by Abigail Agar
But before long, he stood at the front staircase, feeling himself gazing down upon the children and Marina. He could no longer see. Perhaps it was too far in the distance; perhaps there simply wasn’t enough light. But it didn’t matter. As he stood, the children and Marina’s greetings were wild and electric, filled with laughter and enough light for his blind eyes.
“My goodness, you children! Why aren’t you yet dressed?” Marina asked them, between what sounded like kisses. “Why aren’t you preparing for breakfast? You must be famished.”
Marina Blackwater’s voice was like honey, greeting them. Warm and syrupy and lovely. The Duke loved the way it curled into his ear, wrapping around his insides like a hug. But he hung back slightly, loving the little ecosystem of love that existed down below him.
“Father, look!” Lottie cried, trying to tug him from his reverie. “Ms Blackwater is back!”
There was a long, tense pause. The Duke knew nothing of it, except he felt the gaze of Marina, looking up at him. He opened his lips, hunting for the proper question, or proper answer. But she got to it first.
“Sir, I’ve got it,” she said, her voice raspy. It seemed to him that she might be crying, although it wasn’t clear. “Sir, I’ve got the ledger. And it’s ready for you, and your accountant. Whenever your schedule clears.”
Chapter 25
Marina led the children back to their bedrooms to prepare for the day, her heart fluttering wildly. She kept the ledger tight against her chest, not wanting anyone or anything to tug it away, for it was her ticket to remain home. Home! What a marvellous word, one she hadn’t attributed to any warm environment her entire life. Perhaps this was the true meaning of the word.
“What about this dress, Ms Marina?” Lottie asked, swirling a white, lace affair around her shoulders, her little feet dancing beneath her.
“It will look marvellous on you, Ms Lottie,” Marina echoed. “Are you all right to dress yourself, while I have a meeting with your father?”
“Of course. I’m grown up,” Lottie offered.
Marina ensured that the other children were busy readying themselves, including Christopher, who seemed to hop around his room with his crutches faster than she could on two feet. Then, she shot out the hallway, buzzing her lips as she nearly skipped to the Duke’s study. As she moved, she heard a wild, volatile scream from somewhere near the kitchen—words she might have attributed to Sally Hodgins. “GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME THIS INSTANT.”
They were delicious words. Words of retribution. Marina scampered up the last of the steps, drawing a deep breath, before reaching the Duke’s study. The door was ajar, with light flickering in from the candles atop his desk. As she lifted her knuckles to rap against the wood, he boomed out, “Please. Come in. I recognise your footsteps.”
And so, she did. Her skirts, muddy from her run out of the warehouse, skimmed against the hardwood. She was grateful he couldn’t see her dishevelled look. Yet, as he spun towards her, his dark hair curled and full around his cheeks and chin, his hair mangy, such a contrast to his exquisite suit, his eyes seemed to glitter, as if he could, for the first time, see her.
This caught her off-guard. “Duke?” she began.
But within seconds, his eyes moved away from her. It was clear that it had been a catch of the light.
“Marina, I’m grateful that you’ve returned,” he said, sounding incredibly sombre.
“Yes.” Was that all she could possibly think to say? A million images flashed through her mind—images of the way Jeffrey had chased after her, of the craftsmen and their fine, glowing violins, of the way she and Lucas had trekked out along the muddy moor fields, both overwhelmed with a sense of promise. She was unable to translate any of this to the Duke.
“And you’ve brought the ledger,” the Duke continued.
“Yes. I believe it says everything I feared,” Marina murmured, slowly drawing deeper into herself.
“I believe you’re right,” the Duke said. “I’ve had several of the carriage boys take Sally Hodgins to a little cottage to the side of the grounds, where she will await my decision about what to do with her. Of course, I could turn her into the authorities. And probably should. But the woman, well. She was always there for me and the children, in the wake of their mother’s death. A cruel woman, Sally Hodgins. Never one for a warm word. But regardless, she gave her life to this estate.”
Marina felt her lips curl at the softness of the Duke. How certain she felt that, were it any other man of power, he might have wanted to lock the jail cell door himself and toss away the key.
Atop the desk, the violin’s remains gleamed in the candlelight. She took several small steps towards it, drawing her finger over one of the more jagged pieces. She remembered the blood it had drawn, and spotted the dried blood, still on her skin. She shivered. The memory felt like several months ago, rather than mere hours.
“It’s all right, you know,” the Duke said, his voice lower. “The violin, I mean. I know that …”
“It truly wasn’t my intention,” Marina whispered. “I was upstairs, wanting to play out into the night in this way I haven’t been able to in, well. Since I arrived.”
“I understand the feeling,” the Duke murmured. He walked towards the corner of the room, his fingers slipping along the cabinet wall to find the latch. When he undid it, he hunted around the top shelf until he drew back two violin cases. He passed one, then the other to the top of the desk, before gesturing. “Please. Take one of them. Play for me,” he said.
