Chapter 12

12

Caroline stared out the carriage window as London sped past, buildings reduced to shadows and fragmented light. Julian’s thumb swept her knuckles in steady rhythm, anchoring her amid visceral memories churning through her thoughts. The bone-jarring explosion. Debris searing her skin. The hellish landscape of torn bodies and crumbling ruins, rubble shifting beneath her boots. She could still taste the acrid tang of smoke coating her throat.

The carriage rolled to a stop, wheels a distant crunch over the gravel drive.

“Let’s get you inside,” Julian said gently.

He alighted first, then turned and lifted her down. He steered her straight upstairs to the washroom and eased her onto a stool beside the copper tub. “Wait here while I fetch supplies and draw you a bath,” he instructed.

When he returned, his arms were laden with linen, scissors, brandy, and a steaming basin. He set them on the tiles before her and knelt, taking her bloodied hands between his own.

“This will hurt,” he warned. “But I need to clean them properly. I’ll be quick.”

She sucked in a breath, bracing. “I know. Just do it.”

Even with warning, she still flinched at the first touch. Julian kept his grip gentle as he swabbed every cut, clearing away blood and grit. Caroline focused on him – shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, exposed forearms corded with muscle. Here knelt the elusive Duke of Hastings, scion of one of the noblest families in the kingdom, a powerful man humbled before her. Not a hint of impatience marked that austere face, only calm competence.

Unexpected tenderness pierced her, stealing her breath. This man had shielded her body with his own – and now he scrubbed the blood and grime from her torn flesh as if she were infinitely precious.

“I’m sorry,” Julian said when she gasped. His touch remained gentle. “I know it hurts like the devil.”

“A small price to pay for having all my limbs still attached.”

“You were brave,” he said, continuing his ministrations. “Quite commanding.”

“Well, there are some benefits to this duchess business. At least people snap to attention when I start bellowing orders.”

Amusement softened his tone. “Like a general marshalling troops into battle.”

She gave a laugh. “Yes, I’m sure that’s precisely how I looked. Covered in blood and soot, gown ripped to tatters. People will probably describe me as a deranged harpy.”

His hands stilled on hers. “I think what people will tell me is that my wife was ferocious tonight.”

Wife.

The word resonated through her chest. Spoken in that smoke-rough voice, as if he were relearning her measure.

“They might,” she conceded. Casting about for safer conversational ground, Caroline ventured, “You needn’t wait on me, you know. I’m perfectly capable of bathing alone.”

“Have you seen the state of these hands?” he asked. “I doubt you could even unbutton your gown.”

Stubborn man. “You underestimate my determination regarding personal hygiene.”

“And you underestimate my determination regarding you. Now stand so I can undress you.”

Too weary to argue further, Caroline rose to her feet. Julian’s hands went to her waist, steadying her. She shivered as his warm breath tickled her ear.

“There’s my good girl,” he all but purred.

Liquid heat pooled between her thighs. God, she wanted those elegant hands on her body again. Stroking her. Taking her hard against the tiles as her world fractured apart. This man’s calm, stoic demeanour had always aroused her so effortlessly – that unwavering focus on her alone.

Before she could think better of it, Caroline let her eyes slip shut and surrendered to the sensation of Julian’s fingers moving down the line of tiny buttons on the back of her tattered gown. She focused on the delicate rasp of fastenings slipping free, each baring another sliver of her bruised skin. The tender drag of his knuckles down her neck, her spine.

To be undressed this way after so many years apart felt too intimate. Exposing. As if he slowly peeled back the layers of pretence and performance that comprised her armour, stripping her down to the most vulnerable parts of herself. When he eased the ruined gown from her frame, she heard his sharp inhale ghosting against her bared nape.

Julian efficiently divested Caroline of her chemise, leaving her clad only in tattered stockings gartered high on her thighs. She watched in the mirror as he sank to his knees. His fingers scorched trails of fire along her legs as he removed those last wisps of fabric. She saw it in his eyes – the hunger. Felt it simmer in the heavy air between them. For a suspended heartbeat, she thought he might grip her hips and drag his mouth up her inner thighs, licking over sensitive flesh until she shattered with his name on her lips.

