Page 65 of Duke of Storme
The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it felt like standing on the edge of a precipice, knowing that the only way forward was to jump and trust that someone would be there to catch him when he fell.
Finn pushed away from the wall and continued toward his chambers, but Diana’s words followed him like ghosts in the corridor. He could hide from her questions, avoid her searching gaze, and retreat behind every wall he’d ever built.
But he couldn’t escape the growing certainty that she wouldn’t let him stay hidden forever.
And perhaps – God help him – perhaps he didn’t want her to.
CHAPTER 20
“Since you seem utterly oblivious to it, it is time someone told you that you’ve been unnecessarily cruel, Your Grace.”
Diana’s voice cut through the silence of the unused parlor like a blade, steady and unwavering despite the way her heart hammered against her ribs. She hadn’t knocked or waited for permission to enter. After days of cold shoulders and calculated dismissals, she was finished with his moods dictating the terms of their marriage.
Finn sat hunched over a small writing desk near the window, candlelight flickering across his hands as he worked at something she couldn’t quite see. He didn’t look up at her words, didn’t even pause in whatever task absorbed his attention so completely.
“I’ve said nothin’ untrue,” he replied, his voice carrying that same flat indifference he’d perfected over the past week.
Diana stepped further into the room. Her slippers were silent against the dusty floor. The parlor had clearly been closed off for years – dust sheets covered most of the furniture, and the air held that particular stillness of spaces long forgotten.
“Then say it with kindness, if you must say it at all,” she said, her voice hardening despite her best efforts to remain calm.
Finally, Finn looked up, setting aside whatever instrument he’d been using. In the candlelight, his eyes appeared almost gray, and there was something in his expression that might have been exhaustion.
“I have nothin’ to apologize for, Duchess,” he said, each word precisely enunciated. “This is nothing but a marriage of convenience, and ye know it.”
Diana felt her breath catch as the careful composure she’d maintained for days finally began to crack.
“Convenience,” she echoed, the word tasting bitter on her tongue. “Then what excuse do you have for being so thoroughly unkind?”
Finn’s jaw tightened, but before he could respond, Diana’s gaze fell to the object beside him on the desk. A sketchbook lay open, and even in the uncertain light, she could make out familiar lines – the curve of a shoulder, the fall of hair across a neck.
“What is that?” she asked, though some part of her already knew.
Finn’s hand moved to cover the sketch, but it was too late. “‘Tis nothin’.”
Diana stepped closer, her pulse quickening as the image became clearer. “Nothing?”
The sketch was undeniably her – captured in profile, head tilted slightly as though listening to something just beyond the frame. The artist had rendered her with careful attention to detail, from the way her hair caught light to the thoughtful expression that seemed to be her natural state.
She’d never seen herself look so... alive.
“You said this marriage meant nothing,” Diana said quietly, unable to tear her gaze away from the drawing.
Finn’s hand stilled on the paper, and when he spoke, his voice had lost some of its careful control. “It does. But my bride is... very beautiful. And she inspired me to draw her.”
The admission was so soft, so unexpectedly personal, that Diana felt her cheeks flame with something that wasn’t entirely embarrassment. She’d never heard him speak with such gentleness or heard him acknowledge her as anything more than a social necessity.
Her lips parted, but no words came. What did one say to such a confession? How did one respond when the man who’d spent days treating her like a stranger admitted to finding her beautiful enough to immortalize in charcoal?
Finn looked up then, his gray-blue eyes meeting hers with an intensity that made her breath hitch. “Will ye sit?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. “‘Tis easier to draw when ye’re still.”
Diana hesitated. Every rational thought told her to leave, to retreat to the safety of her chambers and pretend this moment had never happened. But something in his expression – vulnerable in a way she’d never seen before – made her nod.
She lowered herself into the chair across from him, arranging her skirts with hands that trembled slightly. The parlor seemed to shrink around them as the candlelight created an intimate circle that shut out the rest of the world.
Finn picked up his charcoal with fingers that weren’t quite steady, acutely aware of Diana’s presence in a way that made concentration nearly impossible. What was he doing? This was madness – allowing her to see this side of him, this vulnerability he’d kept carefully hidden for years.
But when she’d discovered the sketch, when he’d seen the wonder in her eyes as she looked at his rendering of her...something had cracked open inside him that he couldn’t quite seal shut again.
