He could have released her at once. Any gentleman would have. Any husband performing courtesy for the servants’ eyes would have helped her up, withdrawn his hand, and thought no more of it.
But Rowan held on.
Only for a heartbeat. Perhaps less. Yet in that small delay, Emmeline found herself wondering, foolishly and with a dangerous tightness in her chest, whether he knew he was doing it. Whether he felt the warmth of her hand as sharply as she felt his. Whether some part of him, buried beneath all that restraint, had wanted one more second too.
Then Rowan released her, and the loss of his warmth felt far sharper than it should have.
Emmeline gathered her skirts and stepped fully into the carriage, telling herself very firmly that a touch was not a promise.
Chapter Eighteen
“Off,” Rowan gritted out.
Biscuit lifted his head from the pile of correspondence on Rowan’s desk, blinked once, and then laid his chin back down upon the folded letters.
Rowan stood in the study doorway with one hand still on the brass handle, staring at the dog.
“No,” he said more firmly. “Off.”
The puppy’s tail thumped once against a stack of ledgers.
Rowan closed the door behind him very slowly.
It had been a long day. A long, irritating, airless day of estate matters, tenant petitions, accounts that refused to settle neatly,and the lingering memory of Emmeline’s fingers tightening around the book he had given her outside the village bookshop.
He had thought of that moment far too often.
Of the crackle of brown paper beneath her grip, the sudden stillness in her eyes, the quiet way she had looked at him as though he had not purchased a book, but placed something far more precious in her hands.
That look had followed him into his study, where he had intended to bury himself in work until exhaustion made thought impossible.
Instead, his desk had been conquered by a dog.
Rowan crossed the room and stopped beside the chair. “This is not a negotiation.”
Biscuit wagged his tail.
He should ring for a servant to remove the animal, but he was not going to call for assistance because a creature small enough to fit beneath a carriage seat had decided to assault his accounts.
He was a duke, not a defeated man battling a dog.
“Down,” he ordered, using the edge of the cloth to nudge Biscuit away from the wet patch.
Biscuit scrambled upright, slipped slightly on the papers, then hopped down from the desk, looking like a drunken lord leaving a card table. He landed near Rowan’s boot, shook himself, and looked up.
“No,” Rowan said immediately.
The puppy sat.
Rowan sat as well, because if he continued standing there addressing the dog, the dog would win by making him ridiculous.
He leaned back in his chair and forced his eyes over the first line. Something about drainage on the western field. A broken boundary wall. An argument over rights of passage near the lower road.
A warm weight pressed against his boot, and Rowan looked down. Biscuit had settled his chin atop the leather.
“Stop.”
The puppy’s eyes closed halfway.
