Page 12 of Duke of the Sun (Regency Sky #1)

CHAPTER 11

T he music swelled as soon as it began. Couples across the ballroom floor swayed and leapt, carried by their partners and full of wide smiles. Michael could not remember the last time he danced at a ball. Further than that, he couldn’t recall the most recent ball he willingly attended. He doubted he even had an answer for that.

Perhaps it was his lack of experience that drove him wild with nerves. It couldn’t have been Cordelia, who was merely a foot away from his chest. It couldn’t have been the way her hand felt within his own, how he somehow managed to feel the warmth of her skin through her thin, silk gloves. It couldn’t have been the curious smile that crept along her tinted lips, an eagerness to remove the walls Michael so comfortably held up all his life.

Michael twirled her, and the shimmering green in her gown sent a wave of color across the floor. He was mesmerized.

“You have a way with words,” he blurted, eager to have something more than merely air between them.

Cordelia raised a slender brow. “What sort of way?”

“Quite like a storyteller,” he replied. “Did you fancy writing in your youth?”

“Heavens no.”

Michael huffed. “I did not realize writing was such an ill-suited pastime for a Lady like yourself.”

“First off,” Cordelia snapped, the corner of her lip perking up in a mischievous manner, “I do not recall ever calling myself a Lady .”

“Is that not what you are?”

“In the barest sense of the word,” she replied, her chin raised. “But in the manner of a Lady in London’s Ton, I am afraid not!”

Michael shook his head. “I cannot say I’m surprised,” he muttered. “What else, then, must you argue with me about?”

She laughed, the sound finding a place alongside the music. “Secondly,” she continued, “I have always had a creative mind, but it was never with words. You have seen my paintings, haven’t you?”

“Here and there,” Michael replied, though he could possibly explain one of her older paintings from memory alone. A few were left around the Manor, neither hung on the walls or in a case. It was as if she painted wherever she went, leaving a canvas behind to let the world know she visited there, once. It was a peculiar habit, but it was one he found himself rather enjoying rather than dreading.

Cordelia smiled. “And what do you think of them?”

“They are fine.”

The smile faded quickly. “ Fine ?” she repeated. “Only fine ?”

Michael laughed. “I did not take you to be someone so proud.”

She stared up at him in silence for a moment. Her eyes drifted down, clinging onto his lips before the laugh was soundly replaced with a straight line. Cordelia cleared her throat, turning her head to the opposite side as they continued on dancing.

“I can only assume you are teasing me,” she murmured.

Michael sighed. “I am.”

“I did not take you to be someone who teases,” Cordelia mocked, raising a proud brow. “Not even someone who dared to laugh.”

Michael glanced at her. A part of him wanted to be offended, to ridicule her for assuming or acting as if she knew him well enough to say it. But, Michael was not raised to be a fool, and knew exactly the legitimacy behind her mocking words. Even if she only teased as much as he did, Michael quickly knew that he no longer acted like the man the Ton expected. At least, not with Cordelia.

The realization was oddly frightening.

“What were those two Lady’s names?” Michael asked instead, quickly changing the subject.

Cordelia looked over to where the family stood and watched. “Loretta and Arietta,” she replied. “Sweet mouses, if not too curious for their own good.”

“They seemed rather convinced.”

She shrugged, though a reddish tint began to stain her cheeks. “It was easier to assume what they wanted to hear,” she explained. “I thought it to be a daunting task, but it went swimmingly enough.”

“Yes,” Michael replied, unable to stop the smirk from curling around his lip, “The rumors will change into how long we decided to stay tangled up in our love, outside of the city’s constraints.”

Cordelia blushed harder. “The girls made that suggestion themselves!”

“I do not recall hearing you deny it.”

“Well, I -”

“While I believe you pushed it gravely to the limits of exaggeration,” Michael interjected, “It was impressively done in the moment. I doubt you planned the story beforehand.”

“Devils, no,” she whispered.

“Language, my love.”

Cordelia’s eyes snapped up.

Still wearing a teasing smile, Michael allowed himself to laugh again. “Not once did I suspect the Ton to be so gullible,” he said. “Perhaps it is good to know, for my own future endeavors.”

Cordelia, much to his surprise, still remained silent. She merely stared, her eyes widening the longer they stayed stuck on him. Slowly, her lips parted before closing again. The words she wanted to stay seemed to hang in the air between them, and Michael never realized how desperate he was to know what they were until that very moment.

“Not a sound out of you,” he murmured. “How peculiar.”

Cordelia blinked a few times, coming out of her reverie. “I-I apologize.”

“Why do you watch me in such a way?”

“In what way?”

“I am not sure I can describe it,” Michael said. “As if you see something for the first time. It is peculiar.”

Cordelia lightly laughed. “I suppose that is exactly right.”

“How so?”

