Greyson took them. He stared at them, but he saw none of the words, not a single line. His mind betrayed him, rushing back to the corridor, to Hazel’s wide eyes, to the trembling breath that left her lips when he leaned in, to the way she looked at him with such deep, raw wanting.
Fool.
He dragged a hand over his jaw, trying to steady the chaos inside him.
“Shall I… remain for a response, Your Grace?” the footman asked tentatively, clearly sensing something amiss.
Greyson blinked down at the man, as though seeing him for the first time. “No. That will be all.”
The footman left in a hurry, closing the door behind him with a soft click that still seemed too loud. Greyson let out a long, ragged breath. He set the documents on his writing table. Then,he immediately pushed them away. How could he read when he could not even think?
What had he done? What had healmostdone?
He pressed his fists against the edge of the writing table, bowing his head. Hazel’s scent lingered in his memory, lavender and sun-warmed linen. Her breath had brushed his lips. Her eyes had softened, widened, opened for him. And he had stepped toward her, so willingly, so instinctively, and so hungrily.
Greyson shut his eyes in torment. He had sworn to never give a woman the power to affect him this way, to never repeat the mistakes of his brother, who had loved so deeply it destroyed him. And yet… Hazel was unraveling him thread by thread. It was her kindness, her stubborn courage, her ability to walk into the darkest corners of his past and bring light without ever meaning to.
He had told her to leave the past buried. She ignored him. And somehow healed the part of him he kept buried with it.
He should be furious. He should be distant. He should reestablish boundaries with the wife he had married for convenience,notaffection,notlonging that threatened to consume him entirely. But all he could think about was that moment in the hallway, and the crushing certainty that if the servant had called out even one moment later, he would have kissed her.
And nothing between them would ever be the same again.
He surged to his feet, pacing the room like a caged animal. This could not continue. He could notletit continue. He was losing control of his emotions, of his restraint, of the very boundaries he had built to protect himself from the pain of love and loss.
And Hazel was the one person he could not afford to lose control with.
Chapter Twenty-One
Hazel had not expected to miss her sisters quite so keenly.
These past days had been ones in which she had slept better, breathed better, and not once been forced to climb a staircase at a reckless pace because one of them had done something catastrophically foolish. And yet, as her carriage rattled toward Belvington Manor, an ache bloomed beneath her ribs.
Ridiculous,she told herself.Entirely sentimental.
But when she stepped out into the familiar garden and saw Patience and Chastity flying toward her as arrows loosed from a bow, her heart swelled all the same.
“Hazel!” Chastity nearly toppled her with enthusiasm. “You look… goodness, you look positively duchess-like!”
“That is because sheisa duchess, silly,” Patience muttered, though her grin was every bit as bright.
Hazel laughed and hugged them both. “I have only been gone a short while, not a decade.”
“It has felt like a decade,” Chastity declared. “Mama has been quite unbearable.”
“We shall let Hazel sit before we terrify her with the details,” Patience advised, tugging her toward the tea table set beneath the blossoming pear tree.
Their mother was already seated in a picture of composed elegance, though her eyes glittered with something dangerously close to triumph.
“Hazel, my dear. I was beginning to wonder when you would visit. Howareyou settling into Callbury Mansion?”
“Well enough,” Hazel replied, taking her seat. “There is a great deal to learn, but nothing insurmountable.”
Chastity leaned forward eagerly. “Tell us everything. Is the house enormous? Does it echo? Do the servants look frightened when His Grace walks by?”
“Chastity,” Hazel warned.
Patience snorted. “Which means yes.”
