Page 80 of Duke of Storme
“I found them in your desk drawer when I was looking for sealing wax,” Diana admitted, a slight flush coloring her cheeks. “I hope you don’t mind that I included them. They’re beautiful, Finn. All of them.”
“They’re private.”
“Were private,” Diana corrected gently. “Now they’re part of a story that shows how your gift has grown and changed but never disappeared.”
Finn turned to the final section of the book, where Diana had written in her careful copperplate hand:
For my husband, who sees beauty in harsh places and captures wonder with charcoal and dream. These drawings span years and pain and healing, but they all share one truth–you have always been an artist, no matter how hard the world tried to convince you otherwise. Your mother’s dreams for you live on in every line you draw, every moment of beauty you choose to preserve instead of destroy. You are worthy of wonder, Finn Hurriton. You always have been.
All my love, Diana.
The words blurred before his eyes. Finn closed the book carefully.
“Diana,” he said, his voice thick with emotion he couldn’t quite control. “This is... I don’t know what to say.”
“Then don’t say anything.” Diana rose from her chair and moved around the desk, close enough to see the way his breathing had changed and the careful control he was fighting to maintain. “Just accept it. Accept that someone sees the value in preserving the parts of yourself you’ve tried so hard to bury.”
Finn looked up at her, and Diana saw something crack in his expression – some wall finally beginning to crumble under the weight of her patient persistence.
“Why?” he asked simply. “Why would ye do this?”
“Because you matter to me,” Diana said quietly. The admission emerged more easily than she’d expected. “Because your art matters. Because the boy who drew these pictures deserved to have someone protect his dreams, even if no one was there to do it at the time.”
For a moment, Finn seemed poised on the edge of something – surrender, perhaps, or the kind of emotional honesty that had terrified him into retreat just two days ago. Diana held her breath, waiting, hoping.
Then his expression shuttered and the walls slammed back into place with almost audible force.
“‘Tis very thoughtful,” he said, his voice returning to that careful neutrality she’d come to dread. “Thank ye.”
The formal distance in his tone hit her like cold water. “That’s all?”
“What more would ye have me say?”
“I would have you say something real,” she said, her voice gaining strength. “Something that acknowledges what just happened here. Something that admits it affected you.”
“‘Tis a lovely gesture–”
“It’s not a gesture, Finn. It’s a declaration.” Diana leaned forward and placed her hands flat on his desk. “It’s me telling you that I see who you really are, that I value the parts of yourself you’ve convinced yourself are worthless. It’s me fighting for us when you’re too frightened to fight for yourself.”
Finn stood abruptly, moving away from the desk and toward the window where Highland mist obscured the landscape beyond. “Ye don’t understand–”
“Then explain it to me.”
“I can’t.” His voice was rough with suppressed emotion. “I can’t give ye what ye want, Diana. I can’t be the man ye see in those damned drawings.”
“Why not?”
“Because that man doesn’t exist anymore!” The words erupted from him with startling violence. “He died years ago, along with every other soft thing in me. What ye’re seein’, what ye think ye’re preservin’ – ‘tis just shadows. Ghosts of somethin’ that was never meant to survive.”
Diana rose from her chair, moving toward him with the same careful approach she might use with a wounded animal. “What if he’s simply been waiting for someone to believe in him again?”
Finn’s voice carried a warning that made her pause. “Don’t try to resurrect somethin’ that’s better left buried.”
“Better for who? For you? Or for the scared boy who learned that caring about anything was dangerous?”
Finn’s shoulders were rigid with tension; every line of his body radiated the effort it took to maintain distance.
“The boy who made those drawings,” Diana continued softly, “he deserved better than what he got. And the man standing in front of me right now? He deserves better than what he’s giving himself.”
