Page 31 of A Scottish Bride for the Duke (Scottish Duchesses #1)

Chapter Twenty-One

“ I am honored you invited me here,” the dowager duchess said as Isobel poured her a cup. “I confess, it’s strange coming back here as a visitor.”

The matter of Adrian’s father would not leave Isobel, even when she knew that with the man long dead, it was none of her business. But whenever he thought about his father, he retreated a little further into himself, shutting a door on whatever memories remained.

Thus, she did precisely as he recommended and invited his mother round for tea.

“Ye must come back as often as ye can,” Isobel urged. “I know Adrian would like it.”

“No, I should stay away and let you both get used to your new lives together. Build something new on what came before. I think that’s a beautiful thing.”

Isobel tapped her silver spoon against the rim of the teacup with a definitive clink .

“I agree,” she said. “And actually, I had hoped that we could speak a little.”

“Oh?” The dowager raised a brow. “About what? Has my son done something?”

“No, no, not at all. It’s more about…” Isobel hesitated. “The former duke. Your husband.”

The dowager sighed, placing her teacup back on its saucer. “Ah, I see.”

“Do ye?”

“Has Adrian spoken to you much about his father?”

“A little about his methods of discipline.”

“I see. Yes. Well, that says about all I think anyone needs to on the subject.” She released a breath, and it looked as though her smile was forced. “He was not a kind man, and he took out the bulk of his cruelty on Adrian, thinking that it would shape him to be a better man.”

“Adrian showed me his…” Isobel couldn’t quite say his scars . “I can’t believe his father would do such a thing.”

“Well, he believed that the harsher he was when disciplining his son, the stronger Adrian would be for it.”

“How did he…”

“Die?” the dowager asked, and when Isobel flinched at the word, she sighed. “It’s not a nice story, but I can’t imagine Adrian wanting to tell you.”

“He doesn’t.”

“I thought so. It happened many years ago now, when Adrian was barely more than a boy. Just twenty years of age.”

Her hands folded into fists, and Isobel looked at them, noting the older lady’s tension, the coldness that filtered into her voice.

Such a warm woman, one who had been so welcoming when Isobel had first come to London, and yet when it came to her former husband, there was no softness to her.

For the first time, Isobel got an inkling of what she must have done—and what she must have been like—to survive.

“My husband—his father—wanted to test Adrian’s intelligence and strength. To see, I suppose, whether he thought Adrian was worthy of being his heir, the man who would eventually take over his estates. And so, he locked both him and me in the house. And he set fire to the building.”

Isobel’s gasp felt as though it ought to rattle the windows. “No,” she whispered. “Surely he would not have been so cruel.”

“Oh, he most certainly was. He was capable of great cruelty, that man, as I mentioned. And he wanted to see if Adrian would achieve the impossible. His ultimate test.”

“And so, he risked your lives in the process.”

“Adrian and I have always been close. His father knew that even if he would not have been motivated for the sake of his own life, he would be motivated for the sake of mine.” She sighed heavily.

“All through Adrian’s childhood, I would do what I could to intervene when he became too violent, but he just redirected his anger onto me.

Eventually, Adrian asked me to stop interfering.

He preferred it when he took the brunt of the damage for me. ”

Yes, Isobel could imagine Adrian doing that. Stepping up, taking responsibility, even when it wasn’t his, and saving others pain and damage. Her heart stung.

“What happened?” she whispered. “With the fire?”

“It got out of hand. Any fool could have known that, but my husband was always single-minded in his pursuit of something.” She sighed.

“Adrian got me and the staff out, but his father had gone inside. Perhaps to find us, perhaps to get us out, or due to some delusion that he could defeat the fire by the force of his will alone. Adrian went back inside to find him, but it was too late. He barely escaped with his life. His father burned to ash.”

She picked up her cup and sipped from it, her fingers surprisingly steady.

“I regret many things in my lifetime, including marrying such a man and not being strong enough to shield our only son from his wrath, but I do not regret the way he burned.” She glanced at Isobel. “Perhaps you think me heartless?”

“I think ye must have been very strong to endure such a terrible thing,” Isobel said.

“You’re very kind. But that is the story. After this, Adrian… changed. He became cold, unyielding. The man you know today. But he never used to be like that. When he was a child—oh, he was endearing. A sweet, funny boy with a warm heart.

His father beat that out of him, and the fire destroyed the last of his softness. He is dutiful, of course, and I know he holds me in his affections, but…” Her face softened in a smile. “I think he has softened slightly since meeting you.”

“I plagued him enough, aye,” Isobel said, but she could not stop thinking about all the things the dowager had revealed. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand. If his father was so cruel to him, why did he risk his life to save him? Surely, he could have let the fire do its work.”

“Because he loved him,” the dowager said simply. “Oh, you can look as disapproving as you like, little miss—and perhaps you would be right to. True, his father was an awful man, and heaven knows I felt no fondness for him, but love is not simple, and it does not listen to reason.”

“No,” Isobel murmured. “It surely does not.”

“Adrian lost a great deal that day, and I think it has taken him time to find it again. I hope with you, he will feel as though he has found it.” The dowager gave a brisk smile.

“Perhaps it’s foolish of me to hope, but I think this marriage might be the making of him, even though neither of you intended it. You are fond of him, are you not?”

Everyone seemed to want that answer from her—and she could hardly fail to give it.

“Aye,” she said. “I am.”

“Then I have great hopes for him. Just know that his father is a sore point with him. Not only has he grown up shaped by the things his father did and said, but I’m sure he has a fear of becoming a man like that in the end, too.”

“But he’s nothing like that,” Isobel said heatedly. “He is kind and gentle when he needs to be, and I have never felt as though he would be cruel to me. Well,” she amended, thinking back, “not since we were married, anyway. At the beginning, he was not cruel, but cold.”

A coldness that had iced into every part of him and had only begun to thaw since their first impassioned kiss.

“But I have never been afraid of him,” she added.

“Oh, he’s nothing like his father, and he never will be. But he had to shut himself down to survive, and he believes that strength comes from lack of feeling.” She clucked her tongue.

“I tried to tell him, to show him, that strength comes from feeling strongly—and knowing how to handle such feelings, but he has closed himself off. But now he has someone to care about beyond the bounds of duty alone, and I believe he will come to realize how much you mean to him.” The dowager patted Isobel’s hand.

“You will be his saving, so long as you allow him to save you, too.”

The dowager didn’t know the whole truth about why she had fled, and precisely what she feared now, but the words struck a chord in her.

She could trust the duke to save her, and in return, she would save him, too.

They would save one another, and wasn’t that what true marriage was?

It was what her parents had shared. So many times, her father had looked down at her mother with such fondness in his expression and said that she had saved him more times than he could count.

Isobel, a child then, had listened with wide eyes as her mother told her to find a husband who would give her everything and expect nothing in return. And her father had said to be prepared to offer a good man her heart, bared and vulnerable, without needing it to be a trade.

And if both parties were prepared to sacrifice everything for the person they loved, they would both put each other’s needs first, and they would both be happy.

The challenge was, her mother had said, finding someone who would do that.

Isobel didn’t yet know if Adrian would be that man. He was so wrapped in pride and duty. But she also knew that he did care, even if he hadn’t processed it yet. She’d felt it every time they had been wrapped up together, when he had been gentle even though he wanted to dominate.

She would trust him to save her, and she prayed he would not let her down as she found a way to save him.