Charlotte frowned.
“He sent you away… for that?”
“Not just that,” Seth said, voice low. “For laughing. For answering back. For not being the son he’d ordered from the cradle. He said I had afractured natureand needed discipline before it broke the dukedom.”
Charlotte moved closer, wordless. Her hands found his, grounding him with touch where words failed.
“It was winter when they packed me off,” he went on, more softly now. “No farewell. No carriage ride. Just a footman and a list of rules.” A pause. “I think that was the day I learned how to be alone. And when I returned some years later, my mother, too, had… changed.”
Sensing the shift in atmosphere, he asked, “And what about you? What would your family have made of all this?”
Now, it was her turn to muse. “Our mother came up with the idea for the two of us to switch places. She would try to guess which of us was which, and we could never fool her, though the household staff and our relatives were always confused. I remember our house in Carlisle as a place of laughter, light, and... love. I had never been happier.”
“And Amelia?” Seth asked.
“She felt the same. When our mother died and we were told that we would go to different homes, we were distraught. We ran away together into the Cumbrian hills. A farmer found us bedraggled, cold, and hungry. Lord knows what would have happened if he hadn’t found us. Our rebellion only confirmedour family’s belief that we were too much of a handful for any one household. And so… we grew apart.
“I lived a quiet life tucked away in the Yorkshire hills, spending as much time with the household staff and locals as I did in the Assembly Rooms of York. And Amelia...”
“In my world,” Seth finished for her. “She must have adapted well to have caught my father’s eye as a suitable duchess for me in his final years.”
Charlotte nodded primly. “I think she did. But she sometimes craved the peaceful life that I had as much as I craved her excitement. That is why we began to change places for a month each year.”
Charlotte tucked her feet under her and nestled against Seth’s chest. He stroked her hair, his touch surprisingly gentle. Her eyes fluttered shut.
“I have been lonely for a very long time,” she murmured. “Even in the busiest rooms of Hamilton House—guests, cousins, constant chatter—I never quite belonged to any of it. I always imagined Amelia’s life here in London was the opposite. Filled with company. Filled with... everything.”
Seth’s voice was quiet. “London can be the loneliest place in the world.”
Charlotte glanced up at him, her eyes soft. “I don’t feel lonely anymore.”
He didn’t answer with words. He kissed her—slowly, reverently—and she let herself sink into it. Somehow, it always felt new. As if it might be the first time. Or the last. And either possibility made her want to remember every detail.
When he finally pulled back, he rested his forehead against hers.
“Nor do I,” he whispered.
CHAPTER 26
Charlotte sat before the mirror of a rickety dressing table, high in a draughty room at the top of a Derbyshire inn—a modest stopover, a third of the way through their journey. Damp from her bath, she wore only a linen nightgown, her skin still flushed from the heat as she slowly drew the brush through her dark, curling hair.
A soft knock came at the door, followed by the quiet click of a latch. She turned as Seth stepped inside.
“Our rooms connect,” he said, grinning like a schoolboy caught in mischief. He gestured to the narrow door behind him. “I thought I’d test the theory.”
She turned back and met his gaze in the mirror, one brow arching in feigned disapproval. “Yes. The innkeeper entrusted me with the key, thinking it better that I should have it rather than you. I see now why he reached said conclusion.”
Seth’s grin only widened.. His golden hair was tousled from travel—or perhaps from running a hand through it too often. He was leaning against the doorframe, watching her with that maddening, wolfish glint in his eye, entirely too pleased with himself.
“A wise man.”
She turned back to the mirror, aware of his gaze and shamelessly enjoying the weight of it.
“At Towcester, you arranged for us to sleep at opposite ends of the corridor,” she reminded. “Are you trying to tell me something by acquiring adjacent rooms this time?”
He gave a theatrical sigh, all mock suffering. “I didn’t sleep a wink at Towcester, plagued by thoughts of you drifting too far from my reach. Naturally, I sought to correct the oversight. Besides”—he moved farther into the room to sit on the end of Charlotte’s bed—“I find road travel dreadfully dull. Why must I suffer solitude on top of it?”
His shirt hung open. The laces were loose, as if purposefully baring the sculpted lines of his chest and the dip of his collarbone. Damp curls clung to his neck, and his breeches fit far too well for her peace of mind—low-slung and worn in all the right places. He looked like he could pin her to the bed with one hand and still have the other free to undo her completely.
