Chapter 3: The Cruelty of Kin
The carved box felt like a live coal in his hands. Elliot closed the drawer, the soft thud echoing in the silent study. He couldn’t stay here. The walls, the portrait, the very air felt complicit in a crime he had only just understood the shape of. He needed movement, noise, something to outrun the quiet shame that was curdling in his veins.
He left the study, his footsteps aimless at first, then turning with purpose toward the east wing. Thomas was due any minute. They had business to discuss—the endless, dry business of estates and parliamentary votes. It was a lifeline to normalcy, to a version of himself that hadn’t just been hollowed out by the memory of a winter iris.
The long hallway leading to the morning room was bright, afternoon sun slicing through the tall windows and laying brilliant, accusing rectangles on the polished floor. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, his fingers closing around the cool metal of his pocket watch. He snapped it open, checked the time. Thomas was late. He snapped it shut, the sound sharp in the corridor.
He was about to turn toward the main staircase when the murmur of voices filtered through the partially open door of the conservatory. It was the light, feminine chatter of visitors. Amelia’s family must have arrived unannounced. He felt a flicker of irritation—an intrusion on the house’s new, painful equilibrium. He moved to pass by, to retreat to his study and wait.
Then he heard her voice. Amelia’s. It was thin, frayed at the edges.
“Mamá, what more can I do? He really doesn’t think of me that way. I don’t think he thinks of me at all.”
Elliot froze. The sunlight felt suddenly hot on the back of his neck.
Claudia’s reply was not gentle. It was practical, sharp with maternal impatience. “You must do something more. You’ve been married for three years and haven’t given him an heir.”
A younger, lighter voice chimed in. Laura. “Maybe if you made more changes to yourself, you could at least make what’s between his legs happy to see you.”
Elliot’s breath caught. His hand clenched around the watch in his pocket, the metal biting into his palm.
“They’re married. Surely he’s sought you out.” That was Shayla, sounding vaguely curious, as if discussing a strange insect.
A heavy silence followed. Elliot could picture it. Amelia’s downcast eyes, the sketchbook in her lap, her fingers twisting. He took a half-step closer, his body moving against his will, drawn by a terrible magnet.
Claudia’s sigh was deep, weary. He could hear the rustle of fabric as she shifted, could imagine her eyes performing their familiar, devastating scan. “You can’t even hold the attention of a man forced to marry you.”
One of the sisters—Laura, he thought—let out a bright, tinkling laugh. “Mamá, don’t be so cruel.”
In the pause that followed, Elliot heard a soft, ragged intake of breath. Then Amelia’s whisper, so small it was almost stolen by the rustle of leaves from the conservatory plants. “I know, Mama.”
The resignation in it shattered him. It was the sound of a soul agreeing with its own sentence.
“What if we do something about your appearance?” Shayla’s voice took on a conspiratorial, surgically keen edge. “Maybe if you didn’t look so mundane, he might touch you every now and then. We could straighten your hair. You could wear loose dresses to hide your fat belly—it’s horrible to look at. I’ve heard there are creams that make your skin look whiter. And you could wear a lot of makeup to make your face decent.”
The words were not shouted. They were delivered with the calm, certain cruelty of a diagnosis. A prescription for eradication.
Elliot saw red. A pure, incandescent rage he had never felt before, not even at his father, not even at her father who had engineered this hell. It was a violence that had no target, because the target was everyone in that room—everyone but her. It was the system, the expectation, the clean, clinical hatred dressed as helpfulness. It was himself, for being the absent, desired prize that justified this butchery.
He didn’t think. He moved.
The conservatory door swung open under his hand, hitting the wall with a crack that made the four women jump. Amelia sat hunched in a wicker chair, her face ashen, her knuckles white where they clutched the fabric of her dress—a dress that fit her perfectly, a deep blue that matched the twilight in her eyes. Her mother, Claudia, stood imperiously by the orchid table, a woman carved from ambition and disappointment. Laura and Shayla, two polished copies of each other, perched on a settee like brightly-plumed, vicious birds.
