The pressure built until it became intolerable, a restless energy beneath his skin that demanded escape before it exposed him.
“I need air,” he muttered abruptly, the words leaving him before he could temper them. Without waiting to hear a response, Wilhelm turned away at once, unwilling to meet Madeline’s eyes for fear of what she might read there.
He left the kitchen quickly, his stride measured only by force of habit, and the sound of Tessa’s laughter followed him down the corridor, bright and untroubled, contrasting the storm gathering inside him. He paused in the shadowed hall with one hand braced against the cool stone wall as he drew in a calming breath that did little to quiet the turmoil swirling in his chest.
Madeline Watton was not merely a governess.
She was a disruption, and as he stood there in the dim quiet, he was forced to confront the unsettling truth that he had alreadyunderestimated just how deeply she was beginning to unsettle him, and how much it would cost him to resist her.
CHAPTER 16
“Miss Watton.”
Madeline’s fingers tightened around the edge of the page before she could stop them, and when she looked up from the book, she found the Duke standing just inside the library, tall in the lamplight, coat still on, gloves in hand, his shadow stretching across the Persian rug.
“Your Grace,” she mumbled, closing the book with care that felt entirely too staged, as if a gentle gesture might disguise the sudden quickness of her pulse. “I did not realize you were still awake.”
“I am,” Wilhelm replied, and his voice was low enough to make the silence around them feel thicker and more intimate. He took a few steps forward and stopped near the nearest armchair. His gaze moved from her face to the book in her lap, then back again. “Has Tessa gone to bed?”
“Tessa is asleep, Your Grace.” She shifted in her seat, smoothing her skirt over her knees, and forced her thoughts back into the lane of propriety.
His brows lifted, and he moved closer, drawing up to the armchair opposite her, though he did not sit. “I want to understand your routine,” he said. “What you intend to teach her, how you intend to structure it.”
Madeline’s chest warmed at the bluntness of it. “I intend to teach her…” she said carefully, choosing each word carefully. “…as a person.”
Wilhelm’s gaze sharpened. “Explain.”
She drew a breath. “It begins in the morning. She usually has an hour of reading, an hour of writing, and lessons in arithmetic as needed. Her French is passable, but I want to strengthen it. Her music is…” Madeline paused, smiling to soften the criticism. “Enthusiastic.”
A beat of silence, then his mouth shifted. He presented not a smile, but something close enough to make Madeline’s stomach drop unexpectedly. He lowered himself into the armchair at last, crossing one booted ankle over the other, and the movement made his coat pull slightly across his chest, revealing the strength beneath with an ease that felt almost indecent to notice.
She told herself to look at his face, not at the way his broad hands rested on the armrests, not at the veins at his wrist where his glove had been removed.
“And the rest of the day?” he said, dragging her attention back by sheer force of presence.
“The rest of the day will not be entirely academic,” she replied, making her tone firmer before he could dismiss her. “I will teach her etiquette, of course, but I will not spend hours forcing her to sit with her hands folded. She needs movement, laughter.”
Something moved in his expression so subtly she might have missed it if she had not become so aware of him. His shoulders eased by a fraction. “You handle her easily.”
Madeline blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“You do,” he said, and now there was no softness in it, only truth. “She listens to you. She laughs with you. She follows you.” His gaze held hers with a bluntness that made heat crawl up her throat. “None of the others managed that.”
Madeline’s face warmed, and she hated herself for it. “Tessa is not difficult,” she said too quickly.
Wilhelm’s eyes narrowed and for a long moment, he said nothing. Madeline felt an absurd, aching urge to reach out and smooth the line between his brows, to tell him he could set his burden down for a moment and it would not make him weak, but the thought was so intimate it startled her into stillness.
“Why?” he asked at last. “Why does it come so naturally to you?”
She forced a small breath and gave him a partial truth, because it was the only kind she could afford. “My father used to bring me to the kitchens,” she said, and the words came out before she had time to consider the danger in them. “He said they were the heart of the house.”
Wilhelm’s gaze shifted, focusing more sharply, as if he had just been handed a thread and intended to pull it. “Your father brought you to the kitchens,” he repeated. “Not your mother.”
“No,” Madeline said, and the memory rose so vividly it made her chest ache. Her father had laughed when she tried to lift a heavy pot. He had leaned down and whispered that she did not need to prove her strength to anyone, because he already knew it.
“Was your father… a gentleman?” Wilhelm asked carefully, as though he knew he was stepping near something delicate.
Madeline’s mouth went dry. She had spoken too freely, and she knew it, because she could feel the questions coming. She let her gaze drop briefly to her lap, gathering herself.
