Page 12 of His Auctioned Duchess
A sudden sound broke the morning calm.
Frantic splashing.
Richard halted, every sense sharpening. The sound carried from the small lake beyond the line of willows. He quickened his stride, then broke into a run, boots pounding across the grass. As he reached the bank, his eyes took in the scene with one sweep: Caroline, thrashing in the water, her muslin gown soaked and dragging her under, her cries hoarse with panic.
Without thought, he tore off his coat and plunged in. The shock of the cold bit into his skin, but he did not falter. His strokes were strong, efficient, cutting through the water until he reached her. Her hair streamed in dark ribbons across her face, her arms flailing.
“Hold still!” he barked, his voice deep, commanding even here.
She gasped and clutched at him, nearly pulling them both under. With a grunt, he wrapped an arm around her waist, his other sweeping hard toward shore. She struggled, not against him, but against her own sinking weight—and against the sodden paper clutched fiercely to her breast.
“Let it go,” he growled, dragging her forward.
“No!” she cried, choking on water, clinging to the sketch as if it were life itself. “I won’t–”
He cursed, tightening his grip, and powered them both to the shallows. They collapsed onto the bank in a tangle of limbs, Caroline coughing violently, her gown plastered to her body, her knuckles white around the dripping sheet of paper.
Richard knelt over her, his chest heaving, droplets streaming down his scarred face. Fury and relief warred within him. “Are you mad?” he thundered. “You could have drowned!”
She shivered violently, lips blue, yet still she clutched the paper, curling around it protectively. “It—it mustn’t be lost.”
His eyes narrowed. With a swift movement, he seized her wrist, prying at the paper. “Show me.”
“No!” she cried, twisting, but her soaked fingers betrayed her, and the paper slipped enough for him to glimpse it.
And he froze.
The sketch, blurred with water, was brutal. His own likeness stared back at him—scarred, monstrous, towering over a dead bride in his arms. Around him, children wept, their faces twisted in terror. It was a vision of him not as man, but as nightmare.
His jaw clenched, a storm igniting in his chest. He crushed the paper in his fist, water dripping from its folds. His voice was low, dangerous. “Is that what you think of me?”
Caroline’s eyes widened. She scrambled up on her knees, reaching for the ruined sketch. “No! You don’t understand—I draw without thinking, it’s–”
“Without thinking?” he cut across, his scar livid in the morning light. “This is how you see me. A monster. A demon to terrify children and brides the same.”
Her lips trembled. “I sketch what comes into my mind—it means nothing—I swear it–”
His fury burned, hot and raw. The girl he had dragged from drowning moments ago now stood before him as his accuser, branding him with ink as cruelly as society branded him with whispers. His chest rose and fell with harsh breaths, and for the first time since his return, anger cracked through his iron composure.
Caroline’s hands trembled as she tried to reclaim the sodden sketch, but Richard held it fast, his knuckles white. The paper dripped between his fingers, the ink bleeding into grotesque streaks, yet the image remained vivid enough to scorch his pride. His scar felt as though it burned anew, bared cruelly in the daylight.
“Do you mock me even in your private hours?” His voice was low, gravel harshened by fury. “Is this your entertainment? To draw me as a beast, cradling corpses? To brand me in ink as London brands me in whispers?”
Caroline shook her head violently, curls clinging wet to her cheeks. “No, no, you mistake it—I draw everything, anything. Thoughts, fears, fragments. It is not truth—it is imagination–”
“Imagination?” His laugh was a bitter bark. “Your imagination paints me carrion, terror to women and children alike. Do not insult me with excuses.”
She flinched at the venom in his tone, but pride flared in her eyes even as she shivered. “Better ink on paper than men who truly prove themselves monsters in flesh. My sketches wound no one.”
His eyes blazed. “They wound me.”
The words fell heavy, heavier than his fury. For a moment silence spread between them, broken only by her ragged breathing and the drip of water from her gown. Caroline’s throat tightened. She had not thought—truly, she had not—that her idle sketch might pierce him so. Yet here he stood, a man forged by exile, undone by her careless pen.
She reached, her hand brushing his sleeve. “I am sorry. I never meant–”
“Do not say you never meant it.” His arm jerked away, his voice sharp. “Ink does not lie as neatly as your tongue.”
Tears pricked at her eyes, hot and stinging. She hated them, hated showing weakness before him. Anger rose to shield her, words spilling before she could weigh them. “At least no one wants to marry you for your body alone!”
