Page 28 of His Scottish Duchess (The Dukes of Sin #5)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“ B ut Sampson… I wasn’t saying it just to be kind.”

Catherine’s voice trembled, a desperate plea against the wall he had so suddenly erected between them. She reached for his hand, her fingers closing around his cold ones, trying to anchor him to her, to the intimacy they had just shared, to the fragile hope that had begun to blossom in her heart.

“You are deserving of kindness though—always. From what you have told me, you were hardly ever given that as a child. And I have no reason to withhold such kindness from you when I care for you so deeply.” She paused, inhaling deeply. “You are not a murderer. It was an accident. You said so yourself.”

Sampson pulled his hand away, his movements stiff and jerky. He kept refusing to meet her gaze, preferring to keep his eyes fixed on the floor as if the rough wooden planks held the answers to the torment that consumed him.

“Don’t,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion in a way that devastated her. “Don’t offer me your pity, Catherine. I don’t need it.”

Seeing him recoil from her and regard her so coldly, when not long ago he had embraced her and spoken to her so tenderly, sent a sharp pain through her heart.

She understood why he was withdrawing from her, why he was so intent on running away, and she wanted to give him the space he needed. But the greedy part of her that craved him so deeply, that yearned for him so desperately, couldn’t afford to be apart from him.

She wouldn’t let him go. Not without a fight.

“It’s not pity, Sampson,” she insisted, her voice rising with a desperate urgency. She stepped closer, her hand reaching out to touch his cheek, her fingers trembling against his rough skin. “It’s… it’s understanding. And… and it’s love.”

The word hung in the air between them, a fragile declaration offered into the darkness of his pain.

Sampson flinched at her touch, turning his face away as if her hand had burned him. His reaction was like a punch to her gut.

He did not believe her? But why?

“Love?” he scoffed, the sound hollow and devoid of any warmth. “Don’t be foolish, Catherine. You barely know me. You feel sympathy, perhaps a sense of obligation. But love? Don’t mistake kindness for something it is not. Do not try to sympathize when it is clear you do not understand what I have just told you. You cannot love me. No one can. Not after what I did.”

His words were like shards of ice, piercing the warmth that had kept her heart beating. Tears pricked her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She wouldn’t let him push her away. Not now, not when he needed her the most, even though he couldn’t see it.

“I do love you, Sampson,” she insisted, her voice trembling but firm. “Your past doesn’t change that. It hurts me to see the pain you have carried, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you. We can overcome this. I want to overcome this with you.”

He finally looked at her, his blue eyes filled with stark disbelief.

“You don’t mean that,” he said, his voice low and resigned. “Not really. You say it out of kindness—out of some misguided sense of duty.” He shook his head, a bitter laugh escaping his lips. “Even if you cannot understand the rest of what I have told you tonight, understand this—I don’t need your pity, Catherine.”

He turned away, his movements abrupt and stiff. He strode around the room, picking up his clothes and putting them on, before making his way to where his coat lay discarded on a chair. He snatched it up and shrugged it on with a jerky, agitated motion.

“S-Sampson? Sampson, what are you doing? Sampson, please—please. Please let us just—let us talk about this. Sampson, I beg of you. If you would just let me explain,” Catherine tried, desperate and devastated.

But he wouldn’t meet her gaze again, his focus solely on escaping from the room. From her.

“I need a drink,” he muttered, the words barely audible before he turned and walked out of the room, the door clicking shut behind him, leaving her standing alone in the cold silence, her heart shattered into a million pieces.

The shock of his sudden departure kept her rooted to the spot for a long moment. She stood there, unmoving, his harsh words ringing in her ears. The intimacy they had shared, the tentative hope for a future together, all seemed to have evaporated, leaving behind only a cold, empty void.

Slowly, the numbness began to give way to a crushing wave of heartbreak. Tears streamed down her face silently as she grieved the loss of a life she nearly had. She had offered him her love, her understanding, and he had thrown it back in her face.

The pain was a physical ache in her chest, a suffocating weight that made it difficult to breathe.

After a while, the overwhelming need to escape the stifling confines of the room took hold. With trembling hands, she began to pack her belongings, her movements mechanical, her mind reeling.

She couldn’t stay here, not without him, not with the raw pain of his rejection still hanging in the air. She needed solace, comfort, and the familiar embrace of her family.

“I cannot—I cannot stay here alone,” she whispered, before a sob tore from her throat. “I’m sorry, Sampson. I truly am.”

And then she left the room.

The journey back to Spranklin Manor was a blur of tears and sniffles. Catherine tried to hold herself together, to maintain some semblance of composure for the sake of the inn’s staff and the carriage driver, but the fear that gnawed at her was relentless.

Had she lost him? Had his devastating confession driven such a wedge between them that they could never find their way back to each other?

It was unfair. Unfair that after all of the uncertainties at the beginning of their marriage, and just as things had gotten good, his past would come to rip them apart.

Just as she had acknowledged her feelings for him and realized he might feel the same.

The thought was a terrifying weight in her chest. She felt scared and utterly alone, the cruel irony of desperately wanting the one man who seemed determined to run from her tearing at her soul.

It was late when the carriage finally rumbled to a stop outside Spranklin Manor. The house was quiet, with most of the lights extinguished, and her family was not expecting her return. She paid the driver with trembling hands and stumbled up the familiar steps, her heart pounding with a mixture of hope and dread.

