Page 37 of Duke of Storme (Braving the Elements #4)

“ S ince you seem utterly oblivious to it, it is time someone told you that you’ve been unnecessarily cruel, Your Grace.”

Diana’s voice cut through the silence of the unused parlor like a blade, steady and unwavering despite the way her heart hammered against her ribs.

She hadn’t knocked or waited for permission to enter.

After days of cold shoulders and calculated dismissals, she was finished with his moods dictating the terms of their marriage.

Finn sat hunched over a small writing desk near the window, candlelight flickering across his hands as he worked at something she couldn’t quite see. He didn’t look up at her words, didn’t even pause in whatever task absorbed his attention so completely.

“I’ve said nothin’ untrue,” he replied, his voice carrying that same flat indifference he’d perfected over the past week.

Diana stepped further into the room. Her slippers were silent against the dusty floor. The parlor had clearly been closed off for years – dust sheets covered most of the furniture, and the air held that particular stillness of spaces long forgotten.

“Then say it with kindness, if you must say it at all,” she said, her voice hardening despite her best efforts to remain calm.

Finally, Finn looked up, setting aside whatever instrument he’d been using. In the candlelight, his eyes appeared almost gray, and there was something in his expression that might have been exhaustion.

“I have nothin’ to apologize for, Duchess,” he said, each word precisely enunciated. “This is nothing but a marriage of convenience, and ye know it.”

Diana felt her breath catch as the careful composure she’d maintained for days finally began to crack.

“Convenience,” she echoed, the word tasting bitter on her tongue. “Then what excuse do you have for being so thoroughly unkind?”

Finn’s jaw tightened, but before he could respond, Diana’s gaze fell to the object beside him on the desk. A sketchbook lay open, and even in the uncertain light, she could make out familiar lines – the curve of a shoulder, the fall of hair across a neck.

“What is that?” she asked, though some part of her already knew.

Finn’s hand moved to cover the sketch, but it was too late. “‘Tis nothin’.”

Diana stepped closer, her pulse quickening as the image became clearer. “Nothing?”

The sketch was undeniably her – captured in profile, head tilted slightly as though listening to something just beyond the frame. The artist had rendered her with careful attention to detail, from the way her hair caught light to the thoughtful expression that seemed to be her natural state.

She’d never seen herself look so... alive.

“You said this marriage meant nothing,” Diana said quietly, unable to tear her gaze away from the drawing.

Finn’s hand stilled on the paper, and when he spoke, his voice had lost some of its careful control. “It does. But my bride is... very beautiful. And she inspired me to draw her.”

The admission was so soft, so unexpectedly personal, that Diana felt her cheeks flame with something that wasn’t entirely embarrassment. She’d never heard him speak with such gentleness or heard him acknowledge her as anything more than a social necessity.

Her lips parted, but no words came. What did one say to such a confession? How did one respond when the man who’d spent days treating her like a stranger admitted to finding her beautiful enough to immortalize in charcoal?

Finn looked up then, his gray-blue eyes meeting hers with an intensity that made her breath hitch. “Will ye sit?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. “‘Tis easier to draw when ye’re still.”

Diana hesitated. Every rational thought told her to leave, to retreat to the safety of her chambers and pretend this moment had never happened. But something in his expression – vulnerable in a way she’d never seen before – made her nod.

She lowered herself into the chair across from him, arranging her skirts with hands that trembled slightly. The parlor seemed to shrink around them as the candlelight created an intimate circle that shut out the rest of the world.

Finn picked up his charcoal with fingers that weren’t quite steady, acutely aware of Diana’s presence in a way that made concentration nearly impossible. What was he doing? This was madness – allowing her to see this side of him, this vulnerability he’d kept carefully hidden for years.

But when she’d discovered the sketch, when he’d seen the wonder in her eyes as she looked at his rendering of her... something had cracked open inside him that he couldn’t quite seal shut again.

“Just... be natural,” he said, though his own voice sounded anything but. “Don’t think about the drawin’.”

“That’s rather difficult when you’re staring at me so intently,” Diana replied, and there was something almost like amusement in her tone.

Finn felt heat creep up his neck. “I’m not starin’. I’m... observin’.”

“Ah, the artist’s defence,” Diana said with understanding. “I use the same excuse when I’m caught studying people too closely.”

Finn’s hand stilled on the charcoal. “Ye understand then.”

“Of course I do. Though, I confess, being the subject rather than the artist makes me feel rather… exposed.”

“Does it bother ye?”

“No,” Diana said softly. “It’s rather flattering to be seen as worthy of capturing.”

The statement hung between them, weighted with implications neither seemed brave enough to address directly.

Finn’s hand moved across the paper, capturing the curve of her cheek and the slight tilt of her head that was so distinctly hers.