All conversation died.
Elliot stood in the doorway, his chest heaving. He couldn’t speak. The fury was a physical block in his throat. He looked at Amelia, and he saw the profound, animal shame in her posture, the way she seemed to be trying to fold herself into nothing. She couldn’t meet his eyes.
Claudia recovered first, plastering on a smile that didn’t touch her hard eyes. “Your Grace! What a wonderful surprise. We were just visiting our dear Amelia. Giving her some… advice.”
“Get out.”
The words were low, gravelly, and absolutely final.
Claudia blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Out of this room,” Elliot said, his voice gaining volume, cutting through the humid, scented air. “Out of this house. Now.”
Laura gasped. Shayla’s mouth formed a perfect ‘O’.
“You cannot be serious,” Claudia sputtered, her cheeks flushing with indignation. “We are family—”
“You are vipers.” Elliot took a step into the room, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. “You come into my home, you sit in my wife’s sanctuary, and you dissect her like a carcass for the market. You speak of her hair, her skin, her body—” His gaze snapped to Shayla, who shrank back. “You call the life in her ‘horrible to look at’?”
Amelia made a small, choked sound. She was staring at him now, her eyes wide with something beyond shock—a kind of terrified disbelief.
“Elliot, please,” she whispered, her voice breaking.
He didn’t look away from her mother. “You have three minutes to be beyond my gates. If you ever speak to her like that again, if you ever so much as look at her with anything less than the respect she is owed as the Duchess of Bellewood, I will ruin your husband. I will call in every loan, block every trade license, and see your social ambitions ground to dust. Do you understand me?”
Claudia’s face went from red to white. The threat was not idle. The power imbalance, which she had sought to exploit through her daughter, was now a blade at her own throat. For the first time, real fear flickered in her eyes.
Without another word, she snatched her reticule from the table. “Girls. We are leaving.”
Laura and Shayla scrambled up, shooting confused, frightened glances at Elliot and then at Amelia, who sat motionless, a statue of quiet agony. They scurried after their mother, their fashionable heels clicking a frantic retreat down the hall.
The silence they left was thick, pulsing. Elliot could hear the drip of water from the watering can someone had left, the distant call of a rook from the gardens.
He was left standing there, his rage evaporating as quickly as it had come, leaving behind a vast, trembling emptiness and the wreckage of his actions. He turned slowly.
Amelia was looking at her hands, now clenched together in her lap. A single tear tracked its way down her cheek, cutting a path through the dust motes caught in the sunbeam beside her.
“Amelia,” he said, his voice now rough, drained.
“Why did you do that?” Her question was a breath, barely audible.
“Because what they said was… it was monstrous.”
“It was the truth.” She looked up at him then, and the raw pain in her eyes was worse than any vitriol from her sisters. “They were just saying aloud what everyone knows. What you know.” She stood up, her movements stiff. “You didn’t defend me. You defended your property. Your ‘Duchess’. You defended yourself from the embarrassment of having a wife who is… all of those things.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Don’t use me as a weapon against my own family. My circumstances are humiliation enough without being the cause of their ruin, too.”
She walked past him, careful not to let her sleeve brush his arm. He stood alone in the sun-drenched conservatory, surrounded by the vibrant, living things she tended, and felt more barren than ever.
The words she hadn’t said hung in the air, more damning than any her mother had uttered.
You have never sought me out.
You have never touched me.
You are the source of every cruel thing they said.
He had stopped the mouths, but he had done nothing to heal the wound. He had only proven he could be louder. He had only made it worse.
From the hallway, he heard Thomas’s cheerful, oblivious voice greeting a footman. The meeting. The normalcy he’d craved.
Elliot walked out of the conservatory, leaving the door open, leaving the sun to shine on the empty wicker chair. He met Thomas in the grand foyer, his face a carefully arranged mask of calm.
“You’re late,” Elliot said, his tone impressively even.