Put your lips on me, she wanted to say.

But Julian only rose and pulled her back against him. “Get in the bath before I forget to be a gentleman.”

Caroline angled a look at him over her shoulder. “And if I don’t want you to be one?”

He froze. Hunger blazed in his eyes, silver-bright. But then Julian took a slow, deliberate step back from her. Cold air raised the fine hairs on her bare arms.

“Forgive me,” she said. “That was too forward.”

“Don’t ever apologise for telling me what you want.”

Want. That word ricocheted between them. What did she want? Not just tonight, but for the endless nights and days after?

Julian looked away when she said nothing. “In you go, Linnie.”

Caroline sank into the tub, limbs heavy. She let her eyes drift shut as warmth seeped into her muscles, loosening knots. The hot water lapped at tender places and turned her skin pink. Steam curled around her, blurring the sharp edges of recent memory into something softer.

Silence enveloped her, broken only by the soft sound of Julian’s clothes hitting the floor, followed by the gentle displacement of water as he joined her. When she forced her eyes open, it was to find her husband sitting across from her, close but not touching. Julian’s stern features appeared softer through the film of steam wreathing his face, blurred at the edges. Younger somehow, like a half-remembered dream.

“You’re injured,” she realised, jolted back by visible proof marring smooth skin. She reached out, unthinking, to skim her fingers over the angry welts slashing his face. “You’re bleeding.”

Julian caught her hand. “Just scratches. Nothing to fuss over.”

Lie.

She read it in every bruised line of him, tension wound tight beneath the skin. Julian was very much not fine. Then again, neither was she.

“Tonight is for you,” he insisted when she opened her mouth to argue.

She traced her fingertips over the fresh cuts marring his knuckles. “Says who? I don’t recall signing that decree.”

The barest ghost of a smile touched Julian’s mouth. “Always so stubborn.”

“Resolute is the word, I think. And you’re clearly not fine, so stop pretending.”

“Determined,” he allowed. “But I want to take care of you right now.” His voice gentled, turned reverent. “All right, Linnie?”

The old nickname speared her heart. Swallowing around the ache, she nodded. Let him shift closer until his thigh pressed to hers beneath the water. Let him ease her back until she floated, supported and safe.

Julian took up a sea sponge and began to wash her. As he worked, Caroline studied his face – taking in faint lines etched at the corners of those pale eyes that had not existed between them before. She had loved learning the landscape of him once. Had traced every part of him with curious fingertips, greedy lips – memorising the geography of this man who was hers. Now he seemed some half-remembered country glimpsed through morning mist. So achingly familiar, yet unknown.

She wondered if her own face betrayed similar stories, mapped by the trauma and loneliness he had not been there to witness.

“You do that well,” she murmured.

“You used to tell me I was good with my hands,” he said, brushing the sponge over her shoulders.

“You still are. I love your hands. I used to watch them for hours – while you wrote, while I drew you. While you played the piano. Especially then.”

Julian went very still. “Did you?”

Heat crept up her throat, but Caroline made herself continue. “Of course. You don’t really think I didn’t treasure those moments when you made music?” She touched the back of his hand with her fingertips. “I was quite taken with your hands.”

With you. I was so in love with you, I could hardly breathe.

Julian’s eyes fell shut. He turned his palm upwards in silent invitation.

Caroline traced the hills and valleys of his knuckles, the delicate tracery of veins inside his wrist. The years peeled back like old wallpaper. She was an infatuated girl again, and Julian the charming boy who featured in all her youthful daydreams. It was a language written into her very bones, into the deepest parts of her soul.

Something she had thought turned to ash long ago.

“And the rest of me?” Julian whispered into the swirling steam between them. So softly, she almost missed it.

As if her answer meant the difference between forever and nothing at all.

“As I recall, the rest of you was my undoing,” she said wryly. “I remember meeting a brooding boy in your father’s gardens and thinking him the most interesting creature I’d ever encountered. All sharp cheekbones and brooding countenance. Utterly magnetic. Until you opened that mouth of yours and told me people bored you.”

