She considered him for a moment, then gestured vaguely toward the shelves lining the study. “You speak as though conversation were a performance. It is not, Your Grace. It begins with recognizing something familiar in the other person, something you like.” Her eyes flicked back to him. “It could be the lady’s appearance, her smile... something you can build a conversation around.”
He hesitated, clearly unused to being asked such a thing. “I’d like to think that I did a good job earlier.”
“You did not,” she said and regarded him for a moment then added, “You sound like Mr. Burke when you speak of society. Earnest, convinced of order, and entirely unwilling to admit that people might wish to breathe outside it. You’re so... rigid.”
His head turned sharply toward her. “Burke?” he paused. “You have read him?”
She shrugged lightly. “Who has not?”
A smile tugged at his mouth. “Many, I assure you. Most speak of him without ever having endured a single page.”
“I have endured several,” she replied. “Enough to know that he mistakes caution for wisdom and tradition for virtue. He fears change so deeply that he would rather preserve a broken system than risk mending it. You need to mend your system, Your Grace.”
Rowan folded his arms, amusement flickering in his eyes. “Or perhaps he understands that society is not a toy to be dismantled by those who do not have to live with the consequences.”
She stepped closer without seeming to notice. “Perhaps he underestimates the damage done by leaving injustice untouched simply because it is familiar.”
He studied her now, openly intrigued. “You argue like someone who has been told to be patient far too often. You refuse to understand where Burke is coming from.”
“But you defend him like a man who has spent his life bearing responsibility,” she returned. “Burke comforts you because he tells you that duty is noble and restraint is necessary.”
His brows rose. “You make that sound like an insult.”
“I mean it as an observation,” she said softly. “One I suspect you would recognize.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Rowan stepped closer. Not abruptly, not with any display that might be mistaken for intention but with the certainty of a man who had decided he wished to hear her more clearly. The distance between them narrowed until Lucy became acutely aware of the details she had no business noticing—the faint crease between his brows when he considered a thought, the way his mouth curved when he restrained a smile.
The way he looked entirely breathtaking for a man as stubborn and uptight as he was.
“Lucy,” he said, and the sound of her name, spoken again, unsettled her far more than it ought.
She should have stepped back. She did not.
“You must understand. Burke speaks of duty as though it were a shield,” he continued, his gaze lingering in a way that made it difficult to pretend this was still coaching alone. “As though obedience to tradition absolves a man of having to question the harm it causes. You hear that as an excuse. I hear it as caution.”
Her breath caught, though her voice did not. “Caution becomes cruelty when it is allowed to stand unchallenged,” she said,meeting his eyes even as she noticed, with clarity, that his attention had drifted again to her lips. “You also must understand what I am trying to say. He writes as though patience were a virtue owed indefinitely and not a demand placed most often upon those with the least power to refuse it.”
A faint smile curved his lips. “You speak as though you have lived it.”
“What if I have?” she questioned.
They were far too close now. Lucy knew it, felt it in the heat of his presence and the way the room seemed to narrow around them. This was no longer the safe, distant sparring of ideas. It was something more intimate, more dangerous. It felt, absurdly, like flirtation dressed up as philosophy, and the worst of it was that she did not wish to stop.
His smile deepened. “You argue beautifully.”
She felt the words land with far more weight than they ought to have. “That is not a compliment,” she said, though it sounded unconvincing even to her own ears.
“But it is,” he said, eyes warm now, intent.
Lucy swallowed, aware that she was still answering him, still engaging, when every sensible instinct told her she ought to retreat. Instead, she lifted her chin. “If this is your idea of flirting, Your Grace, you are doing it improperly.”
“Am I?” he murmured, glancing once more at her lips before returning to her eyes. “Then I fear Edmund Burke has failed us both.”
His gaze lingered there a fraction too long. Lucy felt it like a spark along her nerves, and worse still, she knew that if she allowed another second to pass, he would see the effect of it. The warmth rising to her cheeks, the slight, traitorous hesitation in her breath, all of it would betray her far more thoroughly than any careless word.
That would not do at all.
She stepped back at once, the movement abrupt enough to break the moment, though she disguised it by turning slightly aside, as if the conversation itself had reached a natural conclusion rather than a dangerous edge.
