Page 108 of Caught By the Ruthless Duke
Cressida’s throat constricted, tears stinging her eyes.
“I inherited the title that day. Seventeen years old, watching my father bleed out while my uncle lay dying fifty paces away, knowing that my silence had contributed to their deaths. Knowing that if I’d spoken sooner, been braver, been less selfish, they might both still be alive.” He drew a breath, and she heard the tremor in it. “My mother was shunned by society. She retreated to the dower house and died a few years later, though I suspect it was more grief and shame than any physical ailment. And I was left alone, convinced that caring about anyone meant risking the same devastation.”
He moved toward her then, sinking into the chair opposite hers, his elbows braced on his knees and his hands clasped between them.
The vulnerability of the posture struck her—this man who held himself so carefully, now folded in on himself as though theweight of seventeen years had finally become too much to bear standing.
“I’ve spent all this time building walls,” he continued, his gaze fixed on his hands. “Convincing myself that isolation was safety, that keeping everyone at a distance meant they couldn’t hurt me. And then you walked into my life—stubborn, impossible, refusing to accept my coldness as an immutable fact. You pushed at every boundary I’d constructed, demanded honesty when I’d given you none, offered trust when I’d done nothing to earn it.” He looked up, and the raw emotion in his eyes made her breath catch. “And it terrified me. Because wanting you felt like the most dangerous thing I’d ever done.”
“So you pushed me away,” she said softly, understanding crystallizing. “When I uncovered Charles’s portrait, when I got too close to what you’d hidden?—”
“I panicked.” His voice cracked. “I saw you reaching for what I’d kept buried, and all I could think was that letting you see that part of me meant giving you the power to destroy me the way my mother destroyed my father. The way Charles destroyed our entire family. I told myself I was protecting us both, but the truth is I was just a coward.”
Cressida wiped her cheeks, surprised to find them wet. “You’re not a coward.”
“I am.” He leaned forward, his expression intense. “I’ve been terrified of loving you because I convinced myself that love inevitably leads to betrayal, to manipulation, to the kind ofdevastation I witnessed at seventeen. But these past few days without you have shown me something I was too blind to see before: I’ve already destroyed us. Not through passion or trust or any of the things I was afraid of, but through my own refusal to let you in. Through my certainty that keeping you at arm’s length was somehow protecting both of us when all it did was ensure we’d both be miserable.”
The tears came faster now, emotion welling up from a deep place she’d tried to keep locked away since leaving Ashmere. Because this was what she’d wanted—this honesty, this vulnerability, this man finally trusting her enough to show her his wounds instead of hiding them behind aristocratic disdain.
But it also hurt, hearing the pain in his voice, seeing the guilt he’d carried for so long etched into every line of his face.
“You can’t continue punishing yourself for something that happened in the past,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “What your mother and Charles did—those were their choices, Theodore. Their failures. Not yours. You were seventeen years old, confronted with an impossible situation created by people who should have protected you instead of manipulating you.”
“I should have spoken sooner?—”
“And your father might have challenged Charles anyway. You told me he wasn’t a man who tolerated betrayal quietly.” She leaned forward, holding his gaze. “You cannot know what would have happened if you’d acted differently. And you have to stop blaming yourself for variables you could never control. You werea boy. A boy who loved his family and tried to protect them in the only way he knew how. That doesn’t make you guilty of their deaths. It makes you human.”
Theodore’s eyes closed, his jaw clenching as though he were fighting against years of accumulated certainty. When he opened them again, the devastation there nearly broke her.
“I don’t know how to let go of this,” he admitted, his voice rough. “It’s defined me for so long, I don’t know who I am without it.”
“Then we’ll figure it out together.” She squeezed his hands. “But you have to let me in, Theodore. Completely. No more walls, no more secrets kept because you’re afraid of what I’ll think or how I’ll use the information against you. If this marriage is going to work… if we’re going to have any chance at happiness, you have to trust me.”
“Idotrust you.” The words came quickly, desperately. “That’s what terrifies me. I trust you in a way I’ve never trusted anyone, and that makes me feel so exposed.”
“Good.” She surprised herself with the firmness of the word. “Because I’ve been exposed since the moment I married you. You’ve seen me at my worst, Theodore. You’ve watched me be petty and jealous and desperate for approval. You’ve held me while I cried over parents who’ve never truly cared about my happiness. You know every insecurity I possess, every fear that keeps me awake at night, and you stayed anyway.”
“Because I love you.”
The words hung in the air between them, simple and devastating. Cressida’s breath stuttered in her chest, tears still spilling.
“What?” The word was barely more than a whisper.
Theodore stood, drawing her up with him, his hands framing her face with a tenderness that made her ache. “I love you. I’ve loved you for weeks now, maybe longer, but I was too much of a fool to admit it even to myself. I convinced myself that what I felt was simply desire, or duty, or some manageable emotion that wouldn’t cost me everything. But these past few days have taught me the truth: loving you isn’t what will destroy me. Losing you is.”
“I pushed too hard,” she said through her tears, needing him to understand. “I should have given you more time, been more patient.”
“No.” His thumbs brushed away her tears with infinite care. “You were right to push. I needed someone who wouldn’t accept my walls as permanent, who would demand better from me than the bare minimum of civility. You’ve made me want to be more than the cold, bitter man I’d resigned myself to becoming. You’ve made me want to live instead of simply existing.”
Cressida’s hands came up to cover his, holding them against her face as though she could anchor herself in this moment. “I love you too. I’ve been falling in love with you since the night you found me in your study, though I was too afraid to admit it.”
The smile that transformed his face was worth every moment of hurt, every tear shed over the past few days.
He leaned down, his forehead resting against hers, his breath warm against her lips.
“Come home with me,” he murmured. “Let me spend the rest of my life proving that your trust wasn’t misplaced. Let me show you every day that I’m capable of being the husband you deserve.”
“Yes.” The word came without hesitation, without doubt. Because despite everything—the hurt, the misunderstandings, the walls they’d both erected—she knew with absolute certainty that this was right. That he was worth fighting for. That they were worth fighting for.
