Page 76 of His Mad Duchess
Even Sebastian stared back at her from the wall with younger, thinner cheeks, his shoulders held too square. She almost laughed at the strangeness of it—this man who could command a room with just his presence made rigid and remote by oil and brush. But the sound never left her throat. The painted eyes, so stripped of warmth, unsettled her more than she wished to admit.
Her breath caught. For an instant, she felt as though she had slipped backward into Brighton, that other house of shadowsand whispers. But then her gaze traveled further along the line of portraits… and something cold feathered up her spine.
She knew that face.
The breath locked in her chest as though a hand had closed around her throat. It was the very same portrait she had glimpsed back in Brighton, the one that had driven her out of the room, cold spreading through her as if she’d walked into a crypt.
She had not expected… had not wanted… to see it again. Yet here it was, its copy hanging just as starkly, staring down at her.
The others, however grand or severe, were at least touched with life, with ruddy cheeks, jeweled throats, the faint arrogance of power, but this man bore nothing of warmth. His features were cut like stone, lips pressed into a bloodless line. And those… eyes. They were dark and unswerving beneath the arch of his brows. They did not glance aside like the others but stared directly ahead, as though pinning her where she stood.
A tremor seized her fingers. It was only paint. Only canvas. Yet the weight of his gaze pressed upon her like a grave slab, heavy and airless.
Her breath faltered. The face loomed, pale and pitiless, and the room tilted as though the floor had slipped away beneath her feet. A cold rush swept her skin, crawling up her arms to her throat until she could scarcely swallow. It was he. The very figure that had stalked her sleep, that had stood at the foot of her bed with eyes like pits, watching as she drowned in her own screams.
Her pulse hammered in her ears. “It is only paint,” she gasped aloud, the words cracking in her throat. “Only paint, only canvas, only…” But the weight of his stare pressed down with dreadful life, closing her chest, stealing her air.
She staggered back, fingers clutching at empty air, her vision swimming at the edges. The gallery spun, the gilt frames, the painted eyes, the long corridor of ghosts, until all dissolved into the single face, unblinking, merciless.
“No one is here,” she whispered fiercely, though her lips shook. “No one but me. You cannot hurt me. You cannot?—”
Her throat tore with a strangled sound she did not know she’d made. She tried to breathe, tried to flee, but her knees buckled beneath her. The world went black.
CHAPTER 27
Sebastian bent over the sheaf of correspondence strewn across his desk, the quill suspended uselessly between his fingers. Ink gathered in a dark bead at the nib, threatening to fall, while the words on the page swam like minnows, slipping out of reach no matter how he tried to pin them down. He had read the same line thrice yet could not have spoken it aloud if his life depended on it.
With a growl low in his throat, he shoved back from the desk. The chair shrieked against the parquet, the sound grating as his own temper. Heat prickled beneath his collar, his pulse hammering at his temples. Since morning, he had sworn… commanded himself not to think of her. Not of her mouth yielding beneath his, not of the way she had trembled against him.
And yet… damnation. His hands curled uselessly into fists on the desk. Every nerve in his body screamed for her. To find her in some corridor, to seize one more stolen moment, to claim what sense… what damned pride… demanded the release.
He dragged a hand through his hair and forced himself to sit again. There was work enough if he could just force his mind to the task?—
The door burst open. Rook, usually the picture of composure, stood pale in the threshold.
“Your—Your Grace…” His throat worked as though the words themselves rebelled. “It is… the Duchess?—”
For a heartbeat, Sebastian could not breathe. The steady, imperturbable Rook… reduced to stammering? The sight chilled him as much as the words themselves.
Sebastian was on his feet in an instant, his chair toppling backwards. “What is it? Rook, speak plainly.”
But the man only stammered, his hand gripping the doorframe so tightly his knuckles blanched. “She… she has…”
“Rook.” Sebastian’s voice cracked like a whip. “Get a hold of yourself.”
The effort seemed to wrench the words from him at last. “She has fainted, Your Grace. In the gallery.”
For one blinding instant, Sebastian could not move. His heart seemed to stop, then slammed into life again so violently, he felt it in his throat.
He was already in motion before thought could follow, striding past Rook with such force the man flattened himself against the doorframe. The corridors narrowed around him, his boots striking hard against marble and wood, portraits flashing by in a blur as though the whole house bent itself to deliver him to her.
He found her crumpled at the base of the gallery wall, her gown spread in pale folds, her skin ashen as death. Rook trailed behind, panting, but Sebastian heard nothing but the roaring in his ears.
He was on his knees in an instant. “Margaret.” Her name came rough, broken as his hands framed her face, his thumb trembling against her cheek. “Margaret, look at me.”
She lay still, lashes dark against her skin, her breath so faint he thought he imagined it. His pulse thundered, drowning sense.
“Rook!” His voice cracked the gallery air. “Fetch a physician—now. Run!”
