Page 70 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

“I didn’t have your address. And if I’d written via Hadrian, he’d have wanted to know why.”

She clenched the sheet, clenched and released, as she stumbled through her memory. The past shifted and changed around her. “The gambling. My family told me how you lived in gaming hells.”

“Gaming is the only way for a dependent young lord to earn money, so I built up a nest egg, enough to support a wife and family for years, should my father cut me off. I spent it all on decorative objects in the end. That gambling funded the start of my collection.” He paused. “I had a ring made for you. My own design. A very patient silversmith worked on it with me.”

Sorrow washed over her as she pictured him again in Vienna. Oh, how very young they had been! She hugged her knees, and there, tangled in sheets that still smelled of him, her heart ached for that lovely, sensitive youth. For the dreams he had nurtured, the months he had waited, the hundreds of miles he had traveled, only to find her absorbed in her new life, barely sparing him a thought. She had not lied when she said her love for him was gone by the time they met in Vienna; by then, it was the truth.

But what even was the truth? For ten years, her truth had been that Leo rejected her because she was not good enough for him. For ten years, resentment for that rejection had hummed in her breast, like the cello in an orchestra.

For ten years, that was the truth by which she had defined the course of her adult life.

For ten years, she had been wrong.

He was bowed over, his face buried in his hands, his shirt pulled tight over the muscles in his back. She wanted to curl her arms around him, thread her fingers through his hair. Loll against him while they fed each other snacks and chatted about nothing. With this conversation, she had robbed them of their only chance for such sweet domestic intimacy. She ought never to have said a word. If only she could return to that innocent time of believing that he, and he alone, was wrong.

But this new truth was part of her now, crystallizing in her brain.

“You mean,” she said slowly, “that if I had not decided to study art in Europe, if I had stayed in England, waiting for you, you’d have come after me and we would have married and our whole lives would be different.”

The room felt haunted by those other versions of themselves, this other Duke and Duchess of Dammerton. If they had made different decisions all those years ago, they would be different people now.

He sat up. He didn’t look at her. “But it didn’t happen like that, and there is no point thinking about it.”

And Vienna? He had said he preferred not to remember Vienna. Because of his wife, she had assumed. She searched for memories of him in Vienna. She had a thousand wonderful memories of those years, and he was not in them.

A new anger blossomed. “You called me inconstant,” she said. “Yet back in Vienna, I didn’t see you running after me, fighting for me. Indeed, a few months later you married someone else. You say you loved me and dare scorn my love for fading. Why, if you loved me so much, why did you not eventry?”

“Why try when you—” He surged to his feet, took two aimless steps then pivoted. “You were thriving, Juno,” he said. “You always had verve, but studying art, free from England’s restrictions, you had become so alive. Soluminous. Marriage is not only about choosing a spouse, but choosing a life. And what life could I offer you? Only more rules, more duties, people always watching, judging, demanding. I offered wealth and status, but you care nothing for those. Had I married you and taken you home to England, I would have had to watch your spirit fade and wither away.”

She pressed her lips together and hugged her knees more tightly.

Leo threw back his head, briefly squeezed his eyes shut. “If I had chased you, fought for you, and asked you to marry me back then, would you have accepted?”

A deep breath shuddered through her, as she swiped at the tears burning her eyes. “No. I would have refused you.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “Those were such wonderful days.”

He nodded. “So I married someone else. Erika knew about you from the start.”

“Your wife. Erika. Did you…” She gathered her courage. “Did you love her?”

“Erika was what I needed, as I was for her. We were terribly ill-suited, though we did not realize it at first. I was young and drunk and…” He shook his head, as if disgusted and impatient with his younger self. “I told myself it did not matter whom I married, if I could not marry you.”

“But it does matter, doesn’t it?” she said. “You are a duke, and it matters to the whole country whom you choose as your wife. And to your family, and your Foundation, and your future heirs.”

He didn’t answer.

The silence rumbled on around them, louder than the fire in the hearth and the drumming of the rain. The room seemed as real as a stage, with Juno naked on the bed, Leo dressed on the floor, and a scattering of props: food, drink, a swansdown tippet, a velvet couch.

There was nowhere to go from here. They had torched their bridges, and everything was in flames. There was no other way it could have ended, not with them being who they were, with their choices and lives. Not in this world.

She would not regret this, she vowed. She had succeeded in claiming a small piece of him to take with her when they parted. This pain was simply the price she must pay.

“You did love me then, once?” she asked.

“Maybe. Maybe not.” He seemed exhausted. “Did you truly love me, when you said those words? Is it still love if that love fades over time?”

“You called it desire. Unfinished business.”

“Yes. Desire is all it was.”

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