Page 29 of Duke of Storme (Braving the Elements #4)

“ W ill our lessons continue today, Your Grace?”

Diana stood in the doorway of the estate study, watching as Finn’s dark head remained bent over the endless correspondence scattered across his mahogany desk.

He didn’t look up immediately. His attention was apparently absorbed by whatever missive lay before him. But Diana caught the slight tension that crept into his shoulders at her question and she saw the way his fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around his quill.

“Ye’re improving,” he said finally, still not meeting her gaze. “But ye’re no’ ready yet.”

“Not ready for what, precisely?” Diana moved into the room uninvited. Her pale blue morning dress rustled softly against the leather-bound volumes that lined the walls from top to bottom as she walked past their shelves. “Yesterday you said I was better. Today I’m somehow insufficient again?”

Finn set his quill down with deliberate precision. The small sound it made echoed in the quiet space. When he finally looked up, his gray-blue eyes carried that shuttered expression she’d come to recognize well – the look of a man preparing his defenses.

“Ye’re sufficient for Highland society,” he said carefully. “But London… London requires nothin’ less than perfection.”

“Does it?” Diana settled herself in the chair across from his desk, noting how his jaw tightened at her presumption. “Or is it that you require perfection from me?”

“I require competence.”

“No.” Diana’s voice remained gentle, but there was grit beneath the silk. “You require flawlessness. There’s a big difference, Your Grace, and we both know it fully well.”

Finn leaned back in his chair, his expression growing more guarded with each word he spoke. “Ye don’t understand the stakes.”

“Then explain them to me.” Diana folded her hands in her lap and studied his face with the careful attention she usually reserved for her sketches. “Why does it matter so much to you that I perform perfectly in public? Why are you so determined to transform me into something I am not?”

“I’m not transformin’ ye into anythin’. I’m simply… refinin’ what’s already there.”

“Like polishing silver?”

Something flickered across his features – surprise, perhaps, or reluctant amusement. “Aye. Something’ like that.”

“How flattering,” Diana’s tone carried just enough dry humor to make his mouth twitch. “But you realize you still haven’t answered my question, Your Grace.”

Finn blinked at her. “Which question?”

“Why does my potential failure terrify you so completely?”

The word ‘terrify’ hit its mark. Finn’s expression hardened instantly, his military bearing reasserting itself like armor sliding into place.

“I’m no’ terrified of anythin’.”

“Aren’t you?” Diana leaned forward slightly. Her brown eyes never left his face. “Because from where I sit, you seem absolutely convinced that I’m going to embarrass you. That I’m going to prove inadequate to the task of being your Duchess.”

“‘Tis because appearances matter.” The words came out sharp and clipped.

“Do they? Or is it something more than that? Help me understand.”

Finn stood abruptly then retreated to the window with that controlled stride she knew so well. If not for the rigid set of his shoulders, his pose might have looked casual.

“Ye don’t know what ye’re askin’.”

“I am asking my husband to trust me enough to tell me the truth.” Diana’s voice remained soft, coaxing rather than demanding. “I am asking you to explain why my triumph or failure matters so much to a man who claims our marriage is nothing more than a convenient arrangement.”

“It is a convenient arrangement.”

“Then why do you care what anyone thinks of me? If this marriage truly means that little to you, if I am truly nothing more than a social necessity, then why does the prospect of me making a misstep keep you awake at night?”

Finn’s reflection in the window glass showed her the way his jaw clenched and how the muscles jumped violently beneath the skin of his cheek.

“Ye think ye know so much…” he said quietly. “Standin’ here with yer gentle questions and yer patient tone, like ye’re dealin’ with a fractious child.”

“On the contrary, Your Grace. I am fully aware that I know very little,” Diana replied honestly. “That is why I’m asking.”

For a long moment, the only sound in the study was the distant tick of the mantle clock and the soft whisper of Highland wind against the windows. Diana waited, sensing that pushing further would only cause him to retreat again behind those carefully constructed walls of his.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Finn turned to face her, and what she witnessed in his expression stole the breath from her lungs entirely.

Gone was the controlled mask he usually wore.

