Page 35 of The Wayward Duke
“Good morning, sweetheart,” he said softly. Julian approached the bed with care. “Would you like me to open the curtains for you?”
She said nothing. She lay on the silken coverlet, still dressed in a creased nightgown. Her lovely blonde hair spilled across the pillow in limp disarray. Dark hollows haunted the delicate skin under her eyes.
Perching on the bed’s edge, Julian noted how sharply Caroline’s collarbone protruded above the sagging neckline of her gown. How wan her skin had become, pulled taut over the elegant scaffolding of bones beneath – wasting away despite everything he did to get her to eat.
“I’ve brought you more flowers,” he murmured, replacing the wilting blooms on her nightstand with the fresh bouquet. The vivid new blossoms seemed garish – an offence to the atmosphere of decay. Tulips were her favourites. So he’d brought her red for love and purple hyacinths to beg her forgiveness. “These are from the garden. The magnolias are in bloom now. Will you come outside and see?”
Caroline’s vacant stare drifted over the colourful bouquet. Then away. She had not spoken a word to Julian since the day he returned. She simply existed here in this elegiac tomb, staring into some middle distance only she could see. The entrance sealed shut behind her.
His chest constricted. He kept bringing flowers anyway, stubbornly strewing beauty among the ruin. As if their ephemeral loveliness could pierce the armour of Caroline’s grief. As if anything could.
Gently, Julian lifted one chilled hand in his, chafing warmth back into her icy fingers. “Won’t you eat something today, Linnie?” he murmured. “I’ll have Cook prepare anything you desire. Chocolate. Pastries with clotted cream and jam on top. Cake. Just say the word, and you can indulge in the most hedonistic diet imaginable.”
Nothing. Caroline stared through him, lungs rising and falling in a listless rhythm beneath her nightgown. Barely breathing. Barely alive.
Julian stretched out alongside her on the mattress. With utmost care, he gathered her into the circle of his arms. She remained limp and unresisting in his tentative embrace. Julian rested his cheek against her hair and exhaled unsteadily.
Too thin. She had lost so much of herself, wasting away before his eyes. He wouldn’t tell her that, though. Wouldn’t add fuel to the fire laying waste to the woman he loved.
“It’s warm outside today,” Julian whispered, brushing a kiss across her cheek. “Would you join me for a walk?”
For the span of a heartbeat, Julian thought he glimpsed awareness stir behind Caroline’s hollow stare. The barest flicker of life in the ashes. But it guttered out, and she turned her face in wordless rejection. Shutting him out – a door slamming closed.
Frustration roiled in Julian’s chest, but he leashed it ruthlessly. None of this was her fault. The blame rested on his shoulders. He’d abandoned her when she needed him most. Now, he could only weather her bitterness and try to reach past the armour she had locked around her heart.
So Julian held her too-slight frame, stroking her limp hair. “Then we’ll stay in today,” he conceded softly. “Lounge around in bed.”
He pressed another tender kiss on her temple, willing his touch to penetrate her shell of grief. But Caroline remained removed. Her rejection pierced Julian’s heart like a blade. Twisting with every breath.
At last, she parted her colourless lips. “I don’t want you in this bed with me,” Caroline rasped. Her voice was cracked and ravaged from disuse. “I don’t want you bringing me flowers or telling me about the weather. I can’t bear the sight of you.”
Each ragged word lanced through Julian’s heart, but he drank them in desperately. Proof that she lived. Still feltsomething.
Even if it was hate.
A broken sound tore from Caroline’s throat. Her fingers knotted in Julian’s shirt, twisting it as she collapsed against him. Her body shook with the force of her sobs, guttural and cracked.
“I hate you,” she wept. “I hate you so much.”
Agony splintered through Julian. He cradled her closer, wishing he could absorb her anguish. He stroked her hair and pressed kisses on her brow, offering comfort as she shattered in his arms. As the tide of her agony finally crested and broke.
When her sobs dwindled at last to hiccupping breaths, Julian shifted back. He smoothed her tangled hair from her wet cheeks with tenderness. Cupped that ruined face between his palms and met her wild gaze.
“I know,” Julian whispered. And then, giving voice to his gnawing guilt, “God above, I know. I hate myself, too.”
Hated himself for leaving her. For not being there as she grieved for Grace, endured her pregnancy and childbirth alone. For not being there during the death of their son. For sailing halfway around the world on a fool’s errand while she weathered the unimaginable back home.
Yes, Julian hated himself.
Caroline looked as frail as cracked porcelain in his arms, her skin nearly translucent with a faint tracery of blue veins. Dark hollows clung beneath her eyes. She had slipped back into silence once more. Lost again to a fathomless grief beyond his power to penetrate.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” Julian said, brushing a thumb across her ashen cheek.
“No.” Her voice was iron this time. “Don’t come back. Stop visiting. Just get out and leave me alone.”
Those words sank their claws deep as Caroline released him and turned away.
Everything in Julian railed against leaving. If he walked away now, she might seal herself off from him entirely. Yet he’d never denied Caroline anything she asked – even this ruinous request.
