And yet, as she moved through the corridors of Rosewood House, she felt restless. A subtle, persistent awareness that seemed to follow her from room to room, like the faint echo of a presence she could not quite ignore.
The morning passed as it always did.
There were letters to be reviewed, invitations to be answered, and accounts to be inspected with the steward in the small sitting room that overlooked the gardens. Diana conducted each task with her usual precision.
No one would have suspected that anything occupied her thoughts beyond the matters at hand.
“Your Grace?”
She blinked.
The steward had paused mid-sentence, his brows drawn together in polite uncertainty.
“I beg your pardon,” she said at once, her voice smooth, though she could feel the faint heat rising along her neck at the lapse. “You were saying?”
He resumed, though more cautiously now, and Diana forced herself to listen, to focus, to pull her attention back into the present where it belonged.
But it slipped. Again and again.
A glance toward the door at the faintest sound of footsteps in the corridor. A moment’s pause at the window, her gaze drifting toward the drive as though she might somehow catch sight of him crossing it.
It is ridiculous.She pressed her lips together faintly.
By the time the steward took his leave, Diana felt a quiet tension coiled beneath her ribs, something that had not been there the previous day.
The gardens stretched before her in orderly perfection, the late morning sun warming the gravel paths, the scent of early blossoms drifting lightly on the breeze. It was a place of control and predictability.
She walked without direction at first, her hands loosely clasped before her, her gaze fixed ahead as though the simple act of movement might settle whatever had taken root within her.
It did not.
He should have told me.The thought came suddenly, sharp enough to halt her steps. Her jaw tightened at once. She had been accustomed to this arrangement, but that had been before. Before the studio. Before the way his mouth had claimed hers without hesitation.
Her breath caught slightly, the unwelcome but persistent memory sliding through her, stirring something low and dangerous in her chest.Then where is he?
Diana exhaled slowly, forcing the thought away, forcing the question back into silence where it belonged.
She moved deeper into the garden, pausing now and then to inspect a flowerbed, to adjust a detail the gardeners had missed, to give the appearance of purpose where her thoughts refused to remain still.
The hours passed slowly. By the time she returned to the house, the sun had begun its descent, the light shifting, softening, and still there had been no sign of him.
Dinner was announced at the usual hour, as though nothing within the house had shifted.
Diana entered the dining room alone, her posture composed. Yet the moment her gaze fell upon the table—laid meticulously for two—something within her faltered with a force she had not anticipated.
Candles burned steadily along their length, their golden light catching on polished silver and crystal. The emptiness of it was mocking her, as though the room itself bore witness to his absence. Her throat tightened before she could stop it.
“He has not finished?” she asked, the question escaping her before she could temper it, before she could reshape it into something less revealing.
The butler inclined his head with practiced neutrality. “No, Your Grace.”
Diana nodded once, dismissing him with the smallest motion of her hand, as though the answer carried no weight at all. “Very well.”
She took her seat, smoothing her skirts with steady fingers, though she could feel the faint tension gathering beneath her ribs. The first course was placed before her, the soft clink of porcelain the only sound that dared disturb the stillness.
She lifted her fork, paused, then set it down again.
The room felt too large, the high ceilings stretching upward into a hollow silence that pressed faintly against her ears. Every sound seemed sharpened, magnified—the faint crackle of candlelight, the whisper of fabric as the servants moved along the walls, the distant echo of footsteps somewhere deep within the house, too far to belong to him, and yet enough to make her pulse stutter with foolish, fleeting hope.
