Page 78 of His Scottish Duchess

“He—he lost someone dear to him, Mama,” she choked out, the lie a bitter taste on her tongue she did not particularly care for. “A long time ago. And he—he blames himself. Terribly. He believes—he believes he is unworthy of love. Of having a family.”

She paused as she struggled to articulate the depth of his despair, the boundary he had erected between them.

“And… and he doubts my feelings for him. Feelings—feelings I didn’t even know I was capable of.”

Catherine had received numerous proposals before she had gotten betrothed to Sampson. None of her suitors had seemed manly enough, and the rest had thought her too unruly to makea suitable wife. And as she had looked at the suitors who had asked for her hand, she had not felt the slightest stir in her heart.

After sitting across from so many men, and the numbness in her chest persisted, she had grown to believe that perhaps she wasn’t meant to love. But all that had changed with Sampson.

She learned to be greedy, to be selfish. To be stubborn and persistent. To yearn, to dream, to want. All because of him.

“I’ve never thought I would love anyone. But oh, how I love him. I love him so much, but he doesn’t feel the same.”

Her mother listened patiently, still gently stroking her hair.

When Catherine finally fell silent, exhausted and heartbroken, Mary spoke, her voice soft but filled with a quiet wisdom.

“It’s a difficult thing, my bairn,” she said, her accent thick with empathy, “to make a man do anything he’s truly set against. And if his heart doesnae truly belong to ye, then there’s hardly anything anyone can do to change that fact, nay matter how much ye might wish it.”

Oh. That was true. How foolish she had been.

Catherine had not let herself consider such a possibility, but on the off chance that her mother was right and Sampson truly did not love her, there was nothing she could do.

As she felt herself sinking further into the pit of despair, her mother’s grip on her hand tightened, her gaze holding a glimmer of unwavering belief.

“But his heart has belonged to ye for a while now,mo ghràidh,” Mary continued. “He does love ye, Catherine. I saw it in his eyes from the very first moment I laid mine on him. Perhaps he’s just nae aware of the depth of his feelings yet.

“If yers is a love that’s meant to prevail, then all we must do now is give him the time and the space to realize where his heart truly lies. And when he does, my darling, he will return to ye. Ye ken what they say about setting the things ye love free and what would happen if they rightly belong to ye.”

Catherine clung to her mother’s words, a fragile seed of hope planted in the barren landscape of her despair. She was afraid to hope, terrified of further disappointment and devastation, but she couldn’t bring herself to completely give up on the man she loved.

She did not want to. Not when she might be the only one who knew the full extent of his pain and therefore the one person who could soothe him.

Later, when they left her to rest in her childhood bed, she closed her eyes and prayed for his safety and for the truth of her love to somehow find its way back to him.

She knew one thing with unwavering certainty—she had never lied about her feelings. Her love for Sampson was real, and hopefully, in time, he would come to realize as much.

“Please be safe, my love,” she muttered, with her eyes squeezed shut. “Until we make our way back to each other.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Sampson stumbled back to their room in the early hours of the morning, the stench of alcohol clinging to his clothes. For a little bit, he had been worried about returning to his wife smelling like the interior of a cheap tavern.

Then, he cursed the cheap whisky for failing to dull the sharp edges of his guilt and despair—and especially for failing to drown the hope that was still afloat within him. There was no chance that Catherine would want to stay close enough to smell him.

The rest of the night had been a blur of self-pity and hazy recollections, each drink a futile attempt to drown out the image of Catherine’s heartbroken face. He had sought solace in oblivion—just some time to pretend that the previous hours had not taken place. But all he had found was a deeper sense of emptiness.

By the time sunrise approached, his guilt reached a fever pitch as he realized that perhaps he should not have left her all alone in a strange place.

“I truly am quite the bastard,” he muttered to himself angrily as he finally arrived at their room.

Sampson pushed open the door to the room, wincing as the hinges groaned in protest, and was greeted by a profound silence. The first thing he noticed was that the curtains had been left open because the sunlight streaming in hurt his eyes.

The second was a sight that made a cold dread coil in his gut. The bed was empty, the covers neatly pulled up, missing any proof of his wife’s warm presence. Catherine’s small bag, which he had set down beside the wardrobe, was gone. Her shawl, usually draped carelessly over a chair, was nowhere to be seen.

A wave of panic washed over him. He walked further into the room, his gaze darting around frantically, searching for any sign of her.

“Catherine?” he called out, his voice hoarse and cracking, the sound swallowed by the heavy silence of the empty room.

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