“I know you’re there,” he said, eyes still shut, voice rough as if scraped raw. “Both of you.”
Catherine made a small, wounded sound—half sob, half gasp—that seemed to echo along the panelled hall. Her hand flew to her mouth as if to catch it back, too late.
Marianne stepped into the room with the deliberate composure she had learned to wear even when she felt none. Her wrapper whispered at her ankles, deep blue silk over her night-rail—the shade he once said suited her, though she doubted he would notice such niceties now.
“It is nearly six,” she said, tone even—the one that sometimes coaxed him from the darker places. “Cook will have breakfast ready. The kidneys you favour, and fresh salmon from yesterday’s catch.”
“I’m not hungry.” He still did not look at them, gaze fixed on some middle distance that existed only in his mind.
“Nevertheless, you will eat.”
Catherine hovered at the lintel like a ghost afraid of absolution, neither in nor out, a posture that mirrored her place in her brother’s life. “We shall all eat. Together. Like a family.”
That made him turn—sharp, sudden, like a predator scenting threat. Something flared in his eyes—anger, yes, but under it a more fragile thing. Fear, perhaps. Or hope, twisted but not dead.
“We’re not—” he began, the ducal authority in his voice enough to still a room.
“We are.” She cut across him, surprised by the steel in her own words. Her merchant father had always said a spine served better than a dowry; she felt it now. “Catherine is your sister. I am your wife. You are the master here. We will break our fasttogether and conduct ourselves with the civility our positions require. Is that understood?”
The challenge hung between them like a gauntlet. His jaw worked, as if chewing words too bitter to swallow. Behind her, Catherine drew a sharp breath.
“Is that a command, Your Grace?” His tone was dangerous silk—the one that presaged anger or passion, and sometimes both.
“It is a request from your duchess.” Marianne held his gaze and did not yield. She had learned that lesson from watching him: never retreat, never apologise without meaning it.
The air between them crackled—the familiar tension that rose whenever she tested his authority beyond the bedchamber. It was their daily dance: within those private walls, she surrendered with a grace that astonished even herself; outside them, she was learning to wield her own power. The discovery both aroused and infuriated him in equal measure.
She saw the war in his face—the fine tightening around his eyes, the faint flare of his nostrils, the nearly imperceptible softening of his mouth.
“Half an hour,” he said finally, the words clipped and precise. “In the breakfast room.”
It was capitulation disguised as decree, wrapped in ducal command to save his pride, and they all knew it.
Catherine fled with a rustle of cotton and mortification, her bare feet pattering against marble like rain on glass. Marianne lingered, studying her husband’s rigid posture, the way he held himself like a man braced for blows.
“She loves you,” she said softly, advancing as one might towards a wounded wolf.
“Love.” His laugh was the brittle snap of glass, bitter as wormwood. “Is that the fashion now? To call guilt by a prettier name? How convenient.”
“Sometimes they are the same thread,” she replied. “Love and guilt woven together, impossible to say where one ends and the other begins.”
“They are nothing alike.” He rose with a contained ferocity that set the bench screeching across the floor. The air stirred as he moved; she caught the clean scent of soap, the sandalwood, and that darker note that was only him. “Love builds,” he said flatly. “Guilt corrodes. Catherine looks at me and sees her failure. And when I look at her, I see—”
He cut himself off, jaw clenching so hard she could hear his teeth grind.
“What? What do you see?” She pressed closer, needing to understand this wound that refused to heal.
“The last moment before everything changed.” The admission seemed dragged from him by hooks, each word tearing something inside him.
His voice dropped to barely above a whisper, raw and bleeding. “She was laughing at something—I can’t even remember what. Some jest about her dancing master. Monsieur Beaumont, I think his name was. Ridiculous little man with a waxed moustache who always smelled of pomade and spoke French with an atrocious accent. She was imitating him, making me laugh despite myself. She was seventeen and innocent and whole, untouched by tragedy or guilt or the weight of consequences. Then the carriage came, and that girl ceased to exist. We both did.”
The image he painted was so vivid that Marianne could almost see it—young Catherine, bright and laughing, the protective older brother indulging her silliness, the ordinary moment that would become the fulcrum on which their lives turned.
Marianne moved closer still, drawn by the raw pain in his voice, the vulnerability he so rarely showed. “You saved her.”
“I transformed her into something as damaged as I am. She just wears her scars where they don’t show—on her soul, her spirit, her ability to be happy.” He caught Marianne’s wrist as she reached for him, his grip not quite painful but firm enough to stop her. His thumb found her pulse point with unerring accuracy, a habit he’d developed that both thrilled and unnerved her. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Comfort my husband? Show affection to the man I married?”
