Page 30 of Duke of Storme (Braving the Elements #4)
His words stole the breath from her lungs entirely.
Not because they were harsh, but because of the desperate honesty behind them.
This was certainly not the cold, controlled Duke of Storme speaking.
This was simply Finn – a man who’d spent his entire life, from the moment he drew his first breath, fighting to prove he deserved the place he occupied in the world.
“Your hope,” Diana repeated, testing the words. “Not your proof. Not your evidence… your anchor.”
“Aye.” He confirmed, and she saw something in his expression that made her chest tighten even more.
“When I see ye findin’ yer courage despite all the voices tellin’ ye ye’re not good enough…
it reminds me that maybe I can find mine too.
Maybe we both deserve to be here, even if we arrived by different paths. ”
Diana stood slowly, her legs suddenly unsteady. “Your Grace… I… you can’t… that’s not fair to either of us. As much as I understand, as much as I appreciate what you’re saying… you cannot make me responsible for your hope. What happens when I falter? When I’m not strong enough to inspire you?”
“Ye think I don’t know that?” His voice now carried an edge of sharp desperation. “Ye think I wanted to need ye? To see my own struggles reflected in yers? To find strength in watchin’ ye overcome what I’m still fightin’?”
“Then why do you?”
“Because I don’t know how else to survive it,” he said simply.
“Because every time I walk into a damned London drawing room, I feel just like that unwanted wee lad again, bein’ shipped off to the Highlands because his own father couldn’t bear the sight of him.
But when I see ye refuse to the them diminish ye, when ye find yer voice despite yer fear…
for a moment, I can almost believe I can do the same. ”
Diana felt the weight of his confession, the way he was inadvertently tying his growth to hers.
“You do belong,” she said quietly. “But not because of me, not because of what I can or cannot do in a ballroom. You belong there because you’ve earned it, Your Grace.”
“Have I? Or have I simply been good enough at pretending and no one’s bothered to look too closely?”
“Is that what you think? That everything you’ve accomplished is somehow… fraudulent?”
Finn was quiet for a long moment; his gaze fixed on her face as though trying to read something there.
“I think,” he said finally, “that I’ve spent so many years fightin’ to prove I deserved this title that I’ve forgotten how to simply… be worthy of it. How to exist without constantly justifying my right to do so.”
Diana felt something shift in her chest. She was filled with an understanding that went deeper than any sympathy. She thought of her own struggles with confidence, her own battles against the voice that regularly whispered she wasn’t good enough and wasn’t worthy of attention or love or respect.
“And you think having a perfect Duchess will somehow silence those voices?”
“I think havin’ a Duchess who clearly belongs in their world might make them question whether I do too.”
“Oh, Your Grace,” Diana said tenderly. “What if I don’t belong in their world either? What if I’m just as much of an outsider as you are but I’m just better at hiding it?”
Finn’s eyes widened slightly, as though the possibility hadn’t occurred to him.
“What if,” Diana continued, “instead of trying to prove we belong separately, we simply… belonged together? Could that be enough?”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The morning light had shifted, casting new shadows across the study floor, and Diana could hear the distant sounds of servants moving through the castle corridors.
“Ye make it sound so simple,” Finn said finally.
“Maybe it is simple. Could it be perhaps we’ve been making it complicated because we are both so utterly terrified of just… not being enough?”
“And if you’re wrong? What if we are both pretenders who’ve somehow convinced ourselves we deserve more than we do?”
Diana smiled sweetly. “Then we’ll be pretenders together. And perhaps, that’s its own kind of belonging.”
Finn stared at her for another long moment, something shifting in his expression. “Ye’re no’ what I expected at all, ye know.”
“No?”
“I expected a bride who would make me feel more legitimate. Someone whose obvious suitability would reflect well on my judgement. Instead…” He paused, as though searching for the right words.
“Instead?” she pressed gently.
“Instead, it seems I’ve found someone who makes me question everythin’ I thought I knew about myself. Someone who sees straight through every defense I’ve spent years perfectin’.” His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “Someone who makes me want to be worthy of more than just tolerance.”
The admission swirled around them, weighted with possibility. Diana felt something flutter in her chest, something that had nothing to do with duty or social expectations and everything to do with the man standing before her – her husband, stripped of pretense and artifice.
“The lessons,” she said quietly, “they’re not really about society at all, are they?”
“No,” Finn admitted. “They’re about survival. About findin’ a way to exist in a world that’s never quite made space for either of us.”
“And perhaps,” Diana said, moving closer to him, “they’re about something more than that too.”
“Perhaps,” he agreed, his gaze never leaving her face.
“Ye’re my anchor,” Finn had said. And standing there in the morning light, Diana began to understand that perhaps she didn’t mind the weight of that responsibility after all.
Perhaps being someone’s anchor wasn’t about carrying their burdens. Perhaps it was about helping them discover they were strong enough to carry their own.