Thomas frowned, looking him up and down. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Let’s just get to the study,” Elliot said, turning on his heel. He led the way, each step feeling like a march away from the conservatory, away from her pain, back into the cold, familiar prison of his own making. But the walls of that prison had changed. They were no longer built of longing for a painted face. They were built of her whispered resignation, and the terrible, echoing truth that he was the architect of every ugly word she had just endured.
They were built of her whispered resignation, and the terrible, echoing truth that he was the architect of every ugly word she had just endured.
He shut the study door behind them, the solid thud doing nothing to contain the chaos in his head. Thomas was already pouring two whiskeys, the crystal decanter clinking softly against the glasses. He handed one over, his earlier cheerfulness gone, replaced by a watchful curiosity. Elliot took the drink and drained half of it in one burning swallow, hoping the heat would scour the image of her tear-tracked cheek from his mind.
“Alright,” Thomas said, lowering himself into the leather chair by the cold fireplace. “Out with it. You look like a man who just kicked a puppy and realized he likes the sound.”
Elliot leaned against his desk, the weight of the ledger-filled drawers at his back. He stared into the amber liquid, seeing not the whiskey but the conservatory’s humid light. “Her family was here.” His voice was flat. “Her mother and sisters.”
He told him everything. The overheard conversation, the clinical dissection of her body, her hair, her worth. The silver dress that didn’t fit. The winter iris. Her mother’s verdict: You can’t even hold the attention of a man forced to marry you. He repeated Amelia’s quiet, devastating acceptance. I know, Mama.
When he finished, the room was thick with silence. Thomas let out a long, low whistle. “Not even at the palace have I heard so much poison, and that’s where the worst of the worst of the nobility are.” He swirled his whiskey, his expression turning grim. “What do you want to do?”
Elliot let out a long groan, rubbing his eyes until colored stars burst behind his lids. “I don’t know. I didn’t like at all that they said those things to her, and much less that she just accepts them as if they were true.”
“Do you think she’ll make changes?” Thomas asked, taking a sip.
“Ever since she found out—” Elliot began.
Thomas cut him off, sitting forward. “She knows everything?!”
“I assume so.” Elliot pushed off the desk, pacing the narrow space before the hearth. “Since our conversation the other day, she’s been acting strange, very distant. She’s not like before.”
Thomas asked what he meant.
“She used to wear vibrant colors and her hair loose, very little makeup.” He stopped pacing, the observations tumbling out, each one a fresh indictment. “Now she wears the pastel or muted colors that are in fashion. Her hair is pulled back so tightly you don’t even notice that her hair is curly. And she wears enough makeup that you can’t tell she has freckles.”
“A full-scale retreat,” Thomas mused, his tone losing its levity. “She’s erasing the parts they criticized. Making herself bland, invisible.” He looked at Elliot, a new, speculative gleam in his eye. “What if you spend the night with her, so she takes what you said seriously?”
Elliot blinked. “I could. Our encounters are rare, but they’re not… bad.”
Thomas laughed, a sharp, disbelieving bark. “You call sleeping with your wife an encounter that’s ‘not bad’? Hell, I can already imagine your performance. A brisk bit of business in the dark, then off to your own room to brood by the fire.”
Elliot looked at him, offended. “She hasn’t complained.”
“Does she have anything to compare it to?” Thomas shot back.
Elliot fell silent. The question landed, brutal and unanswerable. He thought of their marital obligations, performed with a bleak, functional courtesy. He had always been careful, distant even in intimacy, treating it as another transaction in their arrangement. The idea of her having any metric for pleasure, for connection, had never occurred to him.
Thomas watched the silence stretch and sighed. “Is there any word stronger than pathetic?”
“Shut your stupid mouth,” Elliot growled, the heat returning to his veins.
Thomas let out a short, humorless laugh. “You can’t talk to me like that. I’m the Crown Prince.”
Elliot met his gaze, the old friendship allowing the brutal honesty. “Shut your stupid mouth… Your Highness.”
A ghost of a real smile touched Thomas’s lips, but it faded quickly. He stood up, setting his empty glass on the mantel. “The problem isn’t her family, Elliot. It’s you. You are the source. You are the ‘forced to marry you’ that gives their poison its teeth. She believes them because you have, for three years, furnished all the proof.”
