"He retreated just now."
"Yes, but not before sitting with us for..."Rosanne glanced at the clock, "forty-three minutes. That is forty-two minutes longer than I have ever seen him voluntarily remain in any social situation."
Lillian felt her cheeks warm slightly, which was ridiculous. She was not a blushing schoolgirl. She was a sensible woman of three-and-twenty who did not flutter over ducal attention.
"He was being polite," she said firmly. "You asked him to stay."
"I have asked him to stay at hundreds of gatherings. He has never once obliged me." Rosanne leaned forward, her eyes bright with barely suppressed excitement. "Helikesyou, Lillian. I am certain of it."
"He does not like me. He finds me irritating."
"Is there a difference?"
Lillian opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again. The question was more complicated than it appeared.
She thought of the duke's expression when she had spoken of restraint; that flicker of something vulnerable beneath his carefully constructed walls. She thought of the way his hands had tightened on his brush when she leaned close to examine his painting. She thought of the precision of his work, the lifelessness of it, and the way he had looked at the real flower as though seeing it for the first time.
The discipline is in the restraint.
She had meant it as an observation about watercolors. But he had heard something else, something deeper, and for just a moment, his mask had slipped.
"I do not know what your brother feels," she said finally. "I suspect he does not know either."
Rosanne's expression softened. "No. He probably does not. Daniel has spent so long not-feeling that I think he has forgotten how." She reached out and touched Lillian's hand; a brief, grateful gesture. "But he feelssomethingwhen you are near. I see it in him. A kind of... disturbance."
"Disturbance is not necessarily positive."
"No. But it is not nothing, either." Rosanne smiled; a small, hopeful smile. "And that, for my brother, is practically a declaration of devotion."
Lillian laughed despite herself. "You are incorrigible."
"I amobservant. There is a difference."
"A distinction without a practical divergence, I suspect."
Rosanne's smile widened, and Lillian felt her own lips curve in response. It was difficult to remain stern in the face of such transparent delight, and really, what was the harm? Rosanne was young and romantic and clearly invested in seeing her forbidding brother brought low by the forces of love. It was a harmless fantasy.
Harmless, Lillian told herself. Entirely harmless.
But she did not quite believe it.
***
Later that evening, after Lillian had returned to Hartfield and the house had settled into its customary quiet, Rosanne sat at her writing desk and opened her sketchbook.
She had not meant to draw anything in particular. She had simply wanted to occupy her hands while her mind wandered; a habit she had developed in childhood, during the worst of her parents' arguments, when she had needed something to focus on that was not the sound of raised voices through the walls.
But when she looked down at the page, after she had finished, she found that she had drawn two figures: a man and a woman, standing close together but not quite touching. The man was tall and dark and rigid with restraint. The woman was smaller, calmer, with a kind of quiet strength in the set of her shoulders.
They were looking at each other as though neither quite knew what to do with what they saw.
Rosanne studied the drawing for a long moment, then carefully wrote beneath it in her tidiest handwriting:
Lillian Wynthorpe, Duchess of Wyntham?
She stared at the words, feeling her cheeks flush with embarrassment at her own foolishness. It was a foolish, childish thing to do; the kind of romantic speculation she would never dare voice aloud.
And yet.