In its place now sat something raw and vulnerable, like a festering wound that only ever partly healed.

“Because I was never meant to be a damned Duke,” he said, the words emerging from him uneven and rough. “When the title passed to me, I wasn’t welcomed. I wasn’t groomed or prepared for any of this, Diana. I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t … wanted.”

Diana’s heart clenched at the raw heartache she heard beneath his measured tone. “Oh…”

“I was tolerated,” he continued, as though she hadn’t spoken, or he hadn’t heard her.

Finn was clearly constrained by the weight of what he was sharing.

“The Highland relatives who took me in after my father… they did their duty, nothin’ more.

Fed me. Housed me. Taught me the bare minimum needed to survive in their world.

But I was always the outcast, always the one who didn’t quite belong anywhere. ”

He moved away from the window, closer to where she sat, and Diana could see the tension radiating from every line of his body.

“When I inherited, they all expected me to fail. The other lairds, the nobility, even some of the older servants – they were all just waitin’ for me to prove that I was exactly what they’d always believed me to be – a pretender, someone who’d stolen a title he had no right to claim whatsoever.”

“But you didn’t fail,” Diana said softly, and found that she meant it.

“You’ve taken responsibility for everything left in disrepair, and your people truly respect you for it.

The gardens show such promise, and the way Mrs. Glenwright speaks of your improvements to the tenant cottages… you’ve made a difference.”

Finn’s laugh was bitter and cold. “Have I? or have I simply managed to convince people that I’m adequately completing the tasks at hand? There’s a vast difference between success and acceptance, Diana. Between respect and belongin’.”

Though he had done it before, in this particular instance there was something different about his voice when he spoke her Christian name, and it sent warmth spiraling though her chest, but she kept her expression carefully neutral.

“Every blunder I’ve made,” Finn continued, “every misstep, every moment when my manners weren’t quite polished enough or my accent was too thick for London, or too mild for the Highlands – they used it as proof that I didn’t belong.

That I was exactly what they’d always said I was: nothin’ more than another Highland cur playin’ at bein’ a Duke. ”

Diana felt something fierce and protective rear its head from some deep corner in her chest. “And you think bringing me to London will somehow change their minds?”

“I think bringin’ a Duchess who stumbles, who can’t navigate their games, who reminds them that I’m no’ one of them…” He met her eyes directly for the first time since beginning his confession, “will cost me more than mere pride. I will lose what little ground I’ve managed to claim.”

The vulnerability in his voice, the raw honesty of the admission made Diana want to reach out to him. But she sensed that any gesture of comfort would cause him to flee and retreat, to re-erect those walls even higher than before.

“So… I am to be your proof,” she said quietly, understanding finally dawning upon her. “I am to be your evidence that you’ve truly become what they always said you couldn’t be.”

Finn went absolutely still. His face looked pale in the morning light. For a heartbeat, Diana expected him to deny it, thinking he might withdraw again and slip behind his usual mask of careful control.

Instead, he crossed the floor to her in three swift strides. His composure cracked like ice in spring. When he reached her chair, he dropped to one knee beside it. His hands came up to frame her face with a desperation that made her breath catch.

“No,” he said, his voice rough and raw with emotion.

“Not my proof. Never my proof.” His thumbs traced the curve of her cheekbones, his gray-blue eyes blazing with an intensity that seemed to burn right through her.

“Ye’re my anchor, Diana. My salvation. The only thing in this wretched, godforsaken world that makes me believe I might actually deserve to draw breath. ”

The confession tore from him like something physical, tender, raw, and bleeding and utterly without artifice. Diana felt tears spring into her eyes at the naked vulnerability in his voice, at the way his hands trembled against her skin.

“When I watch ye struggle with the same doubts that have plagued me… when I see ye lift yer chin and try again despite yer fear… it reminds me that I’m not the only one who feels like an impostor in this world.

” His forehead came to rest against hers.

“Every lesson I’ve tired to teach ye, I was really tryin’ to give ye the guidance I wish someone had given me.

And every time ye find yer strength, every time ye refuse to let them diminish ye…

it gives me hope that maybe we’re both stronger than we think.

Maybe we can learn to belong here together. ”