Martin didn’t push. Instead, he took a slow sip of his drink, his eyes scanning the crowd with a casualness that felt entirely too deliberate. “It is a glittering crush tonight, isn’t it? Though I find the air in these ballrooms grows thinner every year. It’s enough to make anyone lose their focus.”
He paused, letting the noise of the gala swell between them for a moment before he steered the conversation toward the deeper water. “I noticed the duke was… particularly focused on his duties tonight. He has a remarkable way of disappearing into his own mind when he chooses, doesn’t he?”
The comment was a probe, a gentle testing of the defenses she had built around her husband’s recent behavior. Diana felt the prickle of defensiveness. “He is merely adjusting to the pace of town life again, Martin. It is a great deal to take in after a long absence.”
Martin’s gaze finally drifted toward the far side of the room, finding Alexander’s tall, rigid silhouette standing near a marble plinth.
His voice dropped an octave, the warmth in it replaced by a sharp edge. “Something is unusual, Diana. How can you trusthim so implicitly? He left you to face the whispers of the ton for a year without so much as a backward glance.” He turned back to her, his expression softening into something that looked dangerously like pity. “He treated you as an obligation he could simply postpone. How can you set that aside so easily now, just because he has returned with a few soft words?”
Diana straightened, her spine lengthening until she felt the cold dignity of her lineage settling into her marrow. The emerald silk of her gown shimmered as she drew a slow, stabilizing breath.
“I trust him because he has not returned to me unchanged,” she said, her voice calm and absolute. “The man I married was cold. The man standing across this room is… something else. I understand his silence far better now than I ever understood his indifference then.”
“And you truly believe he deserves that trust?” Martin pressed, stepping a fraction closer as if trying to see behind the shield of her expression. “That he won’t simply wake up tomorrow and return to his first coldness?”
“He does,” she said, her chin lifting. Her certainty was a shield, forged in the heat of the previous night’s surrender and the steady thud of his heart against her ear. “He deserves it because he is trying, Martin. And that is more than I ever had before.”
Martin bowed his head, his expression unreadable. “Then I shall not question it further.”
He receded into the crowd, leaving Diana alone with a nagging, quiet fear: she had defended Alexander’s change, but she still didn’t know what—or who—he was becoming.
“Goodnight, Diana,” Alexander said, the words falling between them like shards of ice against the plush velvet interior of the carriage.
The silent, stony-faced footman opened the door, but it was Alexander’s hand that reached for hers to assist her onto the cobblestones of the Rosewood courtyard. His grip was firm, the heat of his palm seeping through her lace gloves, yet his gaze remained fixed somewhere over her shoulders.
Diana felt the sting of it—a sharp, cold needle to her chest. Only a few days ago, he had been on top of her in the greenhouse, worshiping her with a hunger that had rebuilt her soul. Now, as he stepped back and offered a stiff, formal bow, he looked like the stranger who had abandoned her on their wedding breakfast.
“Alexander, wait—” she started, her voice catching on the humid night air.
“It is late, and the evening was… taxing,” he interrupted, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that offered no room for negotiation.
He turned on his heel, his tall, broad-shouldered frame cutting a path through the dim foyer. The rhythmic click of his bootsagainst the marble echoed with a finality that made Diana’s stomach twist into a hard, painful knot.
She watched him disappear up the grand staircase, his sandy-blonde hair catching the dying light of the chandeliers. He didn’t look back.
Diana retreated to her own chambers, her movements stiff.
Once alone, she stripped herself of the sapphire silk gown—the dress he had gifted her—and pulled on a sheer, floor-length nightgown of cream lace and silk. It felt like nothing against her skin, a flimsy barrier for the restlessness vibrating through her limbs.
She paced. The rug beneath her bare feet felt like hot coals. What had changed? The memory of his coldness at the event, the way he had stood stiffly beside her, all were foreign to the man she’d come to know. Then Martin had hinted at Alexander’s instability.
Now, in the silence of her room, the doubt began to fester. Was he regaining his memory? Was the man who hated sentiment returning to reclaim the body of the man who had just learned to cherish her?
“I will not be ignored again,” she whispered to the empty room, her jaw setting in a line of defiance. “I am not a ghost in this house.”
Before she could change her mind, she walked out of her room and down the long corridor. Every step was a drumbeat of heart and heat. She reached his door and knocked with three sharp, insistent raps.
The door swung open almost instantly. Diana’s breath left her lungs as if she had been struck.
Alexander stood in the doorway, but the formal armor of his evening wear was gone. He was shirtless, his dark trousers unbuttoned at the waist and hanging precariously low on his hips.
The sight of him was an assault on her senses. The firelight from behind him carved out the ridged, powerful muscles of his abdomen and the expansive breadth of a chest covered in a light dusting of curling hair. His shoulders were massive, gleaming like burnished bronze in the shadows, and his hair was disordered, as if he had been clutching it in frustration.
Heat, raw and terrifyingly potent, surged through her. Her gaze traveled traitorously over the hard taper of his waist and the way the muscles of his arms flexed as he gripped the doorframe. She wanted to press her face against that warm, bare skin; she wanted to bite the corded tension of his neck until he groaned her name. Her core throbbed with a sudden, slick ache that made her knees feel like water.
“Diana?” His voice was a deep, dangerous vibration.
“What is the trouble with you?” she demanded, forcing her voice to remain steady even as her mind spun with images of him dragging her into the room. “You’ve been acting odd all day. Cold. You stood beside me as if I were a stranger you were forced to tolerate. You’re deep in some thought you won’t share, and I won’t have it, Alexander. I won’t go back to the way it was.”
