Page 25 of Duke of the Sun (Regency Sky #1)

CHAPTER 24

C rash!

Thunder rocked through the countryside as Michael’s steed clobbered down the dirt roads towards Solshire. The streaming rain blurred his vision, but didn’t dare stop him in his tracks. The loose clothes he wore for his boxing session stuck to his skin, and the coat he wore flew out behind him, catching the stream of wind. Thunder slammed into the earth another time, jolting Michael as he gripped onto the reins tighter.

All he could imagine was seeing Cordelia’s nimble body floating in the lake. Swimming in the inky darkness before haunting tendrils wrapped around her ankles to slowly pull her into its mysteries. Michael saw her pale white hands erecting out from between the waves every time he closed his eyes, using it as fuel to push him even faster. Though he never considered himself to be a devoutly religious man, Michael couldn’t stop the prayers from echoing in the back of his mind. He prayed for retribution, to be forgiven. He prayed for Cordelia’s safety. He prayed for her life.

Solshire appeared within the midst of the dreadful storm. In the distance, as he flew over a hill, the orangery caught Michael’s eye, looking like a sanctuary. He went to the front stairs of the estate, leaping off his horse and throwing the reins over the saddle. Perhaps the horse would make its way back to the stables, but he hardly cared. All that mattered was reaching Cordelia.

Michael shot up the front steps of Solshire, all the way to the front doors. Dripping with rainwater, he ripped the doors open, and stepped within the drafty and dark halls. There wasn’t a servant or member of staff in sight, just as he expected. As his clothes made a mess on the floor, Michael ran through the halls and up another grand staircase, his heart hammering like a drum the closer he came to Cordelia’s chambers.

The panic that settled within his chest was all too familiar. He inched closer to the bedroom door, which was cracked slightly, his hand already outstretched. His fingers twitched and quivered, a tremble passing through his entire body. A question, one that he hated to even consider, slipped through his mind, growing louder and louder as his hand reached for the doorknob.

What if she perishes? What then?

Michael shook his head till he felt as though everything within him was rattling. The door swung open with a gentle push. He stepped over the threshold, and was met with a great warmth. A fire roasted in the furnace, the windows sealed shut and the curtains drawn. Every spare pillow and blanket had been thrown onto the bed, covering an incredibly pale figure with thick sheets. Michael crept closer.

Michael never considered Cordelia to have ever been petite or small, but within the fluffed sheets and pillows, she looked no bigger than his finger. Chestnut colored hair sprawled out beneath her, looking much longer than he remembered. The freckles that once danced across her tanned skin stood out like stars across the bridge of her nose, the deep color of her skin no longer as it should be. Her left leg poked out from beneath the covers, a few extra pillows placed beneath it to prop it up. Michael eyed the bandages and felt his heart sink to the floor beneath his feet.

Michael collapsed to his knees at her bedside.

Everything felt all too familiar. Suddenly, he lost himself, grasping at the fringes of his life but hardly able to see where he really stood. He looked upon Cordelia and he also saw his mother, though her fate was not as forgiving. He reached, taking a hold of her small hand within his own. The scars along his palms rubbed against her soft and gentle skin, his calluses rubbing against her smoothness. He stared and watched his own hands tremble, his composure left out within the raging storm.

“Forgive me,” he murmured, barely hearing himself over the raging thoughts in his head.

Somehow, it always came back to that. He would never be able to leave the trauma and nightmare that held onto him. Fate had a way of reminding him of all the things that once plagued him, taking the one beautiful thing he had and thrusting it towards the same mistake. In the end, everything he ever loved went out to that lake, and they never returned the same.

His hands shook more as his vision muddled, unsure of whether or not he knelt at his mother’s coffin or his wife’s bedside. Michael lowered himself, his lips falling upon Cordelia’s icy cold hand. He kissed her knuckles, the tips of her fingers, the rough patch on her palm. He kissed her hand and whispered against her skin, desperate for his words to reach her in some shape or form.

“Forgive me,” he whispered again. “I do not deserve it, but forgive me.”

Michael’s shoulders shook as he lowered himself, unable to lift his face to see the horror in front of him. He gripped onto her hand as tightly as he could, as if that would stop the cold from claiming her.

“Michael?”

He shook his head, his eyes hot and burning from the despair that was beginning to grab a hold of him. Who was it that called out for him? The voice rang familiar, but it was too distant to tell.

“Michael.”

Perhaps it was his mother, coming to claim another woman from his life.

“ Michael! ”

Perhaps it was his regrets and mistakes, all ready to grab a hold of him and to never let go. To plague him for as long as he lived. He remembered the portrait Cordelia drew of him, the likeliness of her work without ever needing him to pose for her. How had he not realized the power and love behind something like that? Why did he leave after Mrs. Bellflower handed that to him?

Why did he leave Cordelia to the same fate his father subjected his mother to?

“Michael,” the voice came again, “Look at me.”

The voice strangely sounded like Cordelia, but he knew that wasn’t possible. He pressed his face into her hand, desperate to feel her touch though he knew it would never be the same. A shudder ran through his body. It would never be the same again.

