Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Isee you there,” Rose said with a smirk.
Christopher’s eyes widened, and he looked down quickly, as if doing so might hide the fact that he had been looking right at Rose when she’d called him out.
He then cleared his throat and focused on the work that he was supposed to be doing, annoyed with himself for letting his mind wander.
For a few moments, too, he and Rose continued in silence.
The scratching of quills on parchment. Steady breathing.
The creaking of their chairs as they shifted positions.
Christopher was doing his best to avoid thinking about Rose, to continue as if she was not there, but the longer that the silence stretched, the greater the urge to look at her again.
He did so carefully. A quick glance, just his eyes, knowing that she, at least, was not paying him attention. She was bent over the desk, focused fully on what she was doing, and that allowed Christopher to glance a second time, holding it now, unable to bring himself to look away.
I don’t understand why I can’t stop looking at her. And it’s not just that I want to check on what she is doing, but that I want her to see me too. It should not be this way. I should not care. And yet, for some reason, I do.
Christopher liked the way she pushed her lips together as she worked. He liked the lines that formed on her brow as she concentrated. And he loved the way that her eyes lit up when she solved a problem.
What he did not like was the loose thread sticking out of the shoulder of her dress.
It seemed to mock him, laugh in his face, and bait him into the distraction.
He wanted to reach out and yank it free or perhaps smooth it down.
And as this battle raged in his head, he dropped the facade of subtlety, now looking at her directly.
“Something the matter?” Rose asked without looking.
“Wh – what?” he stammered.
She laughed. “Staring at me in that way. Should I be worried?”
“I am not staring at you,” Christopher assured her.
“It sure feels like it.”
“Tell yourself what you want, but it’s that thread on your shoulder that I can’t stop staring at.” He half-reached for it but stopped himself. “If you could just… remove it, thank you.”
Rose finally stopped what she was doing and looked up. When she saw the expression on his face, one of extreme discomfort, she frowned. “You’re being serious?”
“I am.”
She glanced at the thread, went to remove it, but then stopped. A smile was quick to twist over her lips, and she flashed her eyes with wickedness. “No, I don’t think I will.”
“What? Why not?”
She shrugged. “I like it there. Besides, it’s my dress, I can do with it what I wish.”
“That is not,” Christopher could feel it building inside of him, that nervous tick, that desire to fix that which needed to be fixed. His leg began to tremble, and his hand began to shake. “I can do it for you.”
“I am sure that you can.” She folded her arms and cocked an eyebrow at him. “But I am not going to let you. So, you will have to live with it, I am afraid.”
The side of his lip twitched again. The urge to assert himself, to use anger if needed, rose in his belly. But Christopher needed to be careful, especially where Rose was concerned. Too often of late, he had let his emotions slip around her, and he couldn’t afford for it to become a habit.
Calm and collected. Reasonable and in control. That is what I need to be. That is who I am, as far as she is concerned. Behave yourself, Christopher!
“Fine.” Christopher tore his eyes from the loose thread and bent his head to look back at his work. “If that is how you wish to be.”
He could feel her eyes on the top of his head. Just as he could sense the amusement. “That’s it then? You’re not going to…”
“To what?” he said sharply.
“Nothing…” She laughed softly, shook her head, and bent herself over the desk; back to work. “Just curious, is all.”
Christopher clenched his jaw and breathed deeply, his attention saved fully for what was in front of him.
This was where he felt most comfortable, this was how he had built his reputation, and it was time he proved why.
The Duke of Thornwall, composed, astute, the type who would walk over his own parents if he thought there was money to be made.
That’s who he was, and any emotions he felt or wanted to show— it really was as simple as saying that he couldn’t afford such things. For his own safety, as much as anything.
In hindsight, maybe this wasn’t the best of ideas.
Christopher and Rose were locked away in his office, a mode of operation that had been Christopher’s suggestion because, as he had told her, he wanted to keep his eye on her.
“That is an odd thing to say,” Rose had said when Christopher raised the topic.
“My meaning is,” He exhaled sharply out of his nose. “It will be easier this way. You won’t have to find me to ask permission to make any changes to my work. And knowing you, were I not immediately available, you would do so without asking.”
