“Take Off the Wedding Dress,” the Duke Said Coldly. “This Marriage Is Just Revenge.” — But When His Fingers Touched Clara’s Bare Skin, His Carefully Planned Vengeance Became a Prison Neither of Them Could Escape.

 PART 5

Midnight came and went. The house was interred in sleep, but Clara’s mind was running a frantic, exhausting marathon.

She lay in the dark, listening to the rain beat against the glass. The encounter with her father played on a relentless loop. Ungrateful little — She had survived him by building a fortress around her emotions, brick by miserable brick. Today, Arthur had watched her father take a hammer to it.

Unable to stand the suffocating weight of the blankets, she rose. She pulled a thick velvet robe over her nightgown, lit a single candle, and slipped out into the hallway. She intended to go to the kitchen to warm some milk — a childish remedy that had never once worked.

But as she passed the ground floor study, she noticed a sliver of golden light bleeding out from beneath the door.

She hesitated. The study was Arthur’s domain. More importantly, it was the room where Lord Henry had ended his life. The staff avoided it whenever possible, crossing themselves when they had to go in to dust the mahogany shelves.

Clara pushed the door open.

The fire was dying, reducing the room to deep flickering shadows. Arthur was sitting in a winged leather chair by the hearth. He had discarded his coat and cravat; his white linen shirt was unbuttoned at the collar. A heavy crystal decanter of amber liquid sat on the table beside him, nearly half empty. He was staring into the embers, a glass resting loosely in his hand.

He did not startle when she entered. He just slowly turned his head.

“Milk?” he asked, his voice rough with whiskey and exhaustion.

“I thought about it.” Clara stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. “But I think the situation calls for something stronger.”

Arthur studied her for a long moment. Then he reached over, retrieved a second glass from the tray, and poured a generous measure of whiskey. He held it out.

Clara crossed the room and took it. Her fingers brushed his. He was warm.

She sat in the chair opposite him, pulling her legs up underneath her robe to ward off the chill of the leather. She took a sip of the whiskey. It burned a fiery path down her throat, settling heavily in her stomach.

“It is terrible,” she choked out, her eyes watering.

“It is a single malt from Islay,” Arthur replied dryly, taking a slow sip of his own. “It is entirely wasted on you.”

They sat in silence for several minutes. It was not the hostile, loaded silence they usually shared. It was the quiet of two people who had run out of energy to fight.

“This is the room,” Clara said softly, looking at the dark stains on the Oriental rug that no amount of scrubbing had ever fully removed.

Arthur’s gaze followed hers. He did not flinch.

“Yes.”

“He was twenty.”

“Twenty.” Arthur swirled the amber liquid in his glass, watching the firelight catch in the crystal. “He was a brilliant boy. Too trusting. Too eager to prove himself to me after our father died. Your father smelled the desperation on him from across the room.”

“My father has a gift for finding the fracture in a person’s spine and leaning on it until it snaps.”

Clara took another, smaller sip of the whiskey. It burned less the second time.

Arthur looked at her. In the dim light, the harsh lines of his face were softened.

“I spent the last two years imagining the man who drove my brother to a bloody end as some sort of criminal mastermind. A monster. Instead, he is just a pathetic man who reeks of gin and borrows money from his daughter.”

“Yes.”

Arthur leaned his head back against the chair. “Watching him today — it did not feel like justice. It felt dirty. Like kicking a dying dog.”

He paused, glancing at the door where Barnaby was presumably sleeping upstairs. “No offense to your beast.”

“Barnaby takes no offense.” Clara traced the rim of her glass. “Revenge rarely looks the way we want it to, Arthur. It does not bring the dead back. It just anchors the living to the graveyard.”

Arthur’s eyes snapped to hers. They were sharp, searching, stripping away the polite veneer they wore for society.

“Is that what you think I have done? Anchored you to a graveyard?”

“You married me to punish him. And today you realized he is not worth punishing.” Clara kept her voice remarkably steady. “So where does that leave us, Your Grace? The debt is paid. The point is proven. We are locked in a house together for the next forty years, acting out a play for an audience of one who has already left the theater.”

Arthur did not answer immediately. He set his glass down on the table with a soft clink. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, closing the physical distance between them.

“I was angry,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, ragged whisper. “I was so blindingly angry when I saw you for the first time at Almack’s. You were laughing at something Lord Stanhope said. You looked so perfect. Untouchable. It made me sick that you could wear diamonds while my brother was in the ground.”

“The diamonds were paste,” Clara said quietly. “Rented for the evening.”

Arthur let out a harsh breath. “I know that now. I know a great many things now.”

He reached out. For a moment, Clara thought he was going to take her glass. Instead, his fingers brushed against her wrist where it rested on the arm of the chair. His touch was light, but it sent an electric jolt straight up her arm.

“I saw his face today when he looked at you.” Arthur continued, his thumb lightly stroking the fragile pulse point at her wrist. “He did not see a daughter. He saw a bank note that had lost its value. I realized I have not just punished him, Clara. I have punished you for surviving him.”

Clara could not breathe. The walls she had spent a lifetime building were cracking, the mortar turning to dust under the quiet sincerity in his voice.

She pulled her hand back, curling it against her chest.

“Do not pity me, Arthur. I told you — I will not have it.”

“It is not pity.” He stood up, towering over her, but there was no threat in his posture — only a bone-deep weariness. “It is regret.”

He did not wait for her to respond. He turned and walked out of the study, leaving her alone with the dying fire and the ghosts.