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“I asked you to help care for her,” he cut her off, still looking at his daughter. “Is this what you call caring for her?”

Juliet blinked.

What… what was so dastardly about that?

Learning to swim would be an act of care, would it not? Why was he being so unreasonable about this?

“Juliet did not know,” Eloise said, her eyes wide as she tried to defend Juliet. “I did not tell her the path was forbidden until after we arrived. And then she⁠—”

“Go back to the house.” He said it quietly, the restraint in his tone taut as a rope. “Take your things and go straight to Miss Green.”

“Papa—” Young Eloise tried again, but Adam’s expression was stone cold.

“Now, Eloise,” he said sharply, and Eloise’s lips trembled.

She looked at Juliet, then she gathered her dress and her boots from the grass, pressed them against her chest, and walked up the slope barefoot without another word.

Adam stood and turned to look at Juliet, but the anger she was expecting did not come.

His chest was moving too fast, his jaw set hard enough that the muscle in it showed. His hands, at his sides, were closed into fists.

“Adam.” His name was out of her mouth before she had decided to say it, but it came out softly, because his restraint didn’t speak of rage.

No, it was some other fragile emotion that tugged at her heartstrings.

At the sound of his name out of her mouth, he flinched.

“Do not bring her here again,” he snapped, and Juliet flinched at the cutting edge of his tone. “Not to this lake, or any part of the estate near the water. Do you understand me?”

She stood in her wet chemise, water cooling fast against her skin, and said, “Yes.” Because he was too fragile to argue with in that moment.

He turned and walked up the slope, disappearing once he reached the top, without looking back once.

Mrs. Priscilla waited in the entrance hall with the look of a woman warned by an advance party of two dripping people and preparing for the third.

She took one look at Juliet’s state and moved without preamble. A towel arrived from somewhere, Sarah was fetched, and Juliet was ushered toward the stairs with the efficiency of a woman who had managed unexpected crises for thirty years and saw no reason to treat this one differently.

“The young lady came through not ten minutes ago,” Mrs. Priscilla said, draping a second towel over Juliet’s shoulders. “Dripping, barefoot, and entirely composed about it, which alarmed me more than tears would have done.” She handed one end of the towel to Sarah. “I saw His Grace behind her.” She smoothed the edge of the towel at Juliet’s shoulder, her hands pausing there. “Please, Your Grace. Do not tell me you went to the lake…”

Juliet looked at her. “Why is it so horrible that we did?”

Mrs. Priscilla looked at the rug. Then the wall. Then she said, “It is not my story to tell, Your Grace.” She gave the towel a firm tuck. “But I would suggest you ask His Grace.”

So Juliet changed quickly, letting Sarah pin her hair back up without protest, and then crossed to the adjoining door and knocked.

There was a brief silence after that rap against the wood, when she heard footsteps shuffling closer. The bolt drew back from his side, and the door opened.

Adam stood in the doorway with his waistcoat and cravat gone, wearing his breeches, which were still damp at the cuffs. His hair was wet, pushed back from his forehead. His feet were bare. He had clearly been in the process of drying off.

His brows came up a fraction, as if he’d expected someone else, which was just absurd.

But she couldn’t dwell on the thought because her eyes went to his chest almost instantly, his pecs a hard outline against the soft, thin material of his shirt. He might as well not have been wearing any shirt at all, even though it was unlaced at the collar and tucked roughly into his breeches.

With all the effort she could muster, she made herself look at his face instead.

“Duchess.” His voice was flat, but his eyes… his eyes were intense. Unmoving.

“Forgive me for coming without warning,” she said, clearing her throat once even as her cheeks pinked. “I—I wanted to speak with you.”