To that, she had laughed. “Am I so predictable?”
Christopher was not so stubborn that he couldn’t admit that Rose had saved him when she’d looked at the taxation policy he was working on, fixing a few small errors that were likely to save him a small fortune. Nor was he so arrogant that he wasn’t about to ask for her help again.
Therefore, he approached her the day after the Ball and suggested that she might help him if she was willing.
There was a part of Christopher that knew this was going to be a bad idea.
But there was a greater part that tried to justify the logic.
He struggled to maintain composure around his wife, and he feared that if he did not learn how to, then a time might come when he would lose it completely. Worse, it might happen in public.
This way, he could train himself to keep his cool and not let his emotions get the better of him. It was an idea that sounded good at the time.
But now that they were alone, the door closed, sitting just across the desk from each other… I wonder if my reasoning wasn’t nearly as clever as I like to imagine it.
“May I ask you something?” Rose said suddenly.
Christopher grimaced but did not look up. He pretended to scratch something out on the parchment in front of him, determined to stay cool. “That’s why you are here.”
“No, not about this,” she said. “I wanted to ask…” He wasn’t looking at her, but he could sense her reservations. “About the Ball last night.”
“What about it?”
“You looked like you were enjoying yourself,” she started carefully. “Just as it looked like everyone else was enjoying your presence there.”
“Your point?”
“Why do you act that way?” she said.
Christopher paused. He balked. He felt her looking at him, just as he understood the true meaning of her question. “Act what way?”
She scoffed. “I admit, I do not know you nearly as well as I might, but even I can see how differently you behave when you are in public.”
“Do I?” He was starting to sweat.
“You do,” she said rightly. “When you are here, you are serious and stern and.” She laughed.
“Well, you are pretty much what I expected before marrying you. But last evening, you were fun. You were laughing and making jokes and actually smiling. Truly, I did not know that you knew how to do such a thing until I saw it for myself.”
“What is your point?”
“Which one is the real you?” She put down her quill and folded her arms, and still, he did not look up. “If either one is. You obviously behave a certain way in public and then in private, so I can’t help but wonder.”
“I think you are thinking too much into it.”
‘I don’t think that I am. And I want to know why. Why do you do it?”
Christopher’s jaw clenched, sweat now forming on his brow and the small of his back. “The only thing I am doing is trying to work. Which you should be too. If not, I will ask you to leave.”
She said nothing at first. But she did not pick her quill back up, and she did not pretend to focus on work. She continued to watch him, eyes narrowed, lips pushed together.
“Do you know what I think?” she said finally. “I don’t think either one is the real you. I think there is a third option, one that I have seen glimpses of here and there, but only ever in fragments. That, in my opinion, is the true Duke of Thornwall.”
“Is that right?” he scoffed.
“It is,” she said. “And what is more, I would very much like to meet him.”
Christopher’s heart was racing. His legs were shaking. And his mind was whirring as he tried to think up a response that would deter this mode of questioning and hopefully convince Rose to drop the topic altogether.
She was right, of course, about Christopher’s many personalities. That he acted certain ways in front of certain people, always carefully orchestrated so as not to offend or upset or cause alarm. He did so for a good reason, one that he could not, under any circumstances, tell Rose.
What would she even say? Would she understand? Would she forgive me? Or would she demand that we divorce somehow, lest she announce my secret to the entire world?
Slowly, Christopher looked up from his work to find Rose watching him; arms still folded, eyebrow still cocked derisively. He held a flat expression, almost bored, needing her to believe that she was imagining these things and to give it any credence was to waste time.
“I behaved the way I did at the Ball because, despite what you might think of me, I am capable of enjoying myself at times.”
“That is not what I –”
“And I behave the way I do at home because, as shocking as this might sound to you, I don’t see the need to laugh and make jokes at every turn.
When I am working, I am one way. When I am with friends, I am another.
There is no mystery. There is no hidden side to my personality.
It is just the simple fact that you do not know me nearly as well as you think that you do. ”
She narrowed her eyes. “Is that so?”
“It is.”