“Do not speak of what you do not understand,” he gritted out, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“I understand more than you think,” she shot back, her voice rising with a passion that surprised them both. “I understand that your brother was not fearless. He was terrified. He died because he was too afraid of disappointing you, of failing to be the Blackwood you all expected him to be. He died of a broken heart long before he reached that wall.”
She took another step, closing the distance between them until she was standing directly before him. She could feel the heat of his anger, the rigid wall of his control.
“You are not grieving Edward,” she said, her voice dropping to a fierce, intense whisper. “You are grieving the man you thought he was, the man you wanted him to be. And in doing so, you are betraying the memory of the gentle, sensitive, frightened boy he truly was. The boy who loved music and poetry. The boy who called his horse his dark confidant.”
She saw it then.
The crack in the ice, a tremor that ran through him.
His control, so absolute and unyielding, was fracturing.
“Stop,” he whispered, the word ragged, broken.
“You see his recklessness in Chaos,” she pressed on, relentless. “But I see his fear, his loneliness, his grief. That is why he comes to me. I do not try to tame him. I simply see him the way you should have seen your brother.”
That was the final blow.
A choked, guttural sound was torn from his throat.
The stone mask crumbled, and what was left was a raw, agonizing grief that was terrible to behold.
He staggered back a step, his hand coming up to cover his mouth. His sea-gray eyes, which had been so cold, were now flooded with a pain so profound it stole her breath.
He did not weep, but the desolation on his face was worse than any tears.
He looked at her, and in his eyes she saw not anger, but a shattered, dawning horror.
The horror of a truth too long denied.
Without another word, he turned and fled the room, leaving her alone with the journal, the dying fire, and the howling of the wind.
The silence that descended was the silence of utter devastation.
For three days, the house was colder and more silent than it had been upon her arrival.
The Duke was a ghost again, but a different kind. Before, his presence had been a cold weight. Now it was a gaping absence.
He did not appear for meals. He did not ride out. The light in his study remained unlit.
Hemlock reported, his face grim, that His Grace was not seeing anyone.
Helena moved through the days in a fog of uncertainty.
She had spoken the truth, a truth she believed he needed to hear, but she had wielded it like a weapon.
She had shattered him.