Rowan nudged him with his foot. Gently. Biscuit slid an inch, then immediately wriggled back and pressed himself more firmly against Rowan’s ankle.
“I said stop.”
The puppy sighed.
Ridiculous animal.
He should have moved. He should have lifted his foot, summoned a servant, and sent the creature back outside where it belonged. Instead, he remained very still.
The fire burned low in the grate. The study smelled of ink, singed wood, and the faint dampness the dog had brought in from the garden.
Somewhere beyond the walls, the house settled into its evening sounds: a footman’s distant step, the soft closing of a door, the rustle of servants moving through unseen corridors.
And, faintly, Emmeline’s laughter.
Rowan’s gaze lifted from the letter.
The sound did not last. It never did. A brief, warm thread of it from somewhere down the hall, likely the smaller drawing room where she had taken to reading with Aaron after tea. But his body reacted as if the sound had entered the study and touched him. His hand tightened around the paper until it creased.
He hated how quickly he knew her now.
The pitch of her voice when she was amused. The quieter tone she used when Aaron struggled with a word. The breath she drew when Rowan stood too near, and she did not wish him to know she had noticed. It had become impossible to move through his own house without being caught by some trace of her, the blue poetry book on the table beside her favorite seat, the scent of her soap lingering in a corridor after she passed.
Biscuit twitched in his sleep, paw jerking against Rowan’s boot.
Rowan looked down again.
“Traitor,” he muttered.
The puppy slept on, but Rowan did not move his foot for a very long time.
“Biscuit sat,” Aaron announced at dinner the next evening, with the grave pride of a military commander delivering news from the front. “Twice.”
Emmeline looked up from her soup at once, her face brightening in that quiet way that always struck Rowan before he could prepare for it. “Twice? Then he is becoming a gentleman.”
Aaron’s mouth twitched. “No. He ate the carrot after.”
“A gentleman may still appreciate a carrot.”
Rowan cut into the meat on his plate, pretending to attend to it rather than to the way Aaron sat less rigidly than he once had. The boy still glanced at him before speaking, still measured the room before allowing himself too much sound, but there was a small, unmistakable difference. Sentences came a little more cleanly now. Not always, but with fewer retreats into silence.
Especially when talking to Emmeline.
Rowan should have felt only grateful. Instead, his hand tightened around the knife, because Aaron was turning toward her, and Rowan, who had married her out of duty, now wanted her with a hunger that made his own skin feel too hot.
“Did he obey when you told him?” Rowan asked before he could stop himself.
Aaron’s head turned to him quickly. The table went quieter. Even the servants seemed to move with more care along the walls.
Aaron’s fingers tightened around his spoon, then loosened.
“Yes,” he said. Then, after a visible breath, “I said sit. He did.”
The words were simple. Clear. Rowan felt something shift in his chest, as if a lock had moved but not yet opened.
“Good,” he said.
Aaron’s eyes lifted fully to his for a brief second, startled by the answer.
