Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“You smiled.”
Dorothy had not meant for the words to sound so abrupt, but they left her lips before she could reconsider.
The carriage jolted slightly as it rolled over the cobbled road, the city pressing nearer with every turn of the wheels.
They were in London now, after days of steady travel, yet her mind had not escaped the moment from their conversation in the study.
It had lodged in her thoughts like a splinter, impossible to ignore.
He had smiled, softly, as though recalling some secret memory, and the image would not leave her.
She had even dared, in the privacy of her heart, to think it resembled jealousy, though she could never confess such a thing aloud, not even to herself.
Magnus turned his head at her words, his dark gaze steady, his expression unreadable save for the faintest lift of his brow. “Did I?” His voice was calm, but she thought she detected the faint edge of amusement beneath it.
She held her breath, studying him across the carriage. The shadows of the window fell across his features, stern and sharp as ever, but she knew what she had seen. He had softened for the briefest moment, and she could not bear not knowing why.
He watched her a moment longer before leaning back against the seat. “I smiled?”
“Not now. The other day. In the study, when we talked about the hyacinth.”
Magnus tilted his head to the side. “Why does it matter?”
Her fingers tightened over the fabric of her gown.
It did matter. She did not know why, but it mattered terribly.
That smile had unsettled her, raising questions she had no answer to, stirring emotions she had never expected to feel for him.
It had been on her mind from the instant it happened, returning to her thoughts again and again as though demanding to be understood.
Magnus’s eyes narrowed, as if he had caught the flicker of something in her expression. “Why does it trouble you so much?” he asked, low and deliberate.
She looked away, unable to meet his stare.
It was not trouble, not truly. But secrets were already thick between them, and the weight of them pressed on her more than she cared to admit.
Every moment she thought she glimpsed something human, something vulnerable in him, it slipped away again. She wanted to know. She needed to know.
“It just feels different,” she said softly, her voice steadier than her racing heart. “It feels as though we hold too many secrets between us already in this relationship, and it makes everything… strained.”
He regarded her for a long moment, his expression shifting almost imperceptibly, before the faintest curve of his mouth appeared. Not quite a smile, but close enough to catch her breath.
“Relationship,” he murmured, his tone edged with wryness. “You would call this a relationship?”
The words fell like a challenge between them, unexpected and disarming.
For a moment, she wondered if he was mocking her.
Yet there was something in his eyes, a glimmer of dry humor, perhaps, that unsettled her further.
It was teasing, she realized, though teasing of a kind so rare from him that it rattled her composure.
No matter how he chose to define it, there was a relationship between them. Perhaps not in the sense society would so quickly assume, nor in the romantic shape she sometimes feared her heart was bending toward, but in some form that neither of them could escape. Something bound them.
He was diverting from her question; she could see it plainly.
His tone, his half-smile, even the way his gaze drifted past her as though seeking escape, all of it told her he wished to turn her aside.
But she refused to let him. She leaned forward ever so slightly, meeting his eyes without wavering, her voice steady when she spoke.
“There is something you must know,” she said quietly.
“I have a mission. I will not tell you all of it now, but something happened that I have not yet shared with you, but I will. I promise I will. You may think little of my duties in the house, but I mean to fulfil something that matters to me.” Her chest tightened as she confessed it, though her words revealed no more than she intended.
“I do not like that we hold too many secrets between us. You guard yours... I know you do, especially concerning that painting. I have my own secrets, too, but I will not let this one become a secret as well.”
Her eyes searched his, calm though unyielding. “So tell me, Your Grace, what made you smile that day when we spoke of the hyacinth?”
The air between them grew charged in the pause that followed.
He did not look away at once, and in the span of those silent moments, she felt as though she had gotten through to him, finally.
His breath caught, a faint sharpness in the sound, before at last he turned his head, his gaze shifting to the passing fields beyond the carriage window.
“It was my sister’s favorite flower,” he said at length, his voice roughened by restraint.
