“Well?” he asked, barely audible.
Rowan looked at his son.
The praise should have come easily, but the feeling had risen too large and unwieldy inside him, filling spaces that had been empty too long. He reached out before he could decide against it and ruffled Aaron’s dark hair.
The touch was clumsy. Aaron went still beneath it, then his mouth curved. Rowan let his hand linger only a second before withdrawing it. Too much would frighten them both.
“You read very well,” he said.
Aaron ducked his head, but this time he was smiling when he did it. “Thank you, Father.”
The words almost made his eyes sting. Rowan rose. If he remained on that rug another moment, some part of him might give way, and he did not know how to be seen in that giving.
He looked at the book in Aaron’s lap. “You may tell me tomorrow whether Captain Morley survives.”
Aaron’s head lifted quickly. “You want to know?”
“Yes.”
The boy’s smile returned, more openly this time. “I shall tell you.”
Rowan nodded and left the library before he could ruin the moment by trying to improve it.
Back in his study, Rowan had just managed to drag his attention back to a letter from the steward when her voice cut through the room.
“I am looking for Biscuit.”
She stood at the threshold. His body remembered exactly how she had looked in his bed last night with her hair loose, lips softened from his mouth, limbs heavy with pleasure while she nodded and let herself settle beside him.
“I have not seen him,” he said, with a composure that would have served him well in Parliament.
Something shifted on his lap.
Rowan lowered one hand beneath the desk and closed it gently around the puppy’s middle before Biscuit could lift his head into view.
The dog had appeared twenty minutes earlier, pushed his way in through the not-quite-latched door, and placed both paws against Rowan’s boot until he had been acknowledged. Rowan had told him to leave. Biscuit had not. One thing led to another, and somehow the animal had ended up asleep across his thighs like a disgraceful little monarch.
Emmeline stepped into the study. “I see.”
Rowan kept his eyes on the page. “Perhaps Aaron has him.”
“I have just come from Aaron.”
“Miss Harrow, then.”
“I am beginning to suspect, Your Grace, that you are hiding something.”
That brought his gaze up.
Emmeline stood before his desk in pale blue, her hands folded neatly, her expression composed with an innocence he knew at once to be false. Her hair was pinned, but one loose curl had slipped near her cheek. He remembered that curl brushing his hand last night when he had held her face and told her she was beautiful. He remembered the way she had trembled when he touched her. The way she had tasted when he kissed her after making her spend against his mouth.
His body hardened at once.
Biscuit shifted again, and Rowan pulled his chair closer to the desk. Emmeline’s eyes lowered to the movement, then lifted to his face.
The corner of her mouth twitched. “Are you quite comfortable?”
“Yes.”
