Page 37 of A Duke, a Spinster, and her Stolen List (Duchesses of Ice #1)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“ I will see my wife, and there is nothing anyone can do about it,” Rhys announced to the marbled entryway, his voice ricocheting off stone and paneling.

He shouldered past the startled butler and ignored the cluster of servants that materialized in the wake of his arrival, their faces registering a mixture of horror and awe. No one moved to stop him. By now, the entire staff knew better.

He took the main staircase two at a time, his boots striking like the tolling of a death knell. Celine’s father—the Earl of Woodsworth, scholar and gentleman, but never quite a warrior—appeared at the landing, his spectacles askew.

“Your Grace—” he began, already reaching for the banister as if it might shield him.

“Not now,” Rhys snapped, never breaking stride. “I’ve been patient, and it’s gotten me nowhere. Unless you’d like to wrestle me to the floor, do us both a favor and stand aside.”

He brushed past, leaving the Earl clinging to the banister as if he’d been dashed against the rocks.

Two turns of the hall, and then her door—her childhood door, newly painted and shining in the lamplight, as if the past two decades could be polished out by elbow grease alone.

He didn’t knock. He pushed the door open, not even bothering with the pretense of propriety.

She was curled up in the window seat, her knees drawn to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly around a dog-eared volume of The Sorrows of Young Werther . A halo of late sun and firelight made her hair look almost blue.

For a heartbeat, Rhys felt the urge to shut the door and leave her alone, to preserve her in that moment of impossible stillness.

But he was too desperate for mercy.

She started at the noise, nearly dropping her book. “What are you?—”

“Don’t,” he said, his tone softer than he’d meant, but every bit as urgent. “Don’t hide from me.”

He crossed the room, more slowly now, measuring his approach the way a man might approach a wounded dog. She pressed herself back against the window, her knuckles white on the book’s spine.

Her face was blotchy, red, and raw, and she made a furious attempt to dash away the evidence with the back of her hand.

“You’ve had four days to say what you came to say,” she said, her voice quivering between defiance and dread. “You needn’t?—”

“Don’t pretend you’ve read a word of that,” he cut in, nodding toward the book. “You hate Werther.”

She glared, but the lie died on her lips. The book slipped to the floor, thudding open at the midpoint.

Rhys let the silence stretch out for a second, just long enough to count her ragged breaths.

“I was told,” she said, after a moment, “that the only reason you married me was because it would enrage your dead father, and?—”

“And you believed it.” He said it flatly, without inflection, but it hurt more than any slap.

She swallowed, her blue eyes narrowing. “You gave me no reason not to.”

He looked at her then— really looked—and saw not the Duchess, or the adversary, or even the clever, impossible woman he had married. Just Celine, small and shaking, braced against a world that had never given her a fair fight.

“I did,” he said. “I just wasn’t brave enough to mean it.”

He turned away, ran a hand through his hair, and tried to find the right place to begin. The room was too bright, too filled with memories. He wanted to smash something, but instead, he walked to the fireplace and stared at the coals until his vision blurred.

“My father was a monster,” he began after a minute.

“He kept his cruelty so well-polished that no one ever held him to account. Not the family, not the servants, not even God. He said that I was weak, that I’d ruin the family line if I didn’t learn to kill off my softness.

So he took it upon himself to do it for me. ”

He smiled, a jagged thing.

“Every day, he would mete out a new punishment. Once, when I misquoted a date in the family bible, he locked me in the mausoleum for a night. It was February. The stone was colder than his heart.”

He looked at her, waiting for the pity, but her expression was unreadable, her jaw locked, her gaze fixed somewhere over his shoulder.

“He told me I’d never be fit to lead. That I’d marry a painted doll and ruin the bloodline with madness or children too stupid to draw breath.

So when he died, I thought: finally, I could prove him wrong.

I made a thousand vows to never be like him, but all it did was chain me to his memory tighter than before. ”

Celine didn’t speak. She sat as if cast in wax, only the rhythm of her breathing showing that she was not a statue.

“I wanted to defy him,” Rhys continued. “It wasn’t even about you at first. It was about doing the one thing he told me never to do—marry for myself, not for the damned title or the estate. I thought if I picked the lady who would scandalize him most, it would be a kind of victory.”

A muscle twitched in her jaw.

“But it wasn’t a victory. It was just more of the same.

More cruelty, more running away.” He turned, stalking the length of the hearth, energy vibrating through his arms like a fever.

“You were never an embarrassment, Celine. You were a challenge. From the first night in the library, when you corrected my Latin and refused to let me win an argument, I wanted you.”

The words came out raw, stripping him of pretense.

“I wanted you so much that it made me angry, because I knew wanting anything was a sure path to loss.”

She looked down at her hands, twisting them in her lap.

He stepped closer and lowered his voice.

“I never meant to make you the villain in this. I was just so damn afraid of becoming him, of becoming the next link in a chain of monsters, that I let myself believe you’d be better off with half a husband than a whole one.

If I could keep my distance, maybe I’d do less harm. ”

She laughed, a brittle sound. “You did a splendid job of keeping your distance, Rhys.”

He winced, but pressed on. “I know. But after you left, after I had no one to keep the rooms warm or the staff in order, after the echo of your voice was gone from the halls, I realized I’d already lost everything I was trying to protect.”

He dropped to one knee, reckless, undignified.

“I’m sorry, Celine. I’m so damn sorry. Not for marrying you, not for wanting you, but for letting the past dictate our future. I am tired of being afraid. I am tired of carrying him around like a plague.”

She stared at him, her lips parted, her eyes glassy with a fresh threat of tears.