Marina stuttered when she spoke, next. “Why don’t we play together?”
“A duet?” the Duke asked, his eyebrows high. “I can’t quite remember the last time I did something like that. Always a soloist, you know.”
“Neither do I,” Marina murmured. “I was always surrounded by people who didn’t give a single care for the act of music.”
“The fact that you ever cared about it, given what your environment was, is a kind of mystery. Isn’t it?” the Duke asked. He unclipped both violin cases, allowing their bodies to gleam that deep red.
Something within Marina stirred. Her stomach tightened with apprehension. She hadn’t slept in perhaps 30 hours, yet every single one of her muscles seemed tense and upright, ready. She reached for the other violin, drawing the bow to its taut strings. What if she messed up? What if she showed herself to be an idiot, trying to duet alongside the Duke?
“What if we begin in the key of D minor?” the Duke asked, his eyes peering off towards the corner. With the violin atop his shoulder, he looked even more volatile and filled with angst. Marina could almost imagine him tossing the violin across the room towards her, given any accidental missed note.
“Okay,” Marina agreed. She began a chord, strumming along the unfamiliar instrument until she built herself into a rhythm. The Duke did the same across the room from her until they met on a harmonising chord. As they did, they both flashed thick smiles towards one another. Smiles that understood: whatever music existed in their heads was built of the same language, and that language was magic.
They played for several minutes, as one of the carriage boys raced back from Leeds with the accountant in tow. It was imperative that they make way on fixing the books as quickly as possible, so that no word got out about the bad deeds at the music instrument factory. The Duke had hissed as he’d spoken to one of his other butlers—one who reigned, now that Sally Hodgins had been taken from the house—that they must act before news of the event got to the Queen. “She’s not to know.”
When the accountant arrived, the butler rapped at the door, pulling both the Duke and Marina from their reveries. Marina brought her violin to her side, gasping for air, realising that she hadn’t allowed herself to breathe throughout the crescendo they’d been building. She stared at the Duke in the moment of silence after the knock. His face was taut with tension, his hair wild and curled around his ears, flicking along his shoulders. She felt a sudden wave of want: to burrow herself against him, to
feel his body alongside hers …
These were feelings she felt unable to articulate, even to herself. She busied herself with burying them deep. She tossed herself towards the door, opening it upon the balding accountant.
“Please. Come in,” she said, her voice a bit too bright. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Marina excused herself to return to the children, watching as the accountant began to flip through the ledger, diving into intense discussion with the Duke. Just before Marina closed the door, she again had the feeling that the Duke’s eyes were upon her. But she reminded herself that was impossible.
Chapter 26
The week after Sally Hodgins’ departure from the mansion, Marina felt peace fall over all of them. No longer were she and the children anxious at just the sound of Sally Hodgins’ footsteps, approaching from down the hall. No longer was the cook, Margaret, darting behind corners to cower before Sally ripped into her with one of her comments. In fact, there seemed an aura of laughter, of joy, even as autumn grew darker and the leaves peppered the ground outside.
Marina began to spend evenings with the Duke, after the children fell asleep upstairs. She brought her violin, and they fell into an easy pattern of duet—crafting new rhythms and new melodies, which she, in turn, wrote down. She was amazed at how easy it all felt, working alongside him.
“I hope you know how grateful I am for you, Marina,” the Duke said after she dotted down a full stretch of music. “If it wasn’t for you, all this music would be lost. Jotting it down myself for later … for a later time when I might, potentially, see again, feels like a losing battle.”
Marina dropped the quill to the table, watching as the Duke turned towards the window. Outside, a wind swirled the trees and cast droplets of rain across the pane.
“Don’t think of it as something that won’t happen, Duke,” Marina said. “You’ll see again. The doctor said you would.”
Silence fell around them. The Duke stepped a bit closer to Marina. “You can’t imagine how much I’d like to,” he offered.
“I really can’t, I know. But I can’t imagine not being able to see your children’s faces. To know what it will feel like to finally see Lottie again, for example—”
“It will change me, I think,” the Duke said. “To see them after so long. To know the small ways they’ve changed. I hear Christopher bucking all over the house on his crutches like some sort of maniac, yet I know nothing of, say, a recent growth spurt, or a shift in his smile.”
“It’s just as sneaky as you remember it,” Marina said, chuckling. “He’s always up to something.”
“And Marina,” the Duke continued. “Marina, it’s very clear to me how much you’ve brought to my life. You saved my business from financial ruin, and thus, my name. You saved my children from boarding school, and brought them closer than ever. I hear their giggles ringing out through the house and the gardens. It brings me more joy than I can possibly say …”
“Duke,” Marina whispered, almost wanting to stop him. The compliments made her blush.
