He let out a low, humorless chuckle. “Do you take all your matchmaking as seriously as you take this?”
“This is my first, but yes... I do,” Lucy said firmly.
Rowan’s gaze sharpened, and for a brief second, his voice softened. “My affairs of the heart are long past simple notions of romance. Like I said, it has been years since I had to flirt with a woman, let alone court her to marry.”
She did not relent. “What about your wife... the late duchess. What of her? How did you get her to court you? To marry you? Perhaps I should not ask, but understanding this may help me avoid…” she trailed off, leaving the implications unspoken though her eyes never left his.
His hands tensed slightly on the desk. “The past is past. It has little bearing here. You would do well to concentrate on the present, not dig for ghosts that serve no purpose.”
Lucy sighed. “You are making this more difficult than it should be, Your Grace.”
“Then I’ll help you,” he said and placed both hands behind him. “You are going to have to teach me if you expect me to do this according to your script, because apparently, my script is not working for you. Of course, you would like it if we wrapped this up quickly, yes?”
“Absolutely,” Lucy breathed.
“Good, then I will follow your lead… this once and only this once,” he said.
Rowan’s smirk was slow, deliberate, and infuriatingly calm. He straightened, brushing an invisible speck from his coat, and then turned, his eyes briefly catching hers before he walked away.
Lucy remained frozen, staring at the polished floor where his shadow had passed. Only when the study door clicked shut behind him did reality seep back in. Her chest tightened, her heart hammering audibly against her ribs, and a heat rose to her cheeks that had nothing to do with exertion.
She sank into the nearest chair, hands pressed lightly to her temples, trying to regain the composure that had deserted her the moment he had smirked and walked away.
Only when a long time had passed did Lucy realize the true cause of her flushed cheeks and sudden breathlessness had been thatsmirk, the casual way he had brushed past her, and the mere proximity they had shared for that fleeting moment.
It was a strange, unfamiliar stirring within her, warmth blooming where none had been before, her attention drawn so sharply that it left her unsettled and unable to look away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“You do realize...” Magnus Fitzgerald drawled, easing his horse into a lazy trot beside Rowan’s. “... that the Ton will expire of shock if it learns you have hired a woman to find you a wife.”
Rowan did not look at him. He kept his gaze fixed on the stretch of winter-dulled grass ahead, jaw set in the way his friends had come to recognize as a warning. “I had no choice,” he replied coolly. “Besides, I see no reason for alarm.”
They rode along the upper stretch of the Walford estate where the land dipped gently toward a line of bare-limbed oaks and the morning mist still clung stubbornly to the grass. Magnus, Duke of Walford, set an unhurried pace, clearly in no hurry to spare Rowan the inevitable interrogation, while Valentine, Duke of Ashbourne, followed them closely.
Rowan himself had insisted upon the outing under the pretext of exercise, yet the truth pressed more insistently than the coldair. Too much had unsettled him in the past few days. His household felt altered, his sons unusually animated, his temper unaccountably frayed, and for the first time in a long time, the order of his life no longer felt entirely within his grasp. He had called for his friends not only for diversion but because he needed witnesses to his confusion, men who knew him well enough to name it, even if he could not.
Valentine laughed, the sound bright. “You see no reason because you are already beyond reason, Rowan. A duke employing a matchmaker—” He shook his head. “Not a mother, not an aunt, not a battalion of well-meaning dowagers, but a stranger whose profession is arranging other people’s hearts. I would pay handsomely to hear how you explained that decision to yourself.”
Rowan’s mouth tightened. “I did not explain it to myself. I made it. There is a difference.”
Magnus leaned forward in his saddle, eyes gleaming. “Ah. Spoken like a man who has lost a battle and insists he merely chose a different field.”
They rode on for a moment, hooves thudding. Rowan had known this was coming. He had known the moment he agreed to meet them that the subject would be dragged into the open, prodded, examined, and mocked with the merciless affection of long acquaintance.
“In truth,” Valentine said more mildly, “we are only surprised it has taken you this long. Three sons, a household in permanentuproar, and not a governess or tutor who lasts longer than a season. One might think desperation had finally won.”
Rowan exhaled through his nose. “Desperation suggests panic. I am not panicked. Like I said, I had no say in this.”
“What even is your goal, Rowan?” Magnus asked with squinted eyes. “You constantly insist that you have no interest in romance, attachment, or domestic harmony. So why agree to this?”
Rowan hesitated, only a fraction, only long enough for both men to notice. “For the family. It is deeply complicated.”
Rowan’s thoughts churned as steadily as the horses beneath him, a turmoil he had not yet allowed to surface. He could not quite understand how Lucy, and, more astonishingly, his eldest son, had persuaded him to let her into the heart of his household. The more he considered it, the clearer it became. She was the first stranger to whom he had granted such unspoken permission, the first woman to occupy that space without title or obligation.
He was not a man given to longing or romance; such indulgences were frivolous distractions from the management of estates, the care of children, and the preservation of propriety. So, on paper, Lucy’s presence was meant to serve a singular purpose: to find him a suitable duchess, to secure him a wife, nothing more. Yet, despite the clarity of her role, he could not deny the effect she had already wrought. She had insinuated herself into the household in ways no outsider had any right to,winning the trust of his sons, navigating their moods, and somehow embedding herself into the rhythm of their lives. It was unsettling, perplexing, and, though he would not admit it, entirely unlike anything he had anticipated when he agreed to employ her. For all his planning and pragmatism, he found himself wondering how she had managed to claim so much space in the lives of those he most cared for and what that meant for him.
“You look troubled, Rowan,” Magnus said and sighed. “What is it?”
