His nostrils flared slightly. “We married because of scandal, not affection.”
“I was present at the ceremony.”
His gaze sharpened at her words, but he did not soften. If anything, he looked more rigid, more controlled. “We do not need to perform every duty of marriage simply because society has named us husband and wife.”
She wished suddenly, violently, that she had stayed in her chamber. That she had not perfumed her skin. That she had not stood before the mirror wondering if he would like her hair loose.
She stepped back once.
His eyes dropped to the movement, and something roughened in his face. “Emmeline.”
“No.” Her voice shook, but only for a breath before she steadied it. “Do not say my name as though you have not just made it plain I have mistaken my place.”
His hand flexed at his side. “You have not.”
“Then what is my place?” she demanded, the question breaking from her before she could soften it. “Duchess? A mother in all but name to your son? A solution to a scandal? Am I to sit at your table, manage your household, smile before your servants, and then disappear when the house grows quiet?”
“You are twisting this into an insult.”
“Because it feels like one.”
His jaw tightened so sharply she saw the muscle shift. “I am trying not to insult you.”
The laugh that escaped her was small and wounded. “Then you have chosen a strange method.”
Rowan looked away for the first time, toward the fire, and in the flickering light she saw his whole body was too tense, his breath too controlled, his hands held too carefully still at his sides.
That knowledge should have comforted her. Instead, it made the rejection worse. If he did want her, then this was not about her body failing to stir him. It was about some colder decision, some private door barred against her before she had even knocked.
“Why?” she asked.
He did not answer.
Emmeline stepped forward, anger and hurt pushing her past caution. “Why, Rowan?”
The use of his name altered something. His eyes returned to hers at once, darker now, his control visibly tightening around him.
“This is not a matter for tonight,” he said.
“It is exactly a matter for tonight.”
His voice dropped. “You do not know what you are asking.”
“I know that I came here as your wife, and you told me to leave.”
He flinched. The sight gave her a cruel little thread of courage.
“Is it because of your late wife?” she asked before she could stop herself.
The room went cold.
Rowan’s expression closed with such force that she almost regretted the question. But a ghost had stood between them since before the wedding. Emmeline did not know its shape, only that Aaron’s grief went silent whenever it appeared, and Rowan retreated from anything that looked too much like tenderness.
“My late wife has nothing to do with this.”
“You do not speak of her. You do not allow Aaron to speak of her. You guard every mention of the past as if a single word might crack the floor beneath us. And now you say this marriage need not be a marriage at all.” Her throat tightened. “Am I wrong to wonder if there is still a ghost in this house?”
His eyes burned into hers. “Do not speak of things you do not understand.”