“And beyond that, Marina, I so want to see your face. I so want to know the way you look when you make that tiny laugh or when you’re concentrating over your violin. I want to know the curve of your cheek and the twinkle in your eye. I want to know what you look like when you’re sad, even. Although I never want to be the one to cause it.”
Marina turned her eyes to the ground, unable to bring herself to look at him fully. As she gazed downward, he took another step, and then another, until he stood before her. He drew his hand across her cheek, rubbing his thumb against her cheekbone. Every single part of Marina’s body was tense and rigid, fearful. Yet this was the most pleasurable feeling in the world.
“I’m sorry if this makes you afraid,” the Duke whispered.
Marina didn’t know how to respond. She forced herself to look at him, even as he brought his thumb over her lips.
“This is simply the only way I can see, right now,” he continued. “And I so want to see you.”
Marina had once seen a blind man touching another man’s face, the tips of his fingers gliding along his nose, his chin, his forehead. It had seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Why didn’t everyone memorise people’s faces in this way—giving another texture to who they were to you? Marina so craved to reach up and touch his face as well, to feel the roundness of his lips and wrap around the little, soft curve of his ear.
Would he kiss her? He couldn’t possibly. Marina remained statuesque, allowing his fingers to grace along her forehead, along her eyebrows. Many times she tried and failed to say something. To articulate what it meant to be seen in this way. But she faltered.
Moments later, there was commotion upstairs. A crash, then a bang, then a high-pitched squeal. Marina drew back from the Duke’s touch, knowing there was something amiss with the children. The intensity between them was broken. Yet, her heart continued to race in her chest as she hurried up the steps. Her lips still burned with his touch. Had she really been moments from kissing the Duke? How could she possibly fall into him like that? Although, now, she couldn’t question her feelings. The thought of departing from his home, when she’d broken the violin, had been close to deathly. Since then, she’d woken up in sweats frequently throughout the nights, aching with a dream that involved being terribly, horribly alone, back at her mother’s home.
Occasionally, in those dreams, she’d meandered down to her mother’s kitchen table, tears streaking her face, only to discover that she’d never actually left the farmhouse. That the Duke, the children, had all been a dream.
These were the worst of the nightmares. For in them, she realised that she’d never lived this beautiful life; that she’d only cultivated it in her mind. And often, from these dreams, she woke up shrieking. Immediately, she latched her hand over her mouth, not wanting to deliver these sounds to the world. The thought of waking Lottie, just because of her own night terrors, nearly destroyed her.
Upstairs, the children had fallen into a rag-tag game, with Christopher chasing after Claudia on his crutches. Claudia cried out, leaping over a couch and an armchair, while Christopher burned forward on his crutches. Marina appeared in the doorway of the playroom, tapping her fists on her waist in a playful fashion. The children paused for a moment, turning their heads wildly towards her, before Christopher charged towards her, instead. Marina cackled, leaping towards the corner, while Lottie hurried towards her and brought her arms around her waist.
“He’s chasing after all of us, Ms Marina!” she cried. “Make him stop.”
“He’s a foolish boy, Christopher is.” Marina laughed. “How will we possibly control him?”
“It’s impossible!” Claudia called from the far corner, waving her hand, mocking as if she was giving up.
But again, Christopher moved too quickly, pulling himself over the couch and accidentally catching his crutches against the legs of a chair. He fell forward, knocking his chin against a table. Marina shrieked, jumping towards the BONK of his head as it fell to the ground. Her heart raced wildly. Would she really bring the doctor back for this maniac of a boy? How could the Duke ever forgive her for putting him into danger again?
But when she reached Christopher, he was quaking with laughter. A small dribble of blood oozed from his mouth, where he’d apparently bit his tongue. But his eyes were alight. Marina grabbed his shoulders, shaking her head. “You can’t destroy yourself like this, Christopher! The people in this house love you too much. Besides, you’re all supposed to be in bed!”
“Ah! Ms Marina, I love you, too!” Christopher said, his eyes glittering with tears. But within moments, he’d bucked up from the floor, finding his crutches once more and hobbling towards the doorway. He winked back at Marina, making her blush.
It was true: nobody had really told Marina that they loved her. Not throughout her teenage years, certainly. And she couldn’t remember a time in the past, either. As a child, she’d had to make up ideas of love. A
nd now, she felt herself shrouded in it.
Marina corralled them all back to bed, guiding behind Christopher to ensure he didn't sneak off somewhere. Rolling her eyes, she watched as he slid beneath his sheets before dabbing at the blood on his chin. Max came into the room, watching her clean his brother. She brought the rag into her fist and grinned at both of them, her heart beating slowly. With each pump, she felt surer and surer of her strong love for them.
