The Silent Duchess

Chapter 19

The Duke feels the plea like a dagger to the throat. He sees the terror in her eyes, the memory of his own hands, the memory of his own cruelty. He knows that if he lets her walk out that door, she will disappear into the forest like smoke, and he will never see her again. He cannot lose her, not now that he has seen the steel beneath her flesh. Not now that he understands what she truly is.

"Captain," Hudson says, his voice dropping into that cold, exacting tone that once commanded armies. "The witch is not a witch. She is my wife."

The guards freeze. A murmur of confusion ripples through them.

"My wife," Hudson repeats, his gaze never leaving Laura's face. "And she is coming home with us. Secure her. Gently, but do not let her out of your sight."

"No," Laura's voice finally breaks through, a strangled gasp of horror. " Hudson, no! Please!"

"Seize her," he orders, his heart breaking even as his jaw sets with ruthless determination.

The guards move in. One catches her arms while another blocks her path. As they roughly manhandle her toward the door, dragging her away from the only sanctuary she had known, Hudson watches with a hollow ache in his chest. He has saved her life, but in doing so, he has reasserted his prison. He has claimed his prize, but as he watches her struggle against the steel gauntlets of his men, he realizes he has never been more alone.

The transformation is complete, but it is a hollow victory. The Duke's servants have scrubbed the forest from her skin, replaced the dirt with expensive rosewater, and swaddled her in layers of fine silk and lace that feel to Laura like a shroud. She has been restored to the image of the Duchess of Whitestone, pale, beautiful, and utterly trapped.

When the heavy oak doors of the ducal bedchamber creak open, and Hudson enters, he expects perhaps a sullen silence or perhaps a tearful plea for mercy. He does not expect a war.

"Get out!" she screams, the sound tearing from her throat like something wounded.

As he steps toward the bed, she seizes a crystal decanter from the bedside table and hurls it with all her might. It shatters against the wall beside his head, spraying expensive brandy across the expensive wallpaper.

"Don't you dare approach me!" she snarls, scrambling to the opposite corner of the mattress, pressing herself against the headboard as if trying to merge with the wood. Her eyes are bloodshot, blazing with a hatred so pure it makes him flinch.

"Laura, be reasonable, " Hudson begins, his voice attempting its usual measured authority.

"Reasonable? Reasonable?" She laughs, a harsh, jagged sound that has no mirth in it. "You dragged me from the only place I felt safe! You tore me from the sky and threw me back into this gilded cage! You would be better off seeking companionship from a slaughtered cow, Hudson! At least a cow wouldn't have to endure your pathetic, cold cruelty!"

The insult stings more than any blade he has ever taken in battle. He stands there, tall and imposing in his black and silver military dress, but he feels smaller than he did in that rotting cabin. In the cabin, she had touched him. In the cabin, she had saved him. Here, she looks at him as if he were something rotting beneath a fallen log.

"I saved your life," he says, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low register. "And I have brought you home where you belong."

"I don't belong to you!" she shrieks, grabbing a silver hairbrush and hurling it at his chest. It bounces off his sternum with a dull thud. "I belong to myself! I belong to my child! You didn't bring me home, you brought me back to my executioner!"

Hudson advances, his patience fraying. "Enough of this theatrics, Laura. You are my wife. You will learn to conduct yourself with "

"With what? Dignity?" She spits the word at him. "I learned dignity in the woods, fighting wolves while you lay bleeding in the dirt. I learned survival while you learned how to command. Now get out! Get out before I scream until every guard in this castle knows what kind of monster sleeps in the Duke's bed!"

He reaches out to grasp her wrist, to force her to listen, to force her to submit as he has done a hundred times before. But the moment his fingers brush the silk covering her arm, she recoils with such violent revulsion that she nearly falls from the bed. She wraps her arms around herself, shaking, her gaze fixed on him with absolute terror and loathing.

"Touch me again," she whispers, her voice trembling but deadly serious, "and I swear to God, Hudson, I will make sure you never have an heir to claim."

He freezes. The threat hangs between them in the candlelit air, thicker than the smoke of the cabin fire ever was. He stares at her, this beautiful, broken, furious creature, and realizes that while he has reclaimed his wife, he has lost his conquest entirely.

The Duchess has returned to Whitestone, but she is a ghost haunting her own life.

Laura moves through the corridors of the ducal estate with a terrifying, flawless precision. She has donned the mask of the noblewoman with the skill of a seasoned actress, but the performance is hollow. To the servants and the staff, she is the dutiful, elegant Duchess, once more efficient, composed, and strangely present. But to Hudson, she is a walking wound.

He watches her from doorways and balcony railings, a predator who has lost his prey despite having it caged.

One morning, he finds her in the solar, already dressed in morning silk, her spine straight as a blade. When he approaches, intending to insist she remain in bed to recover her strength from the ordeal, she doesn't even turn to face him.

"You should be resting, Laura," he says, his voice carrying the remnants of his commanding tone. "The journey back was taxing."

"I should be in the woods," she replies, her voice as cool as winter marble, "left to rot among the ferns while you bled out in the mud. That would have been more productive for us both."