Page 88 of His Unwanted Duchess

She nodded as if seriously considering it. “Perhaps later.”

He wanted to laugh. “You are a nonsensical girl.”

“A mad duchess for a blackhearted duke. I don’t mean to pry, Stephen, I just… Well, this room is wasted. It’s such a wonderful place. It could be my favorite room in the house. A real, working observatory. I could learn so much from a place like this if you’d let me try. Do you not like looking at the stars?”

He sighed again, biting his lip. “Of course I like looking at the stars. Astronomy is… well, it competes with botany for my favorite pastime. However—and I think you may have guessed this already—this room holds painful memories for me.”

He glanced sideways and found her looking at him, waiting. He bit his lip hard and continued.

“I think you already know that my father was a cruel man. He originally built this observatory for my mother, back when they were newlyweds and in love. His love quickly fizzled out and turned into something like hate. He was cruel to her, and to me. One of his favorite punishments was to lock me up in here. He would open all the panels so that the room was sweltering hot during the day and freezing cold at night. I lost count of the times I was locked up in here. Never any food, seldom any water.”

He swallowed hard, not looking at Beatrice. Instead, Stephen stared up at the familiar slopes of the glass ceiling. In an instant, he was a child again, hollow with hunger and dry with thirst, staring up at the endless expanse of stars. Closing his eyes, he could almost count them. Constellations he could not name yet, once even the steady pulse of theaurora borealis.

When he was looking up at the stars, just for a moment, he forgot the hunger and cold and pain, the sharp sting of humiliation and the sense that it wasnot fair.

He felt eyes on him and glanced to the side to find Beatrice studying him thoughtfully.

“I’m sorry,” she said, at last. “You and Theodosia suffered too much at the hands of that man. It should never have happened.”

Stephen shrugged. “It did. But it’s in the past.”

She turned on her side to face him. “You can’t dismiss all that suffering by saying that it’s in the past.”

“But it’s true. It’s behind us. Why not let it be?”

Beatrice sighed. “The past is behind us, true, but it doesn’t leave. The past isn’t like swimming through a pool of water, where we can simply get out, dry ourselves off, and go on with our lives with no signs of where we have been or what we have endured. It’s more like… like swimming through a pool of ink. You may clean most of it off, but not all. There will be stains. You can’t pretend the ink pool never existed.”

He shifted to face her. “Are you saying I am stained?”

She gave a huff of annoyance and flopped back. “I give up.”

“Thank heavens.”

There was a comfortable silence between them. Stephen cast a few glances her way, chewing on his lip.

“I’m not a child anymore,” he said in a rush. “I am a man. A strong one, a clever one. I do not need to put myself through such experiences, so why would I want to relive them in my head? I have freed myself. My mother is free. I don’t care to dig up the past because all I will get from it is a hole in my heart and hands covered in dirt.”

She eyed him for a long moment, then slipped her hand across the table, her fingers brushing his.

After all they had already done together, Stephen was a little shocked to find that the contact was sharp and intense, shivers running up his arm at her touch.

“Perhaps you aren’t so black-hearted, after all,” Beatrice said quietly.

A block of ice lodged itself in Stephen’s gut. He carefully slid his hand away from hers.

“I’m afraid I am,” he said curtly. “Be careful, my dear Duchess. Darkness swallows up everything it touches, even the light. The darkness in me may well eat up the light in you, and then where will you be?”

She held his gaze for a long moment as if expecting something else. There was disappointment in her gaze, he realized after a moment.

He opened his mouth, waiting for something else to come out. A witty retort, or a joke, or something to break the silence, but nothing came out. Only silence.

Abruptly, Beatrice sat up, shaking out her skirts.

“I should go,” she said briskly. “It’s getting late. I’m exhausted, and I promised I would go see Anna today. I want to see the new baby, and I promised Kitty I would bring a new dress for her doll. She’ll hold me to it.”

Without another word, Beatrice slipped off the table, tucking loose strands of hair behind her ears. Stephen struggled into a sitting position, still unsure what to say. He wanted to saysomething, but everything seemed to be not enough.

Beatrice bent down, neatly retrieving her torn underthings and balling them up in her hands.

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