“Don’t try to fix this. Some things are meant to stay broken. Some wounds are too deep to heal. They just... exist. We learn to live around them, not through them.”
“Like you?” She twisted her wrist free with a quick movement. “Like this marriage? Like everything you touch?”
“Yes.” The word was flat, final, carved from stone and just as cold.
“Coward.”
The word had barely left her lips when his hand shot out, catching her throat—not choking, just holding, his thumb pressed against her racing pulse while his fingers curved around her neck in a possessive collar of flesh and bone.
She knew she should be frightened. Any sensible woman would be. Instead, she felt that familiar heat pool low in her belly, that dark thrill that came from being held by someone who could destroy her but chose not to.
“Careful, duchess.” His voice was velvet over steel, a purr that promised consequences.
“Or what?” She lifted her chin defiantly, the movement pressing her throat more firmly into his grip. “You’ll storm off to your study? Shut me out again? Find new ways to punish yourself while everyone who loves you suffers? How terrifying. How original.”
“No one loves—” he started, that familiar refrain of self-loathing she’d heard too many times.
“I love you, you impossible fool!”
The words hung between them like a blade suspended on a thread, sharp and irrevocable, ready to fall and cut them both. Adrian’s hand fell from her throat as if burned, and he actually stepped back, something like fear flickering across his features.
“You don’t mean that.” His voice was hoarse, disbelieving.
“Don’t I?” She laughed, wild and slightly hysterical, the sound bouncing off the music room’s walls like a mad thing seeking escape. “Why else would I endure this? The hot nights where you worship my body and cold mornings where you can barely look at me? The passion that burns us both and the distance that freezes? The constant push and pull of you wanting me desperately while holding me at arm’s length like I’m something too precious to truly touch?”
“Marianne—” He reached for her, then stopped, his hand hanging in the air between them like a question.
“Breakfast. Half an hour.”
She turned on her heel, needing distance before she said something even more catastrophic, like how she dreamed of him saying those words back, how she touched herself to the memory of his voice in the darkness whispering endearments he’d never say in daylight. “Don’t be late.”
She left him standing there next to the pianoforte—surrounded by the potential for harmony he couldn’t seem to find.
***
The breakfast room, where they assembled precisely thirty minutes later, thrummed with the kind of tension usually reserved for treaty negotiations or declarations of war. The footmen, well-trained in the art of invisibility, seemed to sense the charged atmosphere and moved with even more careful silence than usual.
Adrian sat at the head of the table, every inch the duke in his severe black coat and pristine cravat tied in an Oriental so complex it must have taken his valet ten minutes to achieve. His hair was still damp from his ablutions, swept back from his face in a way that emphasised both his classical bone structure and the brutal scar that marred it. He’d shaved with particular care, she noticed—no hint of the shadow that sometimes graced his jaw by evening.
Catherine had dressed with obvious care in a morning gown of soft lavender that made her look younger than her twenty-two years. The colour brought out the cream in her complexion and made her eyes seem larger, more vulnerable. Her hair was arranged in a simple chignon that emphasised her elegant neck, and she wore small pearl earrings that trembled when she moved. She looked, Marianne thought, like a debutante at her first breakfast after a ball—nervous, hopeful, and trying desperately not to show either.
Marianne had chosen deep blue silk, needing the armour of her duchess status, the reminder that she belonged here despite her merchant blood. Sarah had laced her stays a bit tighter than usual, understanding without being told that her mistress needed the structure, the containment. Her hair was arrangedin an elaborate crown of braids—every strand a declaration that she was exactly where she belonged.
The footmen served in studied silence—kidneys glistening with butter, eggs perfectly coddled, toast in silver racks, tea in Sevres china so fine you could see light through it. The normal rhythms of morning felt surreal given the circumstances, like actors performing a play where everyone had forgotten their lines.
“The weather looks promising,” Catherine ventured after several minutes of nothing but the clink of silver on china and the whisper of linen napkins. Her voice was bright, brittle, the kind of false cheer that made everyone wince. “Perhaps fair enough for riding? I haven’t seen the grounds properly in so long.”
“Perhaps.” Adrian didn’t look up from his newspaper, though Marianne noticed he’d been staring at the same paragraph for five minutes.
“I thought I might call upon the Ashfords,” Catherine continued with determined brightness, spreading marmalade on her toast with mechanical precision. “It seems only right. I never managed to visit them before I left, and they were always kind to me. Lady Ashford used to send me novels from her library—she had the most wonderful collection of Gothic romances.”
“The Ashfords are in Bath.” Adrian turned a page with deliberate precision, the paper crackling like fire. “Lady Ashford takes the waters for her rheumatics. They have been gone six weeks—due back soon, no doubt, though still away at present.”
“Oh.” Catherine’s face fell, the false brightness dimming. “I didn’t know.”
“Five years bring many changes.” The words carried a subtle accusation, each syllable weighted with resentment.
Marianne set down her teacup with enough force to make both siblings look at her. The delicate china rang like a bell, a clarion call to attention. “The Weatherbys are receiving tomorrow. We should all attend.”
