Page 80 of His Auctioned Duchess
He needed air. And action.
When Richard descended the spiral staircase, the household froze in astonishment. None had seen the duke emerge from his tower in days. He passed them without a word, his boots leaving a trail of mud and ash across the marble floors.
In the hall, Edmund intercepted him. “Richard,” he said cautiously, “you look as though you mean to march into battle.”
“Perhaps I do,” Richard replied.
Edmund’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve heard, then. About Fernsby’s intentions.”
“I have.” The two words were sharp as steel.
“Then for God’s sake, think before you act. You can’t storm into that house like a conquering general. The scandal’s already enough to cripple half the ton.”
Richard turned to him, eyes burning with a grim kind of clarity. “Scandal is the least of what I’ve survived.”
“Don’t make this worse,” Edmund warned. “You’ll only drive her farther away.”
Richard gave a hollow laugh. “She cannot go farther than she already has.”
He moved past his friend, shoulders set, and disappeared into the courtyard.
The grooms startled when he appeared in the stables, demanding his horse. He did not wait for help. Within moments he had saddled the black stallion himself, his injured hand raw against the reins. The pain bit deep, but he welcomed it. It kept him awake—kept him focused.
When he spurred the horse into motion, hooves struck sparks from the stones, and the wind whipped through his hair like the breath of reprieve. The countryside blurred past in shades of green and gray, the road stretching ahead like judgment.
He rode harder than he had since the war.
Richard was drenched as he reined his horse to a halt before the manor gates. Breathless, the burn in his hand throbbing beneath the leather glove. But when he saw the house—the place where she waited, trapped again by pride and duty—his fear melted into purpose.
He swung down from the saddle, the gravel crunching underfoot, and stared at the door that would either damn or redeem him.
“I will not lose her,” he said quietly.
CHAPTER 22
The auction’s noise receded when Caroline slipped from the house. The corridors of Fernsby Manor in full trade were a theater of polite voices and currency disguised as compliment; beyond them, in the cool hush of the night garden, the world narrowed to the murmur of the fountain and the rustle of leaves. She went there because she could not stay another minute inside a room that measured her worth in coin.
She sat on a stone bench beneath a lilac, the lantern light making small halos on the gravel. The sketchbook she had carried with her felt heavy in her lap. She had told herself she would not draw him again, but the urge came like a tide; the charcoal moved whether she willed it or not.
Fast, fevered marks became a face, then a body—the scar, the angles, the sense of someone, a man. She added hair, pointed like a crown. In his arms she set a bride: laughing, arms tight about his neck; hair tumbling free; a laugh that softened theman's hard face. He looked a little like a beast, but beneath the strokes was a scared man.
When the last stroke lay down, tears blurred the edges and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. The image was a confession on paper: the terror and the tenderness braided together. She felt foolish, vulnerable, and relieved all at once.
Footsteps on the gravel made her stiffen. She snapped the book shut and tucked it beneath her skirt, then glanced up.
The Duke of Cavendish, Alex was there, politely apart from the scene he had come to the auction to court. A servant was behind him. He sank to the bench beside her with the careful grace of a man who fitted himself to a room’s expectations. He spoke with that smooth ease—light, courteous—about the night, the air, the disappointment of the drawing room.
“I am glad for another chance,” he said quietly. “I am glad for another chance to win you.”
The words were proper, honorable in the ton’s idiom. They should have comforted her. Instead, they tightened something in her chest. The notion of being the subject of a duel of purses and polite entreaty stung. She folded her hands in her lap and let a worn civility answer him.
“You give me too much importance, Your Grace,” she murmured. “I am not a prize to be won.”
He smiled with the gentle persistence of a man unused to refusal. “Perhaps. Still—if the opportunity presents itself, I am glad to be given it.”
She wanted to tell him: I am not glad; I am tired, and my heart is not empty of memory. The words dissolved. Instead, she kept silent, and her silence was its own answer.
They sat in the garden’s half light. His presence was unobtrusive and steady; it should have been solace. But the sketch book under her skirts burned like a small private thing about to be bared. She hid it, her throat tight with the wrongness of being admired while her mind and pencil were full of another.
