She hesitated, then turned and left, her steps quick and stiff with pride she was not certain she possessed.
The door closed behind her like a punctuation on the entire conversation. It left no room for any second guesses or misinterpretation, and she left without looking back.
Her room greeted her with quiet and candlelight, the bed turned down, the coverlet smooth and waiting. Eleanor shut the door too hard, then stood there resenting the sound she had made.
She leaned against it, her heart still racing, her cheeks warm, her mind crowded with questions she had not known to ask before this night. She forced herself to breathe evenly.
She had known this marriage was not built on romance, but knowing and feeling were not the same.
It was that he had touched her as though he very nearly might have.
And then chosen to walk away.
CHAPTER 9
James did not move at once when the door to Eleanor’s room closed.
He stood in the center of his bedchamber, his hands flexed loosely at his sides, his breath still too shallow, the ghost of her warmth lingering like a bruise beneath his skin. The house had settled again into its careful quiet, but he could hear her.
Footsteps.
Soft, restless.
Back and forth.
His jaw tightened.
“You may as well come in,” he said.
The valet entered without hesitation, closing the door softly behind him, drink in hand for James. Thomas had served him since boyhood, long before James had inherited the dukedom, and longer still before grief had hardened into discipline. Thomas’s presence was as constant as the estate walls themselves.
“You are awake, then,” Thomas observed mildly.
“That is to be expected... She is pacing.”
Thomas did not ask who. He moved to the sideboard and poured a measured glass of water. “That is also to be expected.”
James smirked and accepted the glass but did not drink. “Nonsense.”
Thomas glanced at him. “But it is.”
James’s mouth tightened. “She is not accustomed to uncertainty.”
“No woman is,” Thomas said, and adjusted the cuff of James’s shirtsleeve as if he were correcting something that had been crooked for years. “Particularly not on her wedding night.”
James’s gaze snapped to him. “Do not sentimentalize it.”
Thomas did not flinch. He merely looked toward the door separating James’s rooms from Eleanor’s, as though he could hear the same restless steps. “I am not. I am stating fact.”
James took one slow breath. He did not drink the water. His throat was dry anyway, as though the kiss had taken something from him that could not be replaced by brandy or propriety.
He had kissed her.
Not carefully.
Not the way he had intended.
As a man who had forgotten how to stop.
