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“That is enough,” he said. The words came out harder than he’d meant, and Eloise’s face went flat.

He watched his daughter’s face shut itself down the way it did when she was trying very hard not to show that she was hurt, and he had done that.

Damnation! Why did they always push him this far?

“May I be excused, Papa?” she asked, her voice small.

Adam’s heart dropped to his stomach. “Eloise…”

She was already up. She made it to the door before the sniffling came; he heard it, then her footsteps on the floor. Then the door swung wide, and she was gone.

Juliet stood, but Adam swung on her, anger in his eyes.

“This is your doing,” he said.

She turned around; the candlelight hit her face fully, and he could see she was angry, actually angry, a bright, clean anger that sat in her eyes and the set of her mouth.

“My doing?” she echoed, her tone incredulous.

Adam was even more incensed at her audacity to be angry at all. “You pushed the subject when I had already made my position clear.”

“Your position has made her feel she has no right to ask.” Her voice was controlled, but only just. “You may call that protection, but I call it⁠—”

“I call it none of your business,” he said, and pushed back from the table.

“Someone has to say it to you,” she hissed back. “Since no one else in this house apparently will.”

“Duchess,” the duke addressed her, but she didn’t respond.

Instead, she turned for the door.

He crossed the room in four strides, and he caught her arm above the elbow.

Slowly, her eyes lifted to meet his. The anger and the fire in them still burned hot. The candlelight illuminated her features, giving her lips a plum shade of red that he had to force his eyes away from. She arched a brow.

Why had he come all the way over here? Now that he had, he did not quite know what he’d meant to do. It felt as though he had moved on instinct because she was leaving and they were not finished.

Surely some other part of him, which had been listening to her voice all evening, didn't particularly care about the argument anymore.

Her eyes dropped to his hold on her arm, and she let out a deep sigh.

“If you have nothing else to say, I’ll take my leave. Good night, Your Grace⁠—”

“Stop,” he growled, the word rough in the quiet of the room.

He meant to demand obedience, to remind her where she stood, but his breath hitched the moment she turned. All the righteous fury he’d carried a moment ago began to dissolve, leaving behind only the dangerous, intoxicating heat of her proximity.

“God help me, Juliet…” he murmured. “Why do you make it impossible to stay angry at you?”

Her arm slackened a little beneath his grip. “What do you mean, Adam?” she asked.

Hearing his name from her lips, stripped of all titles and propriety, felt like a match dropped on dry tinder. He tightened his hold just a fraction, pulling her back another inch so there was no space left between their worlds. His gaze dropped from her flashing eyes to the defiant curve of her mouth.

“What I mean is, you make me question every rule I’ve ever lived by,” he muttered, his voice dropping to a harsh, ragged whisper as the anger bled entirely into a sudden, consuming ache. “And still, all I can think about is how much I want to hear that sharp tongue of yours say my name.”

Those soft eyes glistened, calling out to him. “Adam?” she whispered, this time even softer.

His blood raced, boiling like a volcano about to erupt.