavy bookshelf—the one filled with volumes he’d selected to expand her world—had been torn apart, as if someone had searched frantically behind each leather spine. Books lay scattered like wounded birds, their pages torn and crushed.
And in the center of this devastation, surrounded by the remnants of their stolen happiness, lay Kitty.
Her magnificent red hair—the hair he loved to watch catch firelight during their quiet evenings—spread around her head like spilled wine. The morning dress he’d bought her just last week, a soft blue that brought out her eyes, was now stained with an expanding circle of crimson that seemed to pulse with each beat of his own racing heart.
“No.” The word escaped Blackstone as barely more than breath. Then, louder, raw with anguish: “No, no, NO!”
He was across the room before Lucien could stop him, falling to his knees so hard the impact echoed through the house. His hands hovered over her still form, desperate to touch, to comfort, to heal, but terrified that his touch might somehow make this nightmare real.
“Kitty, my darling girl, what have they done to you?” His voice broke completely now, the Duke of Blackstone’s legendary composure cracking like ice in spring. “I’m here now. I’m here.”
Her eyelids fluttered—barely perceptible, but enough to send hope surging through him. He gathered her carefully into his arms, and the warm wetness that immediately soaked through his waistcoat made his stomach lurch.
“Don’t try to speak,” he whispered, though every word seemed to cost him. “I’ll get help. The physician, he’ll—”
“Raven.” Her voice was a whisper, blood frothing at the corner of her lips. But her green eyes—those eyes that had looked at him with such love, such trust—focused on his face with what remained of her strength. “You came back to me.”
“Always,” he promised fiercely, his own tears falling onto her upturned face. “I told you I’d always come back.”