“Eugenia’s mother loved the hyacinth. When you spoke of it, I thought it—” He gave a small, incredulous shake of his head.
“It was absurd and yet fitting, as though the daughter must echo the mother even in this. That was what amused me.”
Then his eyes returned to her, searching now, the balance of inquiry tipped in her direction. “Why did she begin to favor the hyacinth? What drew her to it?”
Dorothy’s lips parted, her thoughts racing back to that moment in the garden.
“We were gathering flowers for her painting. She would not leave the hyacinth behind. She only pointed, with that stubborn look she has, and I knew at once she meant it. From then on, she would have no other. It became her favorite.”
A faint sound escaped him, half breath, half laugh, and when she glanced at him, she saw it again, that rare flicker of a smile tugging at his mouth. He turned his face toward the window then, though his voice carried easily in the close space of the carriage.
“It seems fitting. She mirrors her mother in more ways than one,” he said quietly, watching the fields roll past. “Perhaps I do not often acknowledge it, but…in these months since you have been here, I can see a change in her. She is better. More comfortable. I think it is only fair to admit that you are the reason for it.”
Her heart stumbled. He went on, his tone steady, almost reflective, “I might not have said so before. I might not have given you the words, but you are doing well, Dorothy. You have done right by her.”
The confession settled between them, heavier than any silence could have been.
She turned her face away, lest he see the confusion tightening her chest. He could not be saying such things to her, not when her thoughts were already so tangled, not when she was barely holding her composure together.
A strange warmth threatened to rise in her, and she fought it back the only way she could, by smiling faintly to herself, then fixing her gaze firmly upon the road beyond the carriage window.
“When we reach London,” he finally said, breaking the silence, “you will need a dress. A new one. There is a ball, and though I loathe public appearances, when I must endure them, I expect you to look your finest. No compromises.”
Dorothy turned her head at that, regarding him with a touch of amusement. The solemnity of a moment ago was gone, replaced by the imperious Duke once more, issuing instructions.
“I shall need your help then,” she replied evenly.
“My help?” His brow arched. “Surely, you jest. I am not in the habit of choosing gowns.”
“Nor am I in the habit of parading alone through modistes’ shops,” she countered smoothly, her eyes never leaving his. “If I must endure London and its scrutiny, then so must you. You will come with me, Your Grace.”
His lips twitched, though he smothered it quickly. “I have far more pressing matters to attend than trailing after you while bolts of fabric and feathers are paraded under your nose.”
“Then I shall not go,” she said simply, folding her hands in her lap.
That earned her a sharper glance, one that seemed to weigh whether she was bluffing. “You would defy me on this?”
“Not defy,” Dorothy corrected, her tone maddeningly calm. “Merely refuse to go without you. What sense is there in choosing gowns to please strangers if the one person who asked for them does not care to see them chosen?”
For a beat too long, silence stretched. She felt the carriage rattle beneath them, then Magnus exhaled, slow and resigned, as if the battle had been lost the moment she opened her mouth.
“You are… impossible,” he muttered.
“It is a small ask, Your Grace,” she returned, allowing herself the smallest smile.
His eyes met hers again, and this time he did not look away so quickly. “Very well,” he said at last, his tone low. “But we will visit no more than two shops. Pick the best ones.”
“Thank you,” she replied, though in truth she knew she had already won far more than that.
She is impossible.
The thought came to Magnus unbidden. Impossible, and yet dangerous.
Something was happening, something he had not permitted, not even noticed until now that he stood in a modiste’s shop.
The realization was awfully strange to him.
How had it come to this? That he was bending, softening, saying yes when he had built his life on no?
The pattern revealed itself the moment he searched for it.
Ever since his return from that business trip with Rowan, ever since the quarrel about the painting on the wall, the change had begun.
He had raised his voice at her, and the guilt of it lingered like smoke that refused to clear.
Perhaps it was penance, this new compliance.
Perhaps he had been making amends without admitting it.
Or perhaps it was something else. Something worse.