A feverish burn swallowed up her face once more. She watched him through her lashes, pressing her lips tightly together before gathering enough strength and confidence to speak her truth. “You have a charming smile,” she said in a quiet voice. “I cannot recall having the opportunity to see it before.”

Michael gulped loudly. There was a sudden dryness in his throat. He looked away, the space between them feeling like a tangible pressure, a distance he ached to be rid of. Michael shook his head. You are utterly ridiculous. To be so emotional, so windblown by her with only a few words, was the most childish thing he had done in a long time. If his father was still around - well, Michael knew exactly what would be done if the old Duke still walked that earth.

“Have I offended you?” Cordelia asked in a small voice.

Michael frowned. “No,” he blurted, unable to stop himself from snapping out. “Quite the opposite.”

Silence took over them as the music continued on. Dancers positioned all around them never once paid them any mind, too caught up in the orchestra to glance their way. Michael barely heard the music, he realized, barely realized the musicians were still carrying on. Everything else within the ball room quickly faded away, perhaps right when the dancing began. All Michael could focus on was the woman in front of him, and how her simple words managed to pull him into a pensive reverie he had no intention of escaping.

Cordelia breathed in and out slowly, methodically. Her eyes fluttered shut before she nodded to herself.

She acts as if she tries to gather strength, Michael thought to himself. He watched her with a furrowed brow, desperate to know what it was that lied within her.

“I saw you,” she whispered.

Michael frowned. “You see me now, don’t you?”

“No, no,” she murmured. “I meant the day in the bathroom. I saw you. Your -” Cordelia’s voice lowered, so quiet he barely caught it, “Your scars.”

A chill rippled down Michael’s spine. Instinctively, he wanted to release his hold on her, to reach for his back and run a hand along the grooves and lacerations that permanently scored his skin. It was a feverish need, one that grew outlandishly stronger over the past few years. Doctors claimed it to be a sense of trauma. Once the scars were mentioned, Michael was overcome with the overwhelming need to scratch them, to let himself know that they were, in fact, still there.

Michael bit down harshly on his tongue to keep himself poised in front of his wife. “What of it?” he snapped, the words coming out harsher than he meant them to.

Cordelia flinched almost immediately, her face growing crestfallen. “My apologies, your Grace,” she said. “I overstepped.”

He watched her.

“Please, I -” she froze again and squeezed her eyes shut. “Have I ruined it all?”

“Ruined what?”

She sighed. “The moment, the dance. Your smile. Have I lost it already?”

Michael felt far more pained by her words than he ever wished to be. The girl who opposed him so effortlessly, who led to countless rumors being whispered about his name, who recklessly spent his money and reworked the entire estate to look nothing like what he remembered, was so easily saddened by something entirely out of her hands. Michael sighed, the guilt resting on his chest heavily. What once caused him pain in the past no longer lingered on his shoulders, and should not burden her all the same.

“What do you know of the late Duke of Solshire?” Michael asked.

Cordelia blinked. “The same as the rest of the Ton,” she murmured. “A rich man, a businessman. My father regarded him highly, from what I remember. But nothing more than that.”

“My father was nothing like the man the Ton held in high regards,” he continued. “I would never deny or disrespect the legacy my father left for me, the accomplishments he made in society, the things he did to secure his fortune. He was someone most young gentlemen strived to become.”

She watched him with wide eyes, holding on to every word.

“But he had his own ways of creating a strong man.”

“What ways?”

Michael hesitated. The scars along his back seemed to ache and burn, suddenly, as if his father lurked directly behind him. He held back the tremor that threatened to ripple through his body.

“Michael,” Cordelia suddenly said, his name sounding different on her lips than on anyone else’s.

He met her stare. It was hard to believe that the woman he once barely knew, who he married on the same day they first met, held such great power over him. Michael remembered being agonized over the rumors, over everything he heard going on at the estate. Every single thing he once felt burdened with no longer existed. The woman before him was someone else entirely, a creature he had never experienced before within the Ton.

“You do not have to explain it,” she whispered. “But if you chose to, I can carry your burden as if it were my own.”

Michael’s brow shot up. “Why on earth would you do such a thing?”

“We are married, aren’t we?”

He watched her with widening eyes. A sweet smile passed across her face, one that was gentle and genuine. Suddenly, all at once, Michael felt incredibly at ease. It was an odd feeling that did not sit well with him, at first.

“My father believed that the key to making a perfect Duke was through violent punishment,” he explained. “Perhaps it had been done to him when he was a child. Nevertheless, he knew his intentions well. With every crack, he said: ‘Perfection can only be achieved through the abandonment of flaws.’”

Cordelia gulped. “Crack?”

“The whip.”

“W-Whip,” Cordelia repeated, her face growing flushed and pale. “A whip ?”