The words were a direct hit, cleaner and more accurate than any of Elliot’s own spiraling thoughts. He had been the foundation of her misery. His neglect was the evidence her family used.
“So what?” Elliot asked, the fight draining out of him, leaving a hollow exhaustion. “I just… start now? After all this time? She’ll think it’s pity. Or worse, a cruel joke.”
“Probably,” Thomas agreed with infuriating calm. He walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. “But you have to start somewhere that isn’t yelling at her mother or brooding in here with my excellent whiskey. Do something she actually notices. Something that isn’t about your guilt.”
He left, closing the door softly behind him.
Elliot was alone again, but the silence was different now. It was charged with a imperative. Do something. The grand, empty gestures were useless. Throwing her family out had backfired. Buying gifts was Marco’s domain. Flowers were forgotten.
He thought of the sketchbook she always carried, clutched to her chest like a shield. He’d never asked about it. He’d never shown interest in a single thing that was hers alone.
An idea, fragile and terrifying, began to form. It wasn’t a solution. It was a beginning. A question, instead of a declaration.
He left the study and went to the one place he’d been avoiding: the south wing gallery, outside her personal rooms. The corridor was quiet, filled with the soft, late-afternoon light. He stood before her door, his heart pounding a ridiculous rhythm against his ribs. This was harder than facing down her mother.
He raised his hand and knocked, the sound absurdly loud in the hush.
He raised his hand and knocked, the sound absurdly loud in the hush.
Several seconds passed, filled with the frantic beat of his own heart. Then came the soft shuffle of feet on the other side. The door opened a few inches.
Amelia stood there, her eyes half-closed with sleep, a robe of cream-colored linen pulled hastily over her nightdress. Her hair, usually bound so tightly, fell in a loose, chaotic cloud of dark curls around her shoulders. In the dim light of her room, the faint dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks was clearly visible, no longer hidden beneath powder. “Your Grace?” she asked, her voice husky with sleep. “Is something wrong?”
Elliot drew a blank. His rehearsed words vanished. He just stared, arrested by the unstudied reality of her. The sharp, controlled lines of the Duchess were gone, leaving only this warm, rumpled woman blinking at him. He swallowed, his mouth dry. “May I come in?”
Her eyes suddenly looked awake, widening with a confusion that edged into alarm. He watched her think, saw the calculations flicker behind her gaze—propriety, the unusual hour, his unprecedented request. She gave a small, uncertain nod and stepped aside.
He entered her sitting room. The air was different here—warmer, carrying a faint scent of beeswax, dried lavender, and the graphite from her pencils. It was the first time he had ever set foot in Amelia’s private domain. When they had been intimate, it was always because she had sought him out in the Duke’s bedroom, slipping into his cold, formal space to perform a duty. He had never crossed this threshold.
He didn’t know what to do. How to start.
The room was a reflection of her he had never bothered to imagine. Shelves were crowded not with porcelain ornaments, but with interesting stones, feathers, and bundles of dried wildflowers. Several sketchbooks lay stacked on a small table by the window, alongside a cup holding brushes and charcoal pencils. A half-finished drawing of a rook perched on a gargoyle was pinned to an easel, its lines bold and confident, utterly unlike her. A well-worn armchair held a rumpled blanket and a book turned spine-up.
“I…” he began, then stopped. He gestured lamely toward the easel. “Your work is good.”
Amelia closed the door softly, remaining near it as if planning an escape. “It passes the time.”
The distance between them was only a few feet of woven rug. It felt like a mile. Normally, in his room, she would have already crossed it. She would have begun by kissing him—a closed-mouth press of lips against his, then a shy trail along his jaw to his neck. He would let her, his mind elsewhere, until her tentative touches prompted him to take over. He would lay her down, make sure she was lubricated enough so it wouldn’t hurt her. He would do his job. They would sleep together. And the next morning, he would be asleep on his side, and Amelia would be hugging him from behind, her face buried between his shoulder blades.
