Page 65 of Madcap with a Marquess
The latch wiggled, then something thudded against the door, and then silence. “It does indeed appear jammed, my lord. We will address it immediately.”
Franny had never been so glad to be locked in a room. She gently brought his face back to look at her. She stared into his eyes, the fire in them slowly dying. She infused as much sincerity as she could into her own, praying that he could see the truth in her eyes. “I’m not leaving you, Rupert. I promise.”
The spark dissolved from his eyes, replaced by a look so lost her heart splintered. “But you were going to. Because I’m a beast to you. I am a monster when it comes to you.”
She shook her head, but he continued.
“I pushed you to such lengths you put your life at risk. I pushed you to the pointyou left me.”
His body quaked under her fingers, and she was afraid he would truly break this time. Not snap and lose control. But splinter, shatter, disintegrate. She had to hold him together. She would.
“I amsoangry, Franny,” he said hoarsely, his voice shaking as much as his body. “At you. At myself—” His brown eyes welled, the soft light streaking through the window glimmering over them like the sun’s rays on the pond outside. “I am so confused.”
Her heart hurt for him, for them. A tremendous, clenching ache settled in her chest, enveloping the damaged and neglected muscle that resided there. She slowly lowered her hands from his face and took his hand in both of hers and tugged until he followed her.
“Why don’t we do something different for a change?” she murmured. “Why don’t we sit down and talk while we wait for someone to get us out of here?”
She sat against the back wall and gave him an encouraging pull. He slid down the wall and settled next to her. She drew up her knees and rested her arms atop them, twisting her fingers as nerves danced under her skin. Time for them to talk. To hash this out.
“You may have been behind my rash decisions,” she said into the silence. “But they were that, Rupert. Rash. And completely and utterly daft.” She looked at him and caught him staring at her. She could lose herself in those warm brown pools. “I shouldn’t have left you,” she whispered. She hadn’t truly wanted to.
“Then why…?” His mouth moved to form more words, but that was all that surfaced.
She looked away, like the fleeing coward that she was. “This marriage was my only hope for a new life. One where I wasn’t invisible, not a disappointment, not a burden.” Her fists tightened on her knees just like her stomach did inside her, but she forced herself to say the terrifying words. “It hurt too much to face a future so similar to the life I lived before. I couldn’t bear that same treatment from you. Not when you mean something to me.”
“God, Franny—” His voice broke, and she glanced at him. “I am so sorry. That I made you feel that way. That I was the cause…”
She bobbed her shoulder and forced her quivering lips into a weak smile. “I still should have never left. You were right when you railed at me the other night. I don’t think before I act, and in doing so, I put myself in a horrible situation.”
He scooted closer to her, their faces only inches apart.
“I don’t think it has ever mattered to me before,” she whispered.
He gently gripped her chin, the touch jarring in its contrast to his harsh hold from earlier. His thumb coasted over her bottom lip, and he searched her eyes. “Whatever do you mean?”
“No one has ever…” Her gaze darted away. But it shot back to him when he gave her chin a gentle squeeze. She swallowed hard. “No one has ever cared what happens to me, Rupert. My only value was what I was able to gain through our marriage contract. Living a life like that…” She lifted one shoulder and let it drop, limp, tired, defeated. And she finally admitted aloud the dark truth that she even kept from herself most days. “You eventually stop caring what the consequences of your actions are. No matter how dire.” Because sometimes, those dire consequences seemed more appealing than the current life she lived.
“Franny.” Rupert’s hoarse whisper echoed through the room, his brows and forehead a corrugation of despair.
They sat like that, eyes locked, something unspoken hovering between them, something that felt a lot like farewell. Farewell to who they had been and a dawning of who they truly were for the first time: the real Rupert, the real Franny.
“Has he ever—did he hurt you?” he finally whispered into the quiet.
Her lips curved up, though the moment called for anything but a smile. It struck her as ironic how when something was so sad, so tragic, it ended up being almost laughable. “In many, many ways.”
His hand drifted up over her jaw and tucked a loose tendril of hair behind her ear. He focused on her ear, brows plastered together, like her ear had said something offensive. “Physically?” The word seemed torn from him, like he didn’t truly want to know the answer.
“Yes—”
His gaze snapped to hers, turbulent brown seas.
“It was not so bad, Rupert. Truly.” She tried to comfort him, bring him back before he got lost in his own storm. “Mainly bruises from too-hard grips. If I had done something particularly disobedient, the back of his hand. Honestly, the neglect and indifference, the absence of affection, the things he took away from me, things I loved and cared about—that all hurt much, much worse.”
He leaned his forehead against hers, and she let out the last of the pain her father had caused her. “He didn’t ever care for me, Rupert. He always made that clear. The night before our wedding, he told me he wished I had died alongside my mother. When he said it, I realized that was what I felt radiating from him all those years—every look and every word bled with his antipathy for me. So, I am reckless. I don’t think—nor care—for the consequences that will befall me. And with that, I haven’t taken into consideration how my actions affect you.”
He pulled back and stared at her with those stormy brown irises. But what was brewing there was no longer rage, it was resolve, it was passion.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
