Page 56 of His Auctioned Duchess
The nearer she drew to the tower, the louder the music became—discordant now, as if every note were a blow.
When she reached the final landing, she paused. The door stood ajar, a blade of light cutting across the stone floor.
She pushed it open.
Richard sat at the pianoforte, bare to the waist, his back gleaming with sweat and candlelight. Muscles shifted beneath the skin as his hands pounded the keys. The melody, if it couldbe called that, rose and fell like the sea against rocks—relentless, furious, alive.
Caroline’s breath caught. Here was the man unguarded, stripped of title and restraint, wrestling his ghosts through sound.
For a moment she only watched.
Then the final chord crashed, and silence filled the room.
Richard’s hands stilled on the keys. Slowly, he turned his head toward her. The lamplight caught the scar that cut across his cheek, silvering its edge.
“Why aren't you sleeping?” His voice was low, harsh, like gravel ground beneath a boot.
Caroline tightened her grip on the candle. “I heard you playing.”
“And you thought to walk around in your nightclothes?”
“I thought to find my future husband,” she said evenly. “You have been difficult to locate this evening.”
He rose from the bench. In the flickering light he looked impossibly tall, the lines of his body drawn in shadow and flame. “You should be asleep.”
“So should you.”
“This is my house.”
“And I am to be your wife,” she returned, stepping forward. “Or have you forgotten already?”
He stopped a few paces from her, eyes narrowing. “You should not be here.”
“Why? Because it would require you to look at me?”
The words struck. His jaw tightened. “Careful, Caroline.”
“I have been careful,” she said, her voice trembling despite her will. “All day, every moment since I got here, I have been careful—measured, composed, exactly the duchess the world would expect me to be tomorrow. And for what? So that you may vanish?”
“I did not vanish.”
“No,” she said bitterly, “you hid.”
His eyes flashed. “You think this is hiding? It is control. If I lose it, I lose everything.”
“Control,” she repeated. “That is what you call silence, distance, absence? Tell me, Your Grace, at what point does control become cowardice?”
He moved then—one step, slow and deliberate, enough to make her heartbeat quicken. “You presume much.”
“I presume what any woman would. I expected honesty. Presence. You owe me that much.”
“I owe you nothing you haven’t earned,” he said.
Her breath caught. “Then tell me how I might earn it.”
“By growing up,” he said, the words sharp. “By leaving certain fears behind. I have no time to soothe them.”
The candle shook in her hand. “You think I came here to be soothed?”