Every line he drew was an act of devotion he couldn’t voice; every shadow a confession he was too afraid to speak aloud.

“Why do you draw?” Diana asked quietly, her voice carefully neutral.

Finn’s charcoal paused against the paper. It was a simple question, but the answer felt revealing. “I started as a child. My mother... I was told she used to encourage it.”

“Before she died.”

“Aye. It was... easier than talkin’, I suppose. Safer.”

“Safer how?”

Finn looked up from the sketch, meeting her steady gaze. “Words can be misunderstood. Used against ye. But a drawin’... it just is what it is.”

“And what is this?” Diana gestured toward the sketchbook. “What am I, in your drawing?”

The question was dangerous territory, but something in her expression – open, genuinely curious rather than accusatory – made him answer honestly.

“Beautiful,” he said simply. “Strong in ways ye probably don’t even realize. Real, in a world full of pretense.”

Diana’s breath caught audibly, and Finn felt his own chest tighten in response. He was saying too much, revealing too much, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

“Ye asked why I’ve been cruel,” he continued, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. “It’s because looking at ye, being near ye... it makes me want things I have no right to want.”

“What things?”

Finn’s hand stilled completely, the charcoal frozen against the paper. “To be the man I should have been all along, instead of the broken one I’ve always believed myself to be.”

The confession hung in the air between them like smoke, impossible to take back. Diana’s eyes had gone very wide, and Finn could see the rapid flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat.

“Oh…” she said softly, and the simple sound on her lips sent something hot spiraling through his chest.

“Don’t,” he said quickly, setting aside the charcoal and sketch. “Don’t say anythin’ kind. I don’t deserve it.”

“You don’t get to decide what you deserve,” Diana replied, her voice stronger now. “That’s not how this works.”

“Isn’t it? I’m the one who knows what I am, Diana. What I’ve done, what I’m capable of. Ye see what ye want to see, but the reality–”

“The reality is that you’re a man who draws portraits of his wife by candlelight because she inspires you.

A man who’s so afraid of not being good enough that he’d rather be cruel than risk being vulnerable.

” Diana leaned forward slightly, her brown eyes blazing with something that might have been fury or passion or both.

“The reality is that you’re human, Your Grace.

Flawed and frightened and trying to do right by people who depend on you. Just like everyone else.”

Finn stared at her, this woman who’d somehow seen through every defense he’d spent years constructing. “‘Tis not that simple.”

“No,” Diana agreed. “It’s not. But it’s also not as complicated as you’re making it.”

She rose from her chair slowly, smoothing her skirts with hands that had regained their steadiness. “Thank you. For the drawing. For... showing me how you see me.”

Finn watched her move toward the door with something desperate clawing at his chest. “Diana, wait.”

She paused, her hand on the door handle, but didn’t turn around.

“From now on,” he said, the words feeling like stones in his throat, “ye can call me Finn. No more ‘Your Grace’ between us. Just... Finn.”

Diana’s shoulders went very still, and Finn could see the way her grip tightened on the door handle.

“Are you certain?” She asked without turning around.

“Aye. I’m certain.”

She nodded once, a sharp movement that suggested she was fighting some internal battle. “Very well. Goodnight... Finn.”

And then she was gone, leaving him alone with his sketches and the echo of his name on her lips – a sound that felt like the first crack in armor he’d worn for so long he’d forgotten what it felt like to breathe without it.

Finn looked down at the drawing he’d been working on, seeing it with fresh eyes. He’d captured something in her expression, something open and trusting that made his chest ache with possibility and terror in equal measure.

He’d spent days trying to push her away because he was convinced that distance would protect them both from the territory their marriage had begun to traverse. But sitting here in the candlelit parlor, watching her face as he drew, listening to her voice his name with such careful tenderness...

Perhaps some risks were worth taking after all. Perhaps some doors were meant to be opened, even if what lay beyond them was uncertain.

Finn closed the sketchbook and gathered his materials, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something fundamental had shifted between them tonight. The formal barriers that had defined their relationship were cracking, and in their place was something infinitely more real.

Tomorrow would bring new challenges, new reasons to retreat behind the safety of titles and careful distance. But tonight, for the first time in longer than he could remember, Finn allowed himself to hope that perhaps he wasn’t as alone as he’d always believed.

The name she’d spoken echoed in his mind as he made his way through the darkened corridors: Finn . Not Your Grace, not Duke, just his name, spoken with a warmth that suggested she might actually want to know the man behind the title.

It was a small thing, barely a crack in the walls he’d built around himself. But as Finn finally reached his chambers, he couldn’t help but think that sometimes the smallest cracks were where the light got in.

And perhaps, just perhaps, he was finally ready to let some light into the darkness he’d inhabited for far too long.