His honesty stunned her. “You think you are protecting me?”
“I think I am preventing us from making an irreversible mistake.”
“Some mistakes,” she whispered, “are worth making.”
“Not this one.” He moved toward the door. “Not yet.”
“When?”
“When you can look at me and see a man—not a puzzle, not a project, not a beast. And when I can look at you and see my wife—not a beautiful woman I effectively purchased. When we know what we truly want. Not what we believe we ought to want.”
He left then.
Celine remained in the quiet room, surrounded by dust, ghosts—and the unmistakable sense that something within the Duke of Rothwest had shifted.
She looked around again. The room seemed different now with sunlight streaming through the open curtains. Less haunted. More reclaimable.
Perhaps, she thought, like its owner.
She straightened the papers methodically, setting aside ledgers for proper archiving, smoothing old letters. But her mind drifted constantly—to his confession, his touch, the taste of his restraint, the promise in the kiss he had called ill-advised.
Twenty-six more days.
She doubted either of them would endure them unchanged.
***
The rest of the day passed in a curious sort of domesticity. They worked side by side in companionable silence, sorting and stacking twenty years of abandoned papers. Now and then theirhands brushed as they reached for the same document; each accidental touch sent a small, treacherous spark up Celine’s arm.
By evening, the study was transformed—cleaned, ordered, its ghosts if not banished then at least named and neatly filed away.
“Thank you,” he said at last, as they stood surveying their work. “I could not have done this alone.”
“Yes, you could. You simply would not have.”
“Perhaps.” He rolled his shoulders, and she saw the faint wince he tried to suppress.
“You’re in pain.”
“It is nothing. An old riding injury that makes itself known when I overexert.”
Without thinking, she moved behind him, placing her hands on his shoulders. He stiffened immediately.
“Relax,” she said. “I’m not going to assassinate you.”
“I’m not entirely convinced of that.”
But he did not pull away. Slowly, inch by inch, he surrendered his weight to her touch as she worked her fingers into the tight muscles. She could feel the heat of his body through his shirt, the contained strength beneath the tension.
“Where did you learn this?” he asked at length, his voice a shade rougher than usual.
“My sister Anne suffers dreadful headaches. I discovered this helps.”
“This is helping,” he admitted, then hastily amended, “It is… tolerably effective.”
She laughed softly. “High praise from the Duke of Rothwest.”
“I have a reputation to maintain.”
