Page 25 of A Duchess Worth Ruining
Blood.
The end ofeverything.
And he had donenothing.
He had stayed silent until long after the horses had gone, until the dusk had stretched long and violet and cold. He had crept out, trembling, and found their bodies. His mother lay slumped against the carriage wall, her shawl stained red. His father was collapsed in the grass, a pistol still in his hand. Julian’s eyes were wide and unblinking toward the stars.
He could never forget the sound of his own screams.
That night, he buried something in himself. The child. The fear. The softness.
In its place, he planted a vow.
Never again.
Never again would he be powerless. Never again would he freeze. Never again would he lose the people he loved and stand by like a coward. He trained. He studied. He hardened.
And still… the guilt never left him.
“I should’ve done something,” he murmured now, so quietly Mason almost didn’t hear.
His friend’s voice came low. “You were a child.”
Robert shook his head. “I was a Firming.”
He crouched beside the grave, fingers brushing the cold stone of his mother’s name. He’d worn her locket for years beneath his collar, unseen. A charm, a burden, a tether.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I have to break my promise to you.”
He stood, brushing the soil from his hands. He turned to Mason, his voice steadier now. “Let’s go.”
Although his friend was by his side, Robert didn’t feel any lighter. Not when he knew the path that still lay ahead of him.
Chapter Nine
“Idaresay, the man is insufferable,” Evelyn huffed, crossing her arms as the carriage jolted gently over the country road. “Who sends six gowns to confuse a lady further? It’s positively conniving.”
Hazel, seated opposite her with one gloved hand resting on the window ledge, hid a grin behind her fingers. “Or perhaps,” she said sweetly, “he merely wished to be helpful. That is what considerate suitors do, is it not?”
Cordelia snorted. “Oh yes, terribly helpful. Buying every gown she so carefully described just to make her indecision worse. I find it all very romantic.”
Evelyn rolled her eyes with great force. “You would.”
Cordelia slowly leaned forward, her eyes gleaming with mischief. “Admit it, Evelyn. You like him.”
“I do not!”
Hazel raised an inquisitive brow. “You do.”
“I shall tell you precisely what I dislike about him,” Evelyn declared, her chin high as the carriage jostled gently onward. “Since you both seem to think my irritation is some hidden form of affection which it most certainly is not.”
Cordelia and Hazel leaned forward in unison, their eyes bright with anticipation.
Evelyn held up a gloved finger. “First of all, he always speaks as though he’s in on some joke the rest of the world is too dull to grasp.”
Hazel nodded solemnly. “A terrible trait.”
“And he has this insufferable habit,” Evelyn continued, warming to her subject, “of pausing just before he replies, as if weighing every word, as if his conversation is some rare commodity to be dispensed in measured drops.”