Michael was too far within his memories to notice how Cordelia was leaning forward in her bed, reaching with her other arm to wrap herself around him. Her breath, steady and even, trickled down his shoulder, brushing the hair on his neck. Despite how drenched he was from the rain, the side of Cordelia’s face pressed against his own, her warm cheek almost jolting him backwards.

She was warm .

“Michael,” Cordelia murmured into his ear. “Michael, open your eyes.”

He blinked a few times before he realized what was happening. The room came rushing back to him, the roasting fire on one end already in the process of drying his clothes. Cordelia stretched across him, holding her arms around his neck and squeezing as hard as her slender frame allowed her to. Even with the wound at her leg, even though the cold threatened to nip at her. She came for him all the same, trying to bring him back to the reality he stepped away from. Michael inhaled deeply, recognizing her citrusy scent, and wrapped his arms around her torso.

“My Cordelia.” The words came out before he could even think about them.

They remained like that for a few moments, merely holding one another. The shakes threatened to come back to Michael every now and then, but Cordelia merely tightened her embrace on him, as if she was trying to hold all of his fractured pieces together. All the words they never said hung in the air above their heads, and Michael was desperate to let them out. Even if Cordelia wished for him to leave in the end, too betrayed by how he had left a second time, Michael would still say what he needed to say, and he would leave her all the same.

Michael pulled himself out from her tight grasp, holding her upper arms and guiding her back towards the bed, before taking a seat beside her. He reached to tuck a thick strand of brown hair behind her ear. Cordelia, much to his surprise, leaned into his feather-like touch.

“You came back,” she whispered.

Michael sighed. “I came back.”

“Why?”

“I-I thought you were,” he began, the panic quickly returning to him. He looked up at her window, where she could see the lake. He fisted the sheets, trying to stop himself from trembling like a madman but hardly able to control it. “I thought that the lake had claimed you. And I cannot - I cannot - I cannot lose you.”

Cordelia’s eyes widened.

“I love you,” he whispered, staring into her sharp green eyes. “I love you, and I will drain the lake if that would make you happy. I love you, and I will fly into an untamable rage if I were ever to lose you.” Michael raised her hand to his lips, merely brushing the skin against him, desperate for her contact. “Anything you ask, anything you wish, I will deliver, as long as you never leave me, Cordelia.”

Her eyes searched his face quietly for a moment, her expression warping into something of concern. “Michael,” she finally said, a small smile tugging at her lips, “You need not do grand things to have me.” Cordelia’s smile broadened. “I love you. I loved you before you left. I still love you now.”

Michael shuddered again, the words falling over him like the torrential rain outside her window. He leaned forward, his forehead falling against her arm. He did not feel close enough, still wrangling with the idea that she did not survive the lake, that at any given point, she’d be whisked away from him without another word. He gripped onto her tightly, determined to keep her beside him.

“Michael,” she breathed, using her small hand to raise his face, “Why do you look so burdened? I am alright, I promise. It was a silly fall, with no one to blame other than myself. The doctor said my leg was fractured, and the cold air threatened to take me, but I am well.” Cordelia grasped at his face, forcing him to stare into her eyes. “I am well , Michael.”

“But you could have not been,” he murmured.

Cordelia’s head tilted. “Tell me what burdens you.”

“I cannot.”

“You can ,” she said. “Perhaps you were unable to in the past, but I am not your past, Michael.” She straightened to sit up on the bed, meeting his eyes and refusing to let them go. “I wish to be your future. And the only way forward, is to relinquish that which burdens you. Rest it upon my shoulders, so that I might carry it for you.”

Michael stared at her with wide eyes. Never had another person said such words to him, in a way that resonated deeply within his heart. There wasn’t any doubt behind her voice, no betraying emotions that meant she didn’t really wish to hear it. Cordelia wanted to know his truth, and he was beginning to feel as though he could release it.

“I feel as though that lake was meant to torment me all my life,” he finally murmured.

Cordelia sighed. “It is only a lake.”

“Perhaps,” he whispered, “But it has swallowed more than simply water.”

Her eyes narrowed as she watched him, entirely listening to what he had to say.

“It has always been known that my father, the old Duke, was a beast of a man,” he began to explain. “When the time came for him to take a wife, he found my mother, who wished for nothing - except for her freedom. The marriage between them was forced down her throat. The old Duke grew older, and he needed an heir from a young wife to continue his legacy. Courtship was out of his hands. And so, he took what he wanted, and got everything he needed.”

Michael gulped down his fears, and continued. “Not long after their marriage, my mother tried to escape from Solshire, only to find out that she was pregnant, and was too bound to my father to even consider leaving.”

“So she returned?”

He nodded. “Perhaps many people might have assumed her mind would have been changed the moment she gave birth,” Michael said. “Perhaps she even believed that herself, though it never truly came. My mother could hardly look at me, not without scowling and turning away angrily.”

Cordelia reached, taking one of his hands within both of hers.

