Rowan’s brow lifted. “Good,” he said. “Then speak, Miss Crampton. Tell me, what qualities do you imagine I should tolerate in a wife?”
Lucy paused, taking a breath, carefully weighing her words. “I need to know what matters to you,” she said, eyes flicking to his then back to the floor briefly. “Not just what she should be in appearance, but… what she should embody. Temperament, intellect, patience, all of it. Every detail that would make a marriage tolerable… even desirable to you.”
Rowan’s lips pressed into a thin line, his fingers idly fiddling with the feather pen resting on his desk. “Miss Crampton,” he said slowly, “I am not quite certain I wish to answer suchquestions. I am not a man easily pleased nor one who opens himself readily.”
Lucy set down her writing materials, leaning back slightly in her chair, letting her gaze settle on him fully. She allowed a moment of quiet to pass before speaking again. “Then allow me to ask you another question, Your Grace,” she said, tilting her head, keen to mask the flutter in her chest. “I have done some inquiries. I know you are relatively young, established, proper, with impeccable manners. Your reputation precedes you, but there are… gaps. I hope you will indulge me.”
Rowan raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
Lucy pressed on. “Your first son is twelve,” she began carefully. “Which means you married in your early twenties. That might be normal to most people, but I find it… unusual. For a man of your standing to marry so young. Was it… love? Were you so in love with the late duchess that you got married quickly?”
At her words, Rowan’s gaze flickered down to the pen in his hand, his fingers tightening slightly around it. He made no move to answer immediately, but the intensity of his eyes pinned her in place.
For the first time since she had arrived at Langridge Manor, she could feel the pull of his presence, almost magnetic, as if the air itself bent around him. Her pulse quickened, and she realized with a small, startled jolt that her stomach had somehow betrayed her, fluttering as though it had a will of its own. Rowan remained quiet, yet the silence spoke volumes, and Lucy knewthat the answer, whatever it was, was probably too much for him to speak about.
Finally, he leaned back, letting the pen rest on the desk with a deliberate click. “Curiosity is a dangerous thing, Miss Crampton.”
Lucy swallowed, cheeks warm. “Perhaps,” she murmured. “But one must ask the questions if one wishes to find the answers.”
Rowan did not respond to that. Instead, he shifted his gaze away from her entirely, as though her question about his past had already been dismissed, filed away as irrelevant.
“You wished to know what I am looking for,” he said, changing the subject. “Let us return to that.”
Lucy straightened at once, fingers hovering near her abandoned papers.
“She must be proper,” Rowan continued. “Composed. Someone who understands order and respects it. I will not tolerate chaos in my household.”
His eyes flicked briefly to her, then away again.
“She must be good with children. That is non-negotiable. The only reason we are having this conversation is because of my children,” he added. “Capable. Patient. Not indulgent but not cruel. My sons require guidance, not sentimentality.”
Lucy noted the way he said require, not deserve.
“She must be older than twenty,” he went on. “Tall enough to command a room without raising her voice. Attractive, certainly, but beauty without sense is of no value to me.” He paused. “And she must not argue for sport. I have no appetite for constant opposition.”
Lucy’s brow arched slightly, though she kept her tone even. “So, obedience is essential.”
“No,” Rowan said calmly. “Competence is.”
Lucy laughed then, an unguarded, breathy sound she did not bother to restrain. It escaped her before prudence could catch it, light and irreverent. She lifted a hand, half in surrender, half in amusement, her eyes bright with the private joke forming in her mind.
“Well,” she said, still smiling, “that settles it neatly. I must indeed find you a wife, Your Grace, for the lady you describe could not possibly be me. I fail the requirements rather spectacularly.”
Rowan did not look surprised. His gaze remained steady, assessing in that maddeningly calm manner of his, as though he had anticipated the declaration long before she made it.
“I am aware,” he replied.
For the briefest instant, Lucy was taken aback.
Aware of what, precisely?
She bit her tongue, stopping herself from asking out loud. Aware that she was not obedient enough? That she lacked competence? That she was insufficiently tall, insufficiently composed, insufficiently… whatever other invisible measure he kept tucked away behind that maddeningly calm expression?
Her amusement faltered, though she refused to let it vanish entirely. It could not be beauty. That notion she dismissed at once. She had been told often enough, and by people whose opinions carried far more warmth than Rowan’s, that she was beautiful. Nor could it be competence. Lucy might bristle, she might argue, she might occasionally press where she ought to yield, but she was not inept nor careless nor incapable. Whatever box he had in mind, she might not fit it neatly, but that did not mean she lacked substance.
“I am not a man who expects affection,” he continued, almost absently. “Nor one who courts it. Marriage, to me now, would be a function. Stability. Continuity. Nothing more.”
Rowan turned his attention back to her fully then. “If you are searching for a woman who wishes to be cherished, Miss Crampton, you will not find her suited to me.”