He realized, with a jolt, that he had never once awoken with her in his arms.
“I came because of what happened today,” he said, the words sounding clumsy. “With your mother.”
Amelia’s fingers tightened on the lapels of her robe. “You made your position quite clear.”
“No.” He took a step forward, then halted when she stiffened. “I made a scene. I didn’t… I didn’t say what I should have.”
“And what should you have said?” The question was quiet, but it held a sharp, unfamiliar edge.
“That they were wrong.” The force of his own conviction surprised him. “About all of it. About you.”
A sad, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips. “But they weren’t, Elliot.” She used his given name, a rare and startling intimacy that pierced him. “They described the situation perfectly. You were forced. You have a… a preference elsewhere. I am…” She looked down at herself, at the robe draping her curves. “I am as I am. These are just facts.”
“They are not facts,” he insisted, his voice low and rough. He took another step, closing the distance. He was near enough now to see the gold flecks in her brown eyes, the pulse beating at the base of her throat. “The first one is a historical transaction. The second…” He faltered, the ghost of Catherine’s portrait haunting him. “The second is a ghost.” He reached out, his hand hovering near her cheek before he dared to let his fingertips brush a stray curl behind her ear. “The third… is the only thing that has ever been real.”
Amelia flinched at his touch, not in fear, but in sheer, bewildered shock. She searched his face. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, a raw honesty he had never offered her. His thumb traced the arch of her cheekbone, feeling the warm, living skin beneath. “I don’t know how to do this.”
Her breath hitched. He saw the war in her eyes—the ingrained habit of submission battling a newfound, fragile sense of self-preservation. “You don’t have to do anything. Your obligation is met. I understand.”
“Fuck my obligation.” The curse ripped from him, fervent and true. His other hand came up to cradle her face, forcing her gaze to hold his. “This isn’t about that.”
“Then what is it about?” Her whisper was breaking.
“It’s about this.” He leaned in and kissed her.
It was nothing like their previous kisses. Those had been careful, polite, functional. This was all hunger and confession. His mouth slanted over hers, insistent, drinking in the soft gasp she made. He tasted the faint, sleepy sweetness of her, felt the hesitant part of her lips. He poured every ounce of his confusion, his rage at himself, his dawning and terrifying realization into that kiss.
For a second, she was rigid. Then, a tremor went through her. A small, desperate sound echoed in her throat, and her hands came up to clutch the front of his waistcoat, not pushing him away, but anchoring herself. She kissed him back, tentatively at first, then with a gathering fervor that spoke of three years of starved, lonely longing.
It unleashed something in him. A dam broke. His hands left her face, sliding down to her waist, pulling her tightly against him. He could feel the lush, generous curves of her body through the thin linen, so different from the remembered slightness of Catherine. This was warmth and softness and a shocking, profound rightness. He groaned into her mouth, his tongue sweeping past her lips, claiming her.
Amelia melted into the kiss, her own tongue meeting his with a shy boldness that sent fire straight to his groin. Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him closer. The robe gaped open, and he slid a hand inside, finding the soft, worn cotton of her nightdress, and beneath it, the incredible heat of her skin. He cupped the full weight of her breast, his thumb grazing a peaked nipple through the fabric.
She arched into his touch with a sharp cry, breaking the kiss to bury her face against his neck. “Elliot…”
Hearing his name on her lips like that—a plea, a prayer—shattered his last restraint. He walked her backward, never loosening his hold, until her legs hit the edge of her wide bed. He followed her down, his body covering hers, their legs tangling in the sheets and her discarded robe.
His mouth trailed from her lips to her jaw, then down the column of her throat, tasting salt and lavender. He shoved the nightdress off her shoulder, exposing one breast. He took the dusky, taut peak into his mouth, sucking deep and hard.
Amelia cried out, her back bowing off the bed. Her hands scrambled at his back, his shoulders, clutching him to her. “Please,” she gasped, the word fractured.