He reached for her hand, but she recoiled, just a fraction.

“You can leave me here,” he said. “I deserve it. Or you can come home, and I’ll spend every day making it up to you. I won’t hide from you. I won’t shut you out or turn every kindness into a battle. I’ll let you in. I’ll let you see everything, even the parts that terrify me.”

Celine sat there for a long, unbearable minute. The only sound was the soft whistle of the wind through the cracked window.

“Is that all?” she asked, her voice so low that he almost missed it.

He nodded, too wrung out to speak.

She picked up the fallen book and cradled it to her chest. She looked so young that he could have sworn she was the girl he had once seen running through the orchards at Wylds, her hair loose and wild, her face bright with sun.

“You should have just told me,” she said, tears cutting silent tracks down her face. “I would have understood. I might have even forgiven you sooner.”

Rhys knelt, helpless, waiting for her verdict.

She stood up, the book hugged to her chest like armor. She did not reach for him, but she did not turn away.

He rose, awkward on one knee, and wiped his palms on his coat. He wanted to say something—anything—but found himself stranded between apology and hope.

She set the book down carefully and regarded him with a steadiness that made his heart lurch.

“Did you ever love me?” she asked.

He swallowed. “I tried not to, but I failed.”

Her breath caught, and for a moment, the only thing in the world was the two of them, suspended in that impossible space between ruin and repair.

She stepped forward, just enough that her skirts brushed his knees. “Don’t you dare stop trying,” she whispered.

He looked up at her, hope blooming in the ruins of his pride.

She reached out, her fingers trembling, and touched his jaw. He covered her hand with his own, and for the first time in years, he felt something shatter and reassemble inside him.

She let him hold her there, and the world began to spin again.

Celine pulled her hand back after a long moment, cradling it as though it had been burned. She stepped away from the window seat, away from him, and moved toward the fire.

Her movements were fluid, careful, as though the floor might shift beneath her at any moment.

Rhys watched her back, her tense shoulders, the way she pressed a knuckle to her mouth before she spoke.

“How can I believe you?”

The words landed with precision, more accusation than plea.

She set the book on the side table and took up a place by the hearth, where the flames made her hair glow and threw her shadow up the wall behind her. She stared into the fire, refusing to look at him.

“You weren’t there,” she said, the accusation colder than ice. “Not when I needed you. Not when I wanted you.” She turned a little, but kept her eyes fixed somewhere over his right shoulder. “You vanished into your misery and left me to fend for myself.”

He took a careful step toward her, then stopped, his hands hanging uselessly at his sides.

“I know,” he rasped. “I tried to explain, but it always came out wrong. Or not at all.”

She waited, her lips pressed tight, her silence a dare.

Rhys squared his shoulders, determined not to waste another chance.

“After the first time we kissed, I dreamed of him,” he revealed.

“My father. He was waiting for me in the mausoleum. He sat on top of his own grave and poured himself a brandy and told me I’d ruined everything as usual.

He said if I tried to be happy, I’d only make it worse for everyone else.

” He swallowed. “He said if I let myself love you, it would kill us both.”

She lifted her chin. “You let him win,” she said.

“I did,” he admitted. “I let his ghost run my life, long after he was in the ground.”

He closed the distance between them, moving slowly as if she might vanish if he was too abrupt.

“But I’m done with it,” he added. “That night, I walked up to his grave and told him to rot. I told him he’d never ruin another day of my life, or yours, or any children we might have, whether by blood or by accident or by miracle.

I told him I was going to love you, and if that was a crime, I’d hang for it with a smile. ”

Celine turned then, her eyes searching his face as if trying to weigh the truth of every word. The firelight made her eyes enormous, impossibly blue.

“You never said so,” she whispered.

“I didn’t know how,” he said. “I never had an example to follow. But I confess… I came undone. By the time I was… composed, I was too late, and you were betrayed.”

She looked at him, her hands balled into fists. “And now?”

He reached for her, just barely touching her wrist. “Now I know that the only thing worth being brave for is you.”

For a moment, she didn’t move. Then, she unclenched her hand and let his fingers twine through hers. He felt her pulse, fast and wild, under his thumb.

“Whether or not we ever have a child,” he said, his voice catching, “whether or not we fulfill any of the idiotic, impossible expectations of our titles, it doesn’t matter to me. If I lose you, none of the rest matters.”

Her breath trembled, and she squeezed his hand hard.

He went down on one knee, letting his pride fall to the carpet with him.

“I choose happiness,” he murmured, not trusting himself to say more. “I choose you.”

She stared at him, her eyes wet, then knelt too, her skirts pooling around her like a sanctuary.

“Don’t ever leave me again,” she whispered.

He pulled her into his arms, his heart pounding so fiercely that he wondered if she could hear it through his coat. She was shaking, and so was he.

He kissed her—first on the cheek, then the jaw, then her mouth—reverent, desperate, as if he could pour every apology, every vow, into the space between them.

She tasted of salt and hope. Her hands slid up his shoulders, then into his hair, holding him as if she could keep him from drifting away.

They stayed like that, kneeling on the carpet in front of the fire for so long that the flames guttered to embers.

“I love you,” he said.

It was the easiest thing he had ever said.

Celine smiled, then, and the world came back into color.

He touched her face, traced the curve of her cheek with a thumb. “You’re sure you want to keep me?”

She laughed, a real laugh, and tugged him down so their foreheads touched.

“You’re mine,” she breathed. “Whether you like it or not.”

He let out a shaky breath and pressed his lips to hers again, gentle and certain.

For the first time in his life, Rhys believed in tomorrow.