She did not know how many more days this house could contain both herself and Alexander without breaking one of them entirely. She only knew that something had begun—whether ruin or freedom, she could not yet tell.
And that, for the first time in her life, even in pain, she had chosen her own voice over everyone else’s design.
CHAPTER 25
“Prepare my horse.”
Harris, who had only just drawn back the curtains to let the first bruised light of dawn into the room, went still for the briefest fraction before turning fully toward him. “At once, Your Grace.”
Alexander stood at the edge of the bedchamber, one hand braced against the carved bedpost. He needed the solid oak to anchor himself to the present and not the nightmare that still clung to him. He could still feel the violent rush of blood behind his eyes, still feel the ghost of alley damp against his face, still hear that slurred, venomous voice.
You don’t deserve her.
There had been a time when a voice like that would have been answered without hesitation, without restraint. The instinct rosein him even now, sudden and brutal. It was a cold, efficient urge to find the man and silence him permanently.
The thought settled too easily for his liking, for the man he had become. It came with a certainty that did not feel like his own, as though the man he had been before still lingered somewhere beneath the surface, urging him toward a conclusion he had not yet chosen.
Alexander pushed it back at once, his hand tightening against the bedpost. That was not reason or justice, but something older. Something he did not yet fully understand, but which felt too familiar.
Harris crossed the room briskly, his calm efficiency doing nothing to soothe the brutal restlessness pacing through Alexander’s blood. “Will you be riding out immediately, Your Grace?”
“Yes.”
Harris hesitated. “Very good, Your Grace.”
Alexander turned away from him and strode to the washstand, splashing cold water over his face with a force that bordered on punishment. It did nothing. The water ran down over his jaw and throat, shocking but insufficient.
The memory remained. A man in a dark alley. The smell of rot and drink. That ugly, breathless little triumph in the man’s voice before the blow came.
You should never have married her.
The memory sharpened, and Alexander’s hand flattened against the porcelain basin until his knuckles whitened.
Of course, it was about her. Even now, with his head still pulsing from the force of remembered pain and his body primed for action, that thought cut cleanest. The man had done it for Diana. If only he could remember who that man had been.
Behind him, Harris moved swiftly through the room, laying out dark riding clothes. Alexander stripped and dressed quickly. Every tug of linen over skin, every button fastened, every practiced adjustment of coat and boots felt like an irritation standing between him and the only useful thing left to do.
Harris glanced at him once as he handed over his gloves. “Shall I wake the household, Your Grace?”
“No.”
“The Duchess?—”
The word hit him with vicious accuracy. He had not seen her in more than a week.
He had avoided her because he had been a coward. Because once he had remembered, once the old self and the new one had collided inside him, he had not known how to stand before her.
He had delayed telling her because the remembered man in him wanted distance, but the man he had become in her presence wanted one more hour of her warmth, one more night of her softness.
He had chosen the basest possible way of handling it instead. And she had every right to hate him. But now, another emotion tore through that already unbearable knot with savage force.
I need to protect her.
His jaw hardened. “Do not wake her.”
Harris’s expression remained properly blank, but his eyes sharpened faintly. “As you wish, Your Grace.”
Alexander jammed his hands into his gloves. “Have the horse ready in the front court.”