He knew what she was asking for. The old, clinical pattern. But he was done with that. He stripped her nightdress down to her waist, then sat back on his heels to look at her. In the firelight, she was a vision of disheveled, panting beauty. Her curls were fanned across the pillows, her cheeks flushed, her lips swollen from his kisses. Her breasts were heavy and full, her nipples hard and begging for attention. He stared, his cock aching painfully against his breeches.
“You are so beautiful,” he rasped, the words torn from some deep, untouched place.
A sob escaped her. She reached for him, pulling him down for another searing kiss. Her hands fumbled with the buttons of his waistcoat, then his shirt, her urgency matching his. He helped her, yanking the clothes off, needing to feel her skin against his.
When they were both bare from the waist up, he pressed her down into the mattress, the heat of her magnificent beneath him. He kissed her again, his hand sliding down her stomach, over the soft swell of her belly, and lower. He found the damp, hot heart of her through her nightdress, and she jerked against his palm.
“Fuck, you’re so wet,” he growled against her lips, his fingers pushing the soaked cotton aside to delve into her slick folds.
Amelia whimpered, her hips rising to meet his touch. He circled her clit, a slow, maddening tease, before slipping a finger inside her. She was tight and incredibly hot, clenching around him. He added a second finger, stretching her, preparing her, but the old, careful ritual felt absurd now. He was beyond preparation. He was wild for her.
He pulled his fingers free and shifted, wrenching his breeches open. His cock sprung free, thick and rigid. He positioned himself at her entrance, the broad head nudging against her soaked flesh. He looked down at her face, her eyes wide and dark with need.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice guttural.
She did, her gaze locking with his.
He thrust into her in one long, deep stroke, burying himself to the hilt in her tight, welcoming heat.
A sharp cry tore from her throat, a sound of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. Her nails scored his back. He was lost, gone, buried in a sensation so profound it wiped every other thought from his mind. She felt like heaven, like home, like a truth he’d been blind to for years.
He began to move, a driving, punishing rhythm that shook the bed. Each thrust was a repudiation of the past, a claiming of the present. He fucked her with a raw, desperate intensity, their skin slapping together, her breath coming in ragged sobs.
“You’re mine,” he ground out, the words a possessive, shattered vow against her neck. “You have always been mine.”
She wrapped her legs high around his waist, taking him deeper, meeting him thrust for thrust. “Elliot,” she chanted, a broken litany. “Elliot, Elliot…”
Her inner muscles began to flutter around him, a vice-like grip pulling him toward his own end. He slid a hand between them, his thumb finding her clit again, rubbing frantic circles. She shattered instantly, her body seizing around him, a silent scream on her lips as her climax ripped through her.
The feel of her pulsing around him undid him completely. With a final, brutal thrust, he came, spilling deep inside her with a roar that was half-agony, half-triumph. He collapsed onto her, his weight pressing her into the mattress, his face buried in her sweat-dampened curls.
For long moments, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the crackle of the dying fire.
Slowly, the world filtered back. The smell of sex, of her, filled his senses. The warmth of her body beneath his was a grounding weight. The terrible, echoing silence of the house was gone, replaced by the soft, steady beat of her heart against his.
He didn’t roll away. He didn’t retreat to his side of the bed. He shifted his weight slightly to avoid crushing her, but he kept his body draped over hers, one arm possessively around her waist. His softening cock was still nestled inside her.
Amelia’s breathing gradually evened out. Her hand, which had been gripping his shoulder, relaxed, her fingers tracing a slow, absent pattern on his skin. He felt the exact moment she drifted into sleep, her body going pliant and heavy beneath his.
He lay awake in the dark, listening to her breathe, feeling the gentle expansion of her ribs under his arm. The ghost of Catherine’s painted smile held no power here. The ledger of his failures was still open, but on this page, for the first time, was an entry written in sweat and heat and truth.
He had no idea what happened tomorrow. He had no grand plan, no words to fix what was broken. He only knew he would not be waking alone on his side of the bed. He would be here, wrapped around her, as the first gray light of dawn crept across the room and illuminated the freckles she no longer tried to hide.