“Why?” she asked softly.
“Because I was already dead inside. Catherine’s scream—her horror—it killed something in me. So I went where dead men go to be useful.” His laugh was bitter. “Turns out I was very good at it. The Beast of Belgravia became the Shadow of Bombay. Children would cross the street to avoid me.”
“Adrian—”
“I have blood on my hands that will never wash clean. I’ve done things that would make you run from me if you knew the details. And now Catherine wants to come home, to pretend we can be siblings again, when she can barely look at me without remembering—”
“Without remembering that you saved her life.”
“Without remembering that I’m a monster!” He seized a vase from the mantel and hurled it against the wall, where it shattered spectacularly. “She saw it that day—saw what I truly was beneath the polite veneer. And she was right to run.”
“You’re not a monster.”
“No?” He stepped toward her, dangerous, almost daring her to disagree. “Then what am I?”
“You’re a man who sacrificed everything for someone he loved. Who bore her fear and society’s scorn and never once defended himself. Who went to India and became what they demanded because he thought he had nothing left to lose.”
“Pretty words—”
“Truth.” She held her ground as he loomed over her. “You want to play the beast? Fine. But beasts don’t feel guilt. They don’t lose sleep over the past. They don’t protect merchants’ daughters from scandal or worry over their wives’ comfort or—”
He kissed her then—savage, desperate—backing her against the wall. She let him, knowing he needed the contact, the proof that he was still more man than monster.
“This doesn’t change anything,” he said against her mouth.
“It changes everything.” She looked up at him, unflinching. “Let her come home, Adrian. Let her try.”
“I can’t see her. I won’t.”
“Then don’t. But don’t stop her either. She has as much right to heal as you do.”
He stared at her for a long moment before stepping back. “When did you become so wise?”
“Sometime between being compromised at a dinner party and marrying a duke with more scars of the heart than of the flesh.”
Despite himself, he laughed. “I’m going to ride. Clear my head.”
“Adrian—”
“I need space, Marianne. Please.”
She let him go, though every instinct screamed to follow. He needed time to face the ghosts he’d buried; she needed to learn how to help him fight them.
He didn’t come to dinner. Or to her bed that night.
***
The next morning, she found him in the library, surrounded by empty brandy bottles, still in yesterday’s clothes.
“You look dreadful,” she said.
“I feel worse.” He didn’t look up from the book he clearly wasn’t reading. “Go away, Marianne.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
“I don’t care.” She stepped closer, wrinkling her nose at the scent of stale brandy. “You’re being a coward again.”
