He Struck Her at the Ball, Never Knowing Her Husband, the Feared Duke, Was Watching From the Doorway — Then Dankar Crossed the Ballroom With Slow, Deliberate Fury and Revealed the Woman Everyone Ignored Was His Wife

PART 7 

In the carriage going home through the dark London streets, the Duke of Dankar held his wife’s hand and looked at the mark on her face. And found that his fury, which he had mastered in the ballroom, wanted very badly to come back.

“I should have broken his hand,” he said. “You told me not to, and I did not, and I obeyed you because you asked it. But I want you to know that every mile of this drive, I am regretting the obedience.”

“I know,” she said. She had not let go of his hand. “And I love you for the part of you that wants to. But I am glad you did not. A broken hand heals, and is forgotten, and would make him in the eyes of the world a victim — the man the brutal Duke of Dankar assaulted at a ball. Whereas what you actually did to him tonight will never heal, and will never be forgotten. You turned your back on him before all of society. You gave him the cut direct. And you told the whole room, in that terrible quiet voice, exactly what he did to me five years ago. The truth, which he has spent five years burying under a lie. You did not injure his hand. You injured his name, which is the only thing he has ever cared about. And you did it with the truth, which cannot be answered, or undone, or revenged. By morning, there will not be a drawing room in London that will receive him. You have finished him, Joris, completely and permanently, without breaking a single bone. It is a far more terrible thing than violence. And it is the kind of revenge you will never have cause to regret.”

The Duke was silent a moment.

“You are frighteningly good at this,” he said.

“I have had five years to think about what I would do to Halbert Vain,” said Berangaria. And for the first time that night, something flickered in her composure — something that was not quite a smile and not quite tears. “I did not expect the power to arrive in the shape of a husband who crosses a ballroom like the wrath of God. But I had the plan ready. A woman with no power spends a great deal of time perfecting the revenge she will never be able to take. And then tonight, quite suddenly, I could take it. And I found I did not want the loud version after all. I wanted the quiet, permanent, truthful one. I think that is a kind of growing, Joris. Five years ago, I would have wanted him to bleed. Tonight, I only wanted him finished, and myself free of him. And I find I feel nothing for him at all now. Not even hatred. Which is the surest sign he no longer has any power over me. That is your gift to me tonight — not the revenge. The freedom from needing it.”

When they reached Dankar House, the Duke took her up himself and sat her by the fire. He sent for cloths and cool water. And he would let no maid do it. He tended the mark on her face with his own hands — this great, feared man, kneeling by his wife’s chair and bathing her cheek with a gentleness that would have astonished every soul in the ballroom.

Berangaria watched him do it with an expression he could not quite read.

“What is it?” he asked. “You are looking at me strangely.”

“I am thinking,” she said, “that no one has taken care of me since my father died. Five years. In five years, no one has once. When I was ill at Ashworth Park, I nursed myself. When I was tired, no one noticed. When I was hurt, I hid it, because to be hurt in that house was to be a nuisance. I had forgotten what it was to be taken care of. I had trained myself to forget it, because the wanting of it was too painful when there was no chance of it. And now here is the Duke of Dankar, on his knees, bathing my face. And I find I do not know how to bear it. Joris — kindness. I could bear the cruelty. I got very good at bearing the cruelty. It is the kindness I have no defenses for. It undoes me completely.”

The Duke of Dankar set down the cloth. He took his wife’s face very carefully in his hands, mindful of the mark, and he said, “Then let it undo you. You have spent five years armored against cruelty, and it kept you alive, and I honor it, and I will never ask you to lower that armor toward the people who would hurt you. But you may lower it toward me. That is what marriage is meant to be, though God knows I did not understand it until I met you. It is the one place in all the world where you may be undone. Where you need no armor. Where being hurt is not a nuisance, and being tired is noticed, and being ill means someone nurses you. You are safe here. You will always be safe here. You may fall apart in this house as often as you please. And I will be here every time, to gather up the pieces, because that is not a burden to me. Let me take care of you. It is all I want. It is all I have ever wanted. And I did not know it until you.”

And Berangaria Kembley, Duchess of Dankar, who had not wept when Sir Halbert Vain struck her across the face before all of society, put her face into her husband’s hands, and wept at last.

Not the tears of the ballroom, which she had refused him. But the tears of five years. The whole long, damned grief of half a decade of being unseen and unheld and uncared for.

And the Duke of Dankar gathered his wife into his arms and let her weep it all out against his shoulder. And did not once tell her to stop. And understood that this, and not the ballroom, and not the revenge, was the true marriage. The real one. The private one. The one that no one would ever see.

And that it was worth more than every title he owned.