“She admitted to breaking the latch. She thought the horse would run off, or that it would harm you, forcing me to have it put down.”
He spoke the words with a quiet, bitter disgust.
“Why would she do that?” Helena asked, though she knew the answer.
He stopped walking and turned to face her.
“Because she believed she was to be the next Duchess of Blackwood. She saw you as an interloper.”
“And am I not?” Helena asked, her voice soft.
A strange expression crossed his face. He looked at her for a long moment, at her wind-whipped hair and her clear, steady eyes.
“No,” he said, the word quiet but firm. “You are not.”
He began to talk then in short, halting sentences. He spoke of the estate, of the tenant farms, of the struggles of the last few years. He did not speak of his brother, not yet.
But he was opening a door, just a crack, into his world, and he was inviting her in.
A few evenings later in the library, he looked up from his book and spoke into the quiet.
“Edward chose his name.”
Helena lowered her own book.
“His name?”
“Chaos,” the Duke clarified. “The stallion. The breeder called him Midnight Sun. Edward said it was sentimental nonsense. He said the horse had a storm in its heart. He called him Chaos.”
He smiled.
It was not a real smile, only the almost of a smile, a brief, painful flicker of memory at the corner of his mouth.
“My father was appalled. But Edward, Edward always had his own way of seeing things.”
It was the most he had ever said about his brother.
It was a gift, a small, fragile offering of his grief.
“He sounds like he was a remarkable young man,” Helena said softly.
The almost smile vanished.
“He was reckless,” the Duke said, the familiar shield of coldness snapping back into place. “And it cost him his life.”
He closed his book with a quiet finality, ending the conversation.
But the door, once opened, could not be entirely shut.
Helena felt a deep, compelling need to understand.
To understand the silent, grieving man who was her husband and the ghost of the brother who haunted every corner of Ravensdale.
One night, unable to sleep, she went down to the library.
A storm was raging outside, the wind howling around the corners of the house, rattling the windowpanes. The room was dark, save for the dying embers of the fire.
She did not light a lamp.
She stood by the window, watching the trees thrash in the darkness.
Her gaze fell upon the Duke’s desk.
It was a massive mahogany piece, its surface neat and ordered. On a sudden impulse, she walked over to it.
She was not looking for anything in particular. She was just drawn to this center of his solitary world.