The room was utterly silent, save for the beating of her own heart.
A profound, aching sadness washed over her.
Edward Blackwood had not been a reckless boy courting danger.
He had been a sensitive, frightened young man who had died because he was too afraid to admit his fear.
Marcus was grieving a man who had never existed.
He was honoring a myth of reckless bravado, while the true gentle boy was lost, misunderstood even in death.
And the Duke’s grief, his guilt, was tangled up in this false narrative.
He had not seen his brother.
Not the real him.
A floorboard creaked in the hall.
Helena’s head snapped up.
Her blood ran cold.
The library door opened.
The Duke stood on the threshold, a lamp in his hand. The light cast long, dancing shadows, throwing his face into sharp relief.
His eyes went from her face to the open secret drawer to the journal clutched in her hands.
His face, which had been slowly softening over the past weeks, became a mask of ice.
The sea-gray of his eyes turned to stone.
The air in the room became thick, heavy, impossible to breathe.
“What,” he said, his voice a low, dangerous whisper, “have you done?”
He strode into the room, setting the lamp down on a table with a thud. The light flared, illuminating the fury and deep, wounded betrayal in his eyes.
He did not shout.
He did not need to.
The cold rage emanating from him was more terrifying than any outburst.
“You had no right,” he said, his voice shaking with suppressed violence. “That was private. That was his.”
Helena rose to her feet, the journal still in her hand. Her own heart was pounding, but her resolve was like steel.
She would not cower.
Not now.
“I know,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “It was a violation, and I will not ask your forgiveness for it.”
His eyes narrowed.
“You will leave this room. You will go to your own, and in the morning, we will discuss the arrangements for your departure.”
It was over.
He was sending her away.
The fragile world she had begun to build was shattering around her, but she did not move.
“No,” she said.
He looked at her as if she had sprouted a second head, disbelief warred with his anger.
“What did you say?”
“I said no,” she repeated, taking a step toward him. “You can send me away tomorrow. You can dissolve this marriage and cast me out. But tonight, you will listen to me.”
She held up the journal.
“You have spent six months grieving a lie. You have wrapped yourself in this story of a reckless, fearless brother who died living the life he chose. You have honored him by becoming a ghost, by turning this house into a tomb, by punishing yourself and his horse for a death you think was his fault.”