“She tried to be the mother everyone expected to be,” Michael said. “Though she was never truly affectionate. And when the old Duke decided it was time to begin his… violence against me, to shape me into the man I was meant to be, my mother tried to stop it. She tried, and earned the whip herself.”

Cordelia gasped, one hand covering her mouth. “He hit her?”

“More than I probably know,” he replied. “In the end, her resentment no longer only rested within her husband, but was rather shared between him and I, as though we were both the causes of her entrapment in Solshire. Which,” Michael paused, the guilt already grabbing a hold of his neck, “I can hardly blame her for.”

“Being born is not your fault.” Cordelia’s gaze grew hardened. “You understand that, don’t you? The blame is meant for the old Duke.”

“There is only one of us alive, Cordelia, and I doubt one feels regret in the afterlife.”

Cordelia’s lips parted. Instead of saying anything else, she lifted Michael’s hands to her lips, pressing a gentle kiss against his knuckles, another along his creeping scars. She did it till he felt the courage to speak again.

“I was ten years old when it happened.”

Cordelia looked up. “When what happened, Michael?”

Michael could not recall the last time he even dared to speak the words aloud. They haunted his mind, without fail, always lingering within him even when he refused to think about it. Even his father refused to mention it, due to the distaste that surrounded it. Not a soul within London knew the truth behind her death, believing it to have been a dreadful accident that ended with a young life being stolen from a growing family. He could remember the funeral as if it happened yesterday: the opened mausoleum, the socialites from London flooding in and out of Solshire. He remembered their whispers and murmurs, the gossip already beginning, even before her body grew cold.

Michael trembled.

“Do not be afraid,” Cordelia whispered. “I will protect you from the pain that haunts you.”

And when he looked upon his wife, seeing the determination within her eyes, Michael knew that she believed every word she said. “My spitfire,” he murmured.

“I mean it.”

Michael gave her a small smile. “I know.” He drew in a long sigh, readying the words that felt like a curse to speak aloud. “My mother took her life. I found her. In the lake.”

Her eyes were the widest he had ever seen them. Cordelia gripped onto him tighter, her mouth opening and closing as she searched for the right words to say. Michael felt as though a cavity within him was being filled, the words said aloud finally pulling the despair out from within him. The only other person who knew the truth of his mother’s passing was Rhys, and he knew from how many years they spent alongside each other. To speak the words aloud to Cordelia felt like their marriage was becoming solidified, the bond between them finally snapping into something resilient, something strong. It would take far more than a simple few days apart to drive them away from each other.

When Michael looked back at his wife, tears streamed down her face.

“Cordelia,” he murmured, reaching to swipe the sadness away. “Do not weep.”

She fell into his chest, pressing her face against his clothes, despite how damp they still were from his ride. She burrowed herself within him, as if she wished to be united with his beating heart.

“No one deserves such a story to start their lives,” Cordelia finally whispered. “To be plagued with a burden that was never theirs to carry. What rested upon your mother’s shoulders was not meant for you, and yet, you still embraced it as your own. You never deserved such a thing. And neither did she.”

Michael gently pulled her off his chest to look into her eyes, one hand tucked beneath her chin. “Which is why I left you, Cordelia,” he whispered.

“What?”

“My father knew I would be plagued with my past, incapable of taking a wife after seeing what my mother was forced to do, how it brought her such an unbearable sadness.” Michael shook his head. “And so, he wrote it into his will, that I would be forced to marry in order to take a hold of everything that belonged to me.” Michael buried his shame deep within his chest, desperate to expel everything he wished to say. “On the night of our marriage, I saw you within your window, and I believed…I believed you intended to take your life. All because you married me.”

“Michael,” Cordelia whispered, her shoulders falling.

“And when I left days ago,” he continued, “I only wished to grant you freedom from a marriage that could plague you for the rest of your life. It was all I could give to you.”

“ Michael. ” She grabbed a hold of his face, her warm hands pressing into his cheeks. “I wish for nothing more than to be beside you for the rest of my days.”

He pressed his lips together. “You should think about it before -”

“I have thought for days,” she whispered. “I have imagined my life pressing forward on two different paths, and each time, I always chose the one that is by your side. You said before that you would give me anything I wished.”

Michael nodded fervently. “Anything.”

“I wish for you to say.”

For the first time in his life, Michael felt something other than darkness and despair fill the emptiness within his chest. Instead, there was a timid light in his heart, steadily growing stronger and stronger. The future he never believed he could have, the one that had been torn away from him, suddenly seemed to be within his reach. He flinched at it, unsure if he could trust that light that was beginning to grow. But then his eyes fell upon Cordelia once more, and the feeling of her hands over his cheeks became more and more apparent.

Michael leaned into her hand, no longer doubting if she’d be able and willing to hold him up. And when he spoke again, there was nothing but certainty in his voice, a strength he forgot he had within him all along.

“Then I shall stay.”

Cordelia smiled and closed the space between them, pressing a delicate and feather-like kiss to his lips. He let his eyes flutter shut, breathing her in and letting the hope cascade over him like a waterfall.

Life, he realized, had never tasted so sweet.