The barest smile touched his solemn mouth. “And you proceeded to declare plants better company and lectured me at length on the superiority of most flora over humans for the remainder of that afternoon.”

“Naturally. You needed schooling.”

“I stand by my original assessment that most people are terrible company. With two notable exceptions.”

Caroline’s breath snagged.

Grace had been his other exception.

“Do you think Grace would be happy to see us together?” she whispered.

Old grief flickered over his features. “She would scold us both about the last eight years, I think.”

Steeling herself, Caroline whispered the long-held fear that had corroded her from the inside out. “Did you love her very much?”

There. The poison was out. Now, she could only wait for the blade to fall.

Julian searched her face. “You believed I was in love with Gracie.”

Caroline forced herself to hold his gaze. To speak the thoughts locked away in the deepest vaults of her heart. “You intended to propose to Grace at the end of that summer, and you only married me because my reputation was compromised. And when you left after we lost her, I thought maybe you—”

“No.” A sharp inhale, then softer, “No, sweetheart. I did care for Grace once, but I lost my heart to you that summer.”

Hope and uncertainty warred inside her. Who knew if this fragile détente would last beyond the confines of this room? One truth didn’t undo the shared grief and distance between them.

“I lost my heart to you, too,” Caroline replied.

Dropping a kiss on her hand, Julian took up the sponge and resumed washing away the last traces of blood and soot. She remained pliant, craving the solidity of his hands on her skin.

When he had finished, Caroline drew a steadying breath. “Let me return the favour.”

They did not speak as she swept the sponge across the sleek muscles of his shoulders, his broad chest – along the cuts and bruises that were evidence of the protective way he’d curled himself around her during the explosion. With reverence, she traced old scars, though she did not ask about them. Those stories belonged to another Caroline, one who had shared this man’s past as well as his bed. One who had lost the right to such intimacy and hadn’t yet earned it back.

When she gestured for Julian to turn, he complied without argument. The rigid line of his spine was an accusation, his body coiled tight as if bracing for something. As if he, too, expected this moment between them to snag on all the jagged glass of their history. Caroline set her teeth against the threatening sting behind her eyes and resumed washing him with meticulous care.

By unspoken accord, they left anything below the cloudy bathwater untouched.

Without a word, Julian rose from the bath in a cascade of water. The lean muscles of his back and thighs flexed as he wrapped himself in a length of linen.

“Let’s get you to bed. You need rest.”

Caroline dutifully donned the nightclothes Julian held for her. Allowed him to tuck the sheets around her as she sank onto the mattress.

Yet when Julian made to pull away, some starved, wild thing inside Caroline stirred. Her hand darted out to capture his wrist in silent entreaty. “Come here. Next to me.”

A rough breath tore from his throat. For an endless moment, she thought Julian might refuse. Might turn his back on this fledgling tenderness. But then the mattress dipped beneath his weight as he slid beneath the sheets.

The empty gulf between their bodies echoed the years, yawning wide and fathomless. Caroline’s chest constricted with uncertainty. Then she could bear it no more – she turned onto her side to face Julian’s remote profile. His eyes remained fixed on the ceiling, body held apart from hers.

She dared to trail her fingers down the rigid line of Julian’s forearm, touch whisper-soft in silent entreaty. In unspoken apology for everything left unsaid between them.

Then she found the courage to whisper, “Will you hold me?”

With a low groan, he turned and hauled her into his arms. Caroline pressed her face to the warm skin of his throat, inhaling cedar and soap.

“Julian?” she whispered into the intimate darkness.

He tensed. “Hmm?”

“The answer to your question… When I look at you, I feel everything ,” she whispered. “And I’m so sorry for pushing you away. I didn’t know how to fix us.”

For an endless moment, Julian simply held her in punishing silence. Then, “Never apologise for me leaving you to bear losing Grace and our son alone. I didn’t know how to fix us either. After that.”

Their shared grief lodged like a spike in her throat. She stroked Julian’s back in silent apology, wishing she could erase the damage done.

Then she closed her eyes and let the rest of the world fall away.