She had gone to her room after dinner. She had tried to sit beside the fire, had tried to unpin her hair, had even opened a book and stared at the same line until the words blurred into nonsense. But Aaron’s face would not leave her. His lowered eyes. His trembling fork. The way his little voice had broken.
And beneath that, worse because she wished it were not there, was Rowan.
Rowan, watching her across the table. Rowan, refusing to speak. Rowan, making silence feel like a command.
So she had risen, wrapped her evening robe around herself, and gone to find him.
He had not been in his chamber. Somehow, that had hurt more than it should have.
She had found him at last in the study, standing behind his desk with ledgers spread before him and a glass of brandy untouched near his hand. His coat was gone, his dark waistcoat fitted close over his broad chest, and his shirtsleeves were rolled back to his forearms, exposing strength that looked too alive in the firelight.
He stared at her for one suspended moment, and in that moment something unguarded crossed his face. His gaze moved over her evening wrapper, the loose braid resting over one shoulder, the exposed line of her throat, and the place where his mouth had been.
Emmeline felt the look as surely as touch.
Then his expression hardened. “Duchess.”
“Your Grace.”
His mouth tightened. “If you have come regarding household matters, Mrs. Vale can assist you in the morning.”
“I have not come regarding household matters.”
His gaze sharpened. “Then you should choose your first question with greater care.”
“I chose it precisely.”
The study door was still open behind her. That seemed careless of him. Or perhaps arrogant, as if he had not considered that anyone in the house might dare interrupt him once the hour had grown late and the fires had begun to sink. The corridors outside had been nearly silent when she came down, the lamps dim, the air colder than it had been during dinner.
She stepped inside and closed the door.
“I want to know why you are so insistent that Aaron must never speak of his mother.”
His face hardened, gray eyes darkening. “We have discussed this.”
“No. You have forbidden it. That is not the same thing.”
He exhaled through his nose, impatience restrained by a thread. “It is late.”
“It is always late when you don’t want to answer. Just like last night.”
His jaw shifted. “This is not about last night.”
“It is all about last night,” she said, her voice quieter now, which made the words sharper. “And dinner. And the way Aaron’s face changes whenever he fears he has displeased you. And the way this house treats grief as though it were a stain that must be scrubbed before guests arrive.”
Rowan came around the desk, leaving the barrier of polished wood behind.
His sleeves were rolled back, exposing the heavy strength of his forearms and the dark hair along his skin. Firelight caught the corded tendons in his hands, the same hands that had branded her waist just last night.
The closer he came, the harder it became to remember why she had meant to remain calm. He could likely hear the frantic beat of her heart against her ribs.
“You speak as though grief is harmless,” he said.
“Silence is not healing. That is what I mean to say.”
He stopped a few feet away. “You do not know what you are reopening.”
“Thentell me.”