“Cordelia -”

Her hands grew tight on his own. “I-I can hardly understand,” she breathed. “H-How can that have happened to you? How are you well? We should -”

“Cordelia,” Michael said again, his voice firmer that time.

She pressed her lips together.

“While I admire your sudden urgency towards the matter,” he began, keeping his voice even, “it happened long ago. Whatever pain inflicted me then no longer burdens me. Do you understand?”

Cordelia shook her head. At least she is honest.

“Many years have passed since those days,” he said. “I am not in pain. I do not crave answers for my father’s behavior, I do not simmer at the sound of his name, I do not harbor a profound hatred.” Michael, much to his surprise, found himself smiling once more, the feeling quite odd and misplaced on him. “I am well, though your adamant displeasure is a welcomed thing I have not known for quite some time.”

Her cheeks grew red. “I am surprised.”

“What about?”

“Only a patient and gracious man could overlook those things, to find a certain light throughout it all,” she murmured.

Michael swallowed, unable to pull his gaze away from her own. “I would not go so far as to assume those things about me.”

“Why not?” she asked, her voice small. “It is what I see.”

“It is not what I know.”

“Perhaps all you needed was an outsider to convince you of otherwise.”

Michael smirked. “Who said I had already been so easily convinced?”

She tilted her head, the smile beaming across her face. “You did not have to.”

“There goes that confidence again,” Michael mused with a raised brow.

As the music carried on, coming to a great swell before reaching the end, Michael found himself holding onto Cordelia tighter than he ever planned to. She was directly in front of him, her face tilted upwards to watch him. The feeling of her stare was one he supposed he might never grow used to.

“You know,” Cordelia suddenly said, “I do not believe you have ever told me of your mother.”

Michael went tense before she ever finished saying the word. His teeth clenched immediately, the muscles within his face flexing and becoming rigid. He kept his head raised, looking over Cordelia and upon the crowd.

“No,” he said through clenched teeth. “I have not.”

Cordelia watched him. If she noticed the change in his appearance, she steered clear of pointing it out. “Do not feel obliged to -”

“I do not.”

She narrowed her eyes, but did not grow upset. “I understand,” she whispered. “I am not a teacup susceptible to shattering from a slightly tightened grasp, Michael. I hope you can understand what I mean by such a thing.”

Michael glanced at her, but she no longer watched him as closely as she did before.

The orchestra soon came to a stop, the other pairs of dancing couples pulling away to bow respectfully and clap towards the musicians. Michael felt as though he was no longer in his body, having no control as he pulled away from Cordelia, a sudden chill passing over him as they stepped apart.

The ball was a greater success than either of them planned it to be. Not only did the Ton see Michael and his Duchess in a new light, but they were eager for more, desperate to have some sort of correspondence with the popular couple of Solshire. While Michael never intended to oblige in the Ton, he was surprised that the exact thing he returned to do had been so easily completed.

Now, as he and Cordelia left the Manor behind, climbing into their carriage, there was a peculiar thought resting poignantly on Michael’s mind.

If everything he sought to do had been completed, what was there left to do?

Within the dark carriage compartment, the night time gave off a deep chill. The ride back to Solshire was not painfully long, but long enough to realize it. Across from where Michael sat, Cordelia had her coat wrapped over her shoulders and still shivered. An unavoidable draft slipped through the carriage.

Michael scooted over. “Move over here,” he said.

“What?”

“It is warmer.”

“I never said I was cold.”

Michael raised a brow. “Don’t be proud. You’ll be warmer over here.”

She mumbled something to herself before moving across the compartment, taking a seat beside Michael. The carriage was not an inherently large one, and their sides were touching the moment she took her seat. Nevertheless, the closeness allowed them to soak up each other's warmth, and soon enough, Cordelia no longer shivered or rattled her teeth.

Michael, insistent on ignoring how her natural perfume wafted over him in an unavoidably pleasant way, glanced towards the window, though the darkness shrouded him from seeing a thing outside. After a few more minutes, and the pleasant rocking of the carriage, Cordelia’s breaths came out long and deep. Michael glanced over his shoulder to see her drifting into a woozy sleep.

He sighed.

Movement came from his side and a heavy pressure rested on his shoulder. Michael glanced over, his eyes widening in shock. Cordelia moved around as sleep overtook her, finding a comfortable spot on his shoulder to doze off on. She nestled her head over his coat, her hands folded over her lap. She was fast asleep within a minute, not giving him a mere second to think before claiming the spot as her own.

Michael almost shifted, eager to move her off of him as soon as he could.

But something stopped him.

He paused instead, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She was incredibly peaceful, her chest rising and falling rhythmically. Not even the bouncing carriage could shake her awake. Michael reached, pushing a curly strand of hair out of her face and behind her ear. Cordelia stirred briefly before letting out a sigh.

This time, he would let her sleep.

Looking away, Michael let his eyes close.

What am I doing?