Page 97 of Caught By the Ruthless Duke
He should feel relieved. He’d done his duty. They could live separately, meet for required social functions, and maintain the appearance of civility. It was what he’d planned from the beginning.
Except the plan had been constructed before he’d known what it would feel like to have Cressida’s fingers tangle in his hair while he kissed her. Before he’d heard her laugh at one of his dry observations, the sound surprised and genuine. Before he’d watched her convey the tenants’ needs with passionate eloquence that had made him want to pull her into his study and lock the door.
Before he’d learned what happiness felt like.
The admission settled in his chest, heavy and undeniable.
He’d been happy. For perhaps the first time since his father’s death, he’d woken up looking forward to the day instead of simply enduring it. Had found himself staying at breakfast longer than necessary just to hear her opinions on whatever book she’d been reading. Had made up excuses to ride past whatever part of the estate she’d mentioned wanting to see, then acted surprised when he encountered her there.
Had started imagining a future that looked less like duty and more like life. And he’d destroyed it because she’d done exactly what he’d been too frightened to allow: tried to know him completely.
Theodore turned away from the window, his gaze landing on the small table near the fireplace. He’d been avoiding looking at it, but there was no escaping it now.
Charles’s portrait sat propped against the wall, wrapped in its velvet curtain. He’d had it sent from Ashmere two days ago,along with a terse note to Mrs. Agnes that she was to pack anything related to his uncle and have it delivered to London. Her reply had been even more terse, her disapproval evident in every efficient line of script.
Now the portrait waited, still covered, challenging him.
Theodore crossed to it and pulled the curtain away.
Charles gazed back at him with that warm, open expression that had made everyone love him. Theodore could remember with painful clarity what it had felt like to worship this man. To think his uncle was everything his cold father wasn’t: generous, kind, interested in his opinions and dreams. He’d been fifteen when Charles had started spending more time at Ashmere, and Charles had treated him like an equal rather than a burden.
Theodore had loved him more than his own father.
And Charles had used that love to manipulate him into silence while he destroyed the family.
“You were a bastard,” Theodore said to the painted face. His voice sounded strange in the empty room. “I thought you were a good man. Honorable. I would have done anything for you.”
The portrait didn’t answer, but then, it never had. Charles had died without apologizing, without explaining, without expressing a moment’s remorse for what his choices had cost.
Theodore had spent seventeen years blaming himself. Seventeen years convinced that his silence had killed his father, that his attachment to Charles had blinded him to the truth. Seventeen years certain that caring about anyone was the surest path to destruction.
But looking at the portrait now, he saw what he’d been too young to see at seventeen, too damaged to see in all the years since.
Charles had been a weak man. Not evil, perhaps, but selfish. A man who’d wanted what he wanted and had been willing to sacrifice everything—his brother, his nephew, his honor—to have it. Theodore’s love hadn’t destroyed his family. Charles’s choices had.
And his mother’s.
The realization should have brought relief. Instead, it brought a wave of grief so powerful that he had to grip the edge of the table.
He’d wasted seventeen years. Seventeen years of building walls that kept out every person who might care about him. Seventeen years of refusing to let anyone close enough to hurt him. Seventeen years of convincing himself that he was protecting himself from becoming like Charles, when in reality, he’d been protecting himself from facing the truth—that the people he’d loved had betrayed him, and that betrayal had nothing to do with how much he’d cared.
“I’m not asking for anything anymore, Theodore. That is my point.”
Cressida had given him everything. Her trust, her body, her patience. She’d let him into her bed and her thoughts and her carefully guarded heart. She’d shared her fears about her family, her embarrassment over her time at her aunt’s house, her worry that she wasn’t enough.
And he’d told her she meant nothing.
Theodore sank into the chair facing Charles’s portrait, whiskey glass still in hand. The painted eyes gazed back at him with that same charismatic warmth that had fooled everyone, and he felt something shift in his chest—the lock he’d built around himself, the certainty that isolation was safety, cracking apart.
He’d thought keeping people away would prevent him from being destroyed. Instead, he’d destroyed himself.
The whiskey tasted bitter now. He set the glass down and looked at Charles’s face one more time.
“You don’t get to define me anymore,” he said quietly. “You don’t get to make me into someone afraid to feel. Afraid to want. Who drives away the best thing that’s ever happened to him because he’s convinced himself it will end in tragedy.”
The portrait offered no response. It never would.
Charles was dead, had been for seventeen years. The only person keeping him alive, giving him power, was Theodore himself.