What would she say? What could she say? How on earth would she explain what transpired and what it meant?

A new wave of horror washed over her suddenly. What if Sampson decided she was more trouble than she was worth and decided to divorce her and reinstate the debt her father owed him?

No, Sampson wouldn’t do that.

Wouldn’t he? Did she even know him anymore?

The door was opened by a startled Graham, his eyes widening in surprise and then narrowing with concern as he took in her tear-streaked face.

“Catherine? What in God’s name…?”

The carefully constructed dam of her composure that she had tried to hold together during the last hour of the carriage ride finally broke. The moment she saw her brother’s familiar face, the bubble of her emotions burst, and she crumbled, a sob escaping her lips that quickly escalated into uncontrollable tears.

Her parents, alerted by Graham’s startled exclamation, rushed to the door, their faces etched with worry as they saw their distraught daughter. Her father’s strong arms enveloped her in a comforting embrace, but it was her mother who gently guided her into the familiar warmth of the parlor, stroking her hair with a soothing hand and murmuring soft words of comfort.

“Hush now, my wee hen,” Mary crooned, her voice thick with concern. “What’s happened, my darlin’? Where is yer husband?”

At the mention of Sampson, Catherine cried even harder, her heart calling out for her beloved, knowing she would get no response.

“Margaret, fetch a cup of tea and a blanket for yer sister. She needs to warm up and get some liquid into her. Poor thing’s goin’ to cry herself dry at this rate.”

All the while she wept, her family stayed close by, exchanging looks of concern while trying to soothe her. Their loving presence was reassuring, but Catherine could hardly feel much other than the heartbreak that permeated every inch of being.

The pain was too deep, too great a burden to cast away so easily.

It took a long while for her sobs to subside enough for her to speak. By then, her mother had chased the men off to bed, Graham taking Isobel to the nursery himself, leaving just Mary and Margaret.

“Take yer time, dear sister,” Margaret said gently, running a brush through Catherine’s hair like she used to whenever she was upset as a child. “Whatever it is, we will be here with ye to figure it out.”

Catherine inhaled deeply and tried to think. She couldn’t bring herself to relay Sampson’s horrific confession. But she desperately needed to speak about what had happened between them, dying from the grief festering within her. So, she carefully crafted a narrative, highlighting his pain and guilt.

“He—he lost someone dear to him, Mama,” she choked out, the lie a bitter taste on her tongue she did not particularly care for. “A long time ago. And he—he blames himself. Terribly. He believes—he believes he is unworthy of love. Of having a family.”

She paused as she struggled to articulate the depth of his despair, the boundary he had erected between them.

“And… and he doubts my feelings for him. Feelings—feelings I didn’t even know I was capable of.”

Catherine had received numerous proposals before she had gotten betrothed to Sampson. None of her suitors had seemed manly enough, and the rest had thought her too unruly to make a suitable wife. And as she had looked at the suitors who had asked for her hand, she had not felt the slightest stir in her heart.

After sitting across from so many men, and the numbness in her chest persisted, she had grown to believe that perhaps she wasn’t meant to love. But all that had changed with Sampson.

She learned to be greedy, to be selfish. To be stubborn and persistent. To yearn, to dream, to want. All because of him.

“I’ve never thought I would love anyone. But oh, how I love him. I love him so much, but he doesn’t feel the same.”

Her mother listened patiently, still gently stroking her hair.

When Catherine finally fell silent, exhausted and heartbroken, Mary spoke, her voice soft but filled with a quiet wisdom.

“It’s a difficult thing, my bairn,” she said, her accent thick with empathy, “to make a man do anything he’s truly set against. And if his heart doesnae truly belong to ye, then there’s hardly anything anyone can do to change that fact, nay matter how much ye might wish it.”

Oh. That was true. How foolish she had been.

Catherine had not let herself consider such a possibility, but on the off chance that her mother was right and Sampson truly did not love her, there was nothing she could do.

As she felt herself sinking further into the pit of despair, her mother’s grip on her hand tightened, her gaze holding a glimmer of unwavering belief.

“But his heart has belonged to ye for a while now, mo ghràidh ,” Mary continued. “He does love ye, Catherine. I saw it in his eyes from the very first moment I laid mine on him. Perhaps he’s just nae aware of the depth of his feelings yet.

“If yers is a love that’s meant to prevail, then all we must do now is give him the time and the space to realize where his heart truly lies. And when he does, my darling, he will return to ye. Ye ken what they say about setting the things ye love free and what would happen if they rightly belong to ye.”

Catherine clung to her mother’s words, a fragile seed of hope planted in the barren landscape of her despair. She was afraid to hope, terrified of further disappointment and devastation, but she couldn’t bring herself to completely give up on the man she loved.

She did not want to. Not when she might be the only one who knew the full extent of his pain and therefore the one person who could soothe him.

Later, when they left her to rest in her childhood bed, she closed her eyes and prayed for his safety and for the truth of her love to somehow find its way back to him.

She knew one thing with unwavering certainty—she had never lied about her feelings. Her love for Sampson was real, and hopefully, in time, he would come to realize as much.

“Please be safe, my love,” she muttered, with her eyes squeezed shut. “Until we make our way back to each other.”