Page 100 of His Duchess of Scandal
Ares.
Her heart skipped a beat at the nicknames, her mind flashing back to the painting of the Greek lovers, their debate at Bentley’s party. For a second, she traced her thumb over the sharpAof his signature.
There was something familiar about his handwriting that she had not noticed before, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
Still, she did as instructed.
She readied herself for breakfast, ate excitedly, and listened to Phoebe speak about how her governess was going to take her out to the market. The girl asked her if she would like to come, but Hermia declined gently, too eager at the thought of spending the day with Charles.
Whatever he had planned, she couldn’t wait.
When she really couldn’t hold back any longer, she left the breakfast hall, seeking out Mrs. Nightgale and asking to be directed to the west wing. There wasn’t even a hint of surprise on the housekeeper’s face, just a soft smile as she nodded and led her immediately.
They stopped at the end of a hallway that Hermia had never been in, with only two doors that were placed on the left. She was taken to one, and her hands shook as it was unlocked and opened to almost darkness.
Shadows fell over the floor, and she moved deeper inside as Mrs. Nightgale curtsied and left.
“Close the door behind you.”
She looked for Charles at his quiet command, finding him in the center of the room, cloaked by the same shadows. Except, before him, on a nearby stool, a candle flickered away, illuminating a canvas. Beyond, gossamer curtains hung over the wall, and a chaise lounge faced the canvas.
Hermia slowly walked closer to him, taking in all the paintings around her.
This was it—Charles’s secret passion. The very thing he had kept from his first wife, yet was revealing to her.
“Charles,” she murmured, looking around. “This is…”
“My studio,” he said. “I have had it since I was a boy. The servants helped me keep my secret, helped me get paints and supplies in here. It was far enough away that nobody thought to look, and I could always tell my parents that I was wandering in the woods.”
“And yet you are letting me in.”
“This is me at my truest,” he told her. “And I find that I am rather enjoying letting you know the true me, Hermia. It is disarming, most definitely, for I have never wanted to be seen at my most vulnerable, but…” His eyes met hers, the candlelight reflecting in them. “But I feel as though you can hold that vulnerability with the tenderness I have never let myself want.”
“Stargazing,” Hermia said, recalling Levi’s story of the observatory and the liquor. “Wanting a duchess who might love watching the stars with you.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “It is not—” His voice hitched. “Something I have let myself admit again since that night, but yes. That was my dream.” His eyes bored into hers. “Sometimes, I see how you look at the night sky, Hermia, and I?—”
“Know that you have found her,” she finished. “A duchess who loves watching the stars as much as you do. I might not know a great deal about them, but they are certainly pretty, and that is more than enough for me.”
“They are indeed beautiful,” he acknowledged. “But none come close to you.”
Hermia blushed, her gaze lowering. “And yet I am not as bright as them. I am good at pretending I am, but what if… what if sometimes I am just as dark as the night sky? What if I am that vast space, rather than the twinkling stars?”
Charles held out his hand to her, and she walked towards him, stripped bare by the way he showed her such a vulnerable part of himself.
She thought of the years she had wasted, the years she had not stood up to her parents. There were the nights she had sabotaged her matches out of stubbornness, and then there was?—
The naval officer.
A man she had not possessed feelings for, except for the disconcerting way the security of a life with him had been yanked from beneath her feet.
“What is it?” Charles asked. “What plagues you?”
“Nothing,” she said, realizing she was the one putting up walls now.
Charles only gazed at her, his forearm smeared with paint.
“Well—no, notnothing, but…”
