Page 26 of A Duke for Hire (The Devil’s Masquerade #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“ T he morning I left? I found you cold and bloody beside me.” Hugo began.

Seraphina’s brows flew up in surprise as she leaned back in the ivy-covered gazebo he’d brought her to.

“I believe I would have remembered if such a thing had happened, Hugo.”

A small ripple of relief fluttered through him. She was calling him Hugo again. That was something.

“Not in reality,” he conceded. “But in my nightmares, I had done the worst possible thing a man could do to a woman he loved.”

“A nightmare,” Seraphina sighed, relaxing if only a little, “So you murdered me in your nightmare.”

“No, I don’t even think I did that,” Hugo ventured, still trying to find the right words. The dream started out with me as a young boy, being beaten by my father. Then it shifted to the night I nearly killed Charles- Leah’s former beau. In the final shift it transformed into you. It was like a—a vision. A warning that someday I could do that to you. That the rage I felt then would consume me now.”

He looked over at her, and saw Seraphina staring at him in rapt attention.

“The anger, the fury that resounded in me that night. It showed me what I was capable of. Before it had happened, Leah and I were living together again, making our way back to knowing one another after years of being apart. But after that night I sent her back here. I pushed her away like I pushed you away, terrified I would unleash that ferocity again without being able to control it.”

Seraphina seemed to contemplate what he said for a moment.

“Do you have these nightmares often?”

He nodded.

“Almost every night. That is why I insisted we not sleep together before. But you had never been in them until the night we made love.”

Hugo pressed his eyes shut tightly, bracing himself for his next admission.

“There’s one more thing,” he rasped, forcing his eyes open.

Seraphina tried to meet his gaze but this time he couldn’t. The shame was too great.

“One night, several years ago when I did drink, I was at a certain type of party with Everett and Dominic. I was having fun in the way young men do with certain ladies of the evening and for the first time in my life, I fell asleep in the same bed as someone else.

“I was too drunk to stop myself and just…passed out beside the woman.”

Hugo’s stomach roiled as he recalled that night, but he forced himself to continue.

“My nightmares came, and though I was asleep, my body acted as it did that night of the duel. The woman had been able to—to escape me, but I had completely destroyed that room in my sleepwalking. I woke up to Everett and Dominic restraining me, screaming at me to wake up.

“I never drank in excess again, nor did I sleep in the same bed with another person. Until you. Until that night.”

“So when you saw me in your nightmare, bloodied and beaten,” Seraphina worked out aloud, “You thought you had actually done it.”

Hugo nodded.

“It took several minutes to distinguish reality from dream,” he explained. “I cannot begin to explain the panic and heartache I felt in those moments. Seraphina. When I thought I was responsible for hurting you like that and I- I…I lost my mind.”

“Oh, Hugo, ” she whispered.

He flinched as her fingertips gently caressed his chin and turned his eyes to hers. The sorrow in her eyes made his throat and chest grow tight.

“You should have told me,” she insisted, her tone soft but disappointing. “You should have told me the truth instead of lying and running away.”

“I know,” he choked out.

Hugo cleared his throat, gathering himself, and tentatively reached out to put a hand on her thigh. He was relieved when she neither flinched nor pulled it off of her.

“I was telling the truth about one thing that morning, though. About protecting the weak. You are strong, Seraphina, I knew that from the moment I met you. But as I got to know your situation, I understood that you were powerless against your parents. As strong as you were, you were trapped very much in a way I had been once trapped. I wanted to help you. To give you a place where you would not feel such things.”

Seraphina sniffled, glancing away as her eyes grew glassy.

“So our marriage was out of pity. Not love.”

“At first, yes,” Hugo confessed. “I don’t know if that is right or wrong, but it is the truth. I did not think I could love anyone at all. Not in the way most people love.

“Then you came to live with me. You wormed your way into my heart. You made me laugh, smile. You made feel as if something more than work was worth rising for. But then that terrified me too. Realizing that you were being so kind and wonderful to someone so limited as myself.

“When I saw you with Carrington at the ball I felt like a fraud. Like I had stolen you from a life you deserved. One with people and parties and normalcy.”

“I told you that is what my mother wanted,” she insisted quickly. “That was not what I wanted!”

“I know that now,” he assured her. “Just as I know jealousy is not worth losing you. Just as I now know that nightmares are not worth losing you.”

Seraphina turned back to face him, tears still trickling down her cheeks. She squeezed his hand, a small touch that pushed fresh breath back into his lungs.

“I will work through every nightmare, every regret, every fear of the past, if it means I get to keep you as my wife,” he rasped.

Seraphina’s blank expression crumbled then, and she let out a soft sob as she sagged toward him.

“I love you, Seraphina. Wholly. And I promise you I will never, never make you leave my side again,” He vowed.

Seraphina lunged for him then, her arms circling tight around his neck as she began to cry. Hugo’s own face contorted into a sob as he picked her up and placed her in his lap, holding onto her tightly. Relief poured through him as he finally was able to hold her again, so much so his hands trembled, and his burrowed his face into the hair by her ear.

“Let me take you home,” he whispered, rocking them both on the stone bench.

“Oh, Hugo,” she whispered.

Seraphina leaned back just enough to place feathery kisses along his cheeks, nose, and forehead. When her lips met his, he moved her hands to his cheeks and pressed fully into the kiss; reveling in the taste he’d missed so much.

“I love you too,” she whispered when he finally let her pull away, and Hugo’s heart shuttered with reality of it. He was loved. He. The monster. The abused boy. He was loved.

Seraphina pulled away a little farther, cupping his cheeks as he cupped hers, and looked directly into his soul.

“But you are right. You will not do this to me again. I could not bear it. From now on you must talk to me. Let me be there to help you as you have helped me.”

“Yes,” Hugo agreed, his tone resolute. “No matter the issue, I will share it with you.”

“Good,” Seraphina said with a nod.

She then stood up from his lap, surprising him, and held out her hand to him.

“Now take me home,” she demanded, a spark of desire lighting her tear-stained face for a moment. “You have much to make up for.”