“What precisely did he say?” she asked, though her voice sounded distant to her own ears.
“That he has returned,” the butler replied evenly. “And that he expects to see his wife.”
The words sent a tremor through her spine.
Why now?
Martin stepped closer at once. “You need not see him if you do not wish to.”
Emma squeezed her wrist. “We can remain.”
Benjamin’s jaw tightened. “Or you can claim that you’re indisposed.”
Diana rose slowly from her chair. Her legs felt unsteady for the briefest moment, then steadied through sheer force of will.
“No,” she said quietly.
She smoothed her hands down the front of her gown, suddenly acutely aware of the cut of it, of the exposed skin at her throat, of the way the silk clung to her hips.
He would see her after a year. And she would greet him as a duchess.
“I shall receive His Grace,” she said, lifting her chin.
Her heart hammered with a heavy, rhythmic thrumming that vibrated through her very bones. The storm was at the door, and for the first time in a year, Diana felt truly alive.
“Where is he?” she asked, turning to the butler with composure she did not feel.
“In His Grace’s studio, madam,” the man replied, his professional mask perfect. Yet Diana could feel the tremor of scandal vibrating through the walls of the house. “He went there directly upon arrival.”
The studio.It was the one place in the sprawling mansion she had never entered.
“I shall see him alone,” she commanded, her voice gaining a resonance that surprised even her.
As she walked, each step felt like a march toward a cliff’s edge. Her skin felt electric, every fine hair on her arms standing at attention.
She reached the heavy oak doors of the studio. For a heartbeat, she closed her eyes, fighting the sudden, dizzying sense that the floor was tilting.
Then, she adjusted the fall of the diamonds at her throat and pushed the door open.
The air in the room was thick with the scent of old leather, linseed oil, and something else… Something warm, masculine, and dangerously familiar.
The Duke of Rosewood stood by the wide mahogany desk. His waistcoat was fitted with agonizing precision across the broad expanse of his shoulders. The candlelight caught the gold in his hair and traced the hard line of a jaw that seemed carved from granite.
He looked larger than she remembered, more substantial, filling the room with a gravity that pulled at her very soul.
He turned slowly.
Diana braced for the frost. She expected the polite, bored assessment of a man looking at a piece of furniture he had forgotten he owned.
Instead, the Duke’s eyes—green as a deep, sunless forest—ignited the moment they landed on her. There was no calculation in his gaze, no distance. There was only a raw, searing heat that moved over her in one unbroken sweep. It was a gaze that stripped her of all defenses.
His eyes moved from the arch of her brow to the exposed curve of her shoulders, lingering on the swell of her breasts above the silver lace before returning to her mouth with a hunger so naked it made her breath hitch in a sharp, involuntary gasp.
Before she could gather the strength to speak, he moved.
He crossed the distance between them with steady grace, closing the space until she was forced to tilt her head back to look at him.Up close, he was overwhelming, and she gulped to keep herself from panting.
“Diana,” he murmured.
