Chapter 8
“My, my, Duchess. We haven’t even finished the wedding breakfast, and you’re already dragging me into the shadows?” Felix leaned in, a slow, knowing smirk tugging at his mouth. “If you wanted that first kiss so badly, you only had to ask. There’s no need for such dramatic measures.”
Rose did not deign to reply. She didn’t even look back.
He followed his bride down the empty corridor, their steps echoing against the marble in a sharp, staccato rhythm.
He watched the rigid line of her shoulders and the way her spine had gone taut as a bowstring.
She moved with a frantic, beautiful energy that made the heavy silk of her skirts hiss against the floor.
When they reached the solid oak door of his study, she flung it open and swept inside. The door swung back with a musical creak, forcing Felix to catch it with the tip of his boot before it could shut him out.
As the latch clicked home, she spun toward him. The sheer force of her fury was a physical thing, radiating off her in waves. Her cheeks were stained a vivid, feverish red, and her eyes were bright with a fire that made his pulse jump. Even in her rage, she was magnificent.
“I will not be made a fool of,” she hissed.
Felix leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms with a lazy, calculated grace. The amusement from the ballroom still lingered in the curve of his mouth.
“I would never dream of it, wife,” he replied. “In fact, I thought I was being quite the dutiful husband, fending off the vultures.”
“Don’t,” she snapped, pacing the small space between the desk and the hearth. “Do not use that tone. I saw Lady Rutledge. I saw the way you leaned into her, the way you let her simper over your lapel on our wedding day.”
“She was a nuisance,” Felix said, his voice dropping to a low, soothing vibration.
He moved into the room, closing the distance between them.
“One I was happy to be rescued from. If you wanted the room to know I am yours, you needn’t have dragged me to the dark.
You could have simply asked me to dance. ”
Rose let out a sharp, jagged laugh. “Dance? You think this is a game of quadrilles and flirtations? You promised me respect, Your Grace. And yet you stand there preening while the ton waits for me to stumble.”
He reached for her, not to restrain but to steady, his fingers hovering just an inch from her silk-clad elbow. “I am respecting you, Duchess. I was merely being polite with my guests.”
She looked at him then, really looked, and for the first time since the bells had rung, Felix felt the mirth begin to drain from his limbs.
Beneath the outrage, he saw a tremor in her mouth.
She looked like a woman who had not slept in weeks, who carried the weight of an infant’s future like a stone around her neck.
“We need rules,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “For Lizzie. For the sake of her reputation, we must be beyond reproach. We must share outings. We should appear unified. We should not embarrass one another.”
“A wife after my own heart. Rules, then. Let us set them out.” He straightened, adopting the pose of a barrister. “Rule one?”
Rose folded her arms. “We will be seen together, whenever possible.”
“A show of unity.” He nodded. “Practical.”
“Rule two: You will not publicly contradict or undermine me. If you have a grievance, you may air it in private.”
“Wife craves privacy for all domestic bloodshed. Noted,” he nodded.
Rose pressed on. “Rule three: Appearances are everything. Lizzie is to be treated as your legitimate ward. There will be no whiff of scandal attached to her, ever.”
He did not smile this time. “No one will harm a hair on her head, or a syllable of her name.”
She looked at him as if suspecting sarcasm, found none, and then, her anger seemed to waver.
“Anything else?” Felix prompted. “Shall we share breakfast and dinner? Attend every tedious ball as a matched set? Shall we share—” he let the word linger like a caress “—the same suite of rooms?”
She hesitated, her gaze flickering to the floor before snapping back to his. “We will maintain separate quarters. Behind locked doors.”
“Of course,” he said, giving her a shallow, mocking bow. “I am a rogue, Rose, not a marauder.”
He watched her, expecting a sharp retort or a flush of embarrassment. Instead, she laughed, and it was a brittle, jagged sound that scraped against the quiet of the study.
“I doubt you’re either, really,” she whispered.
Felix felt a rare spark of genuine surprise. He straightened, his eyes narrowing as he studied the sudden, sharp clarity in her expression. “You think you see through me, Duchess? Most people spend their lives trying to do that and fail.”
“I see a man who uses charm as a shield,” she said, her voice dropping. “And I see a man who is currently asking for my bed while the woman he actually ruined is barely cold in her grave.”
The mirth died in Felix’s chest. The air in the room seemed too thin, turning cold and sharp.
“Rose,” he warned, turning his voice into a low, dark vibration.
“Was that the rule you forgot?” she pressed, stepping into his space, her fury finally breaking through the surface. “Rule four: You will own your cruelty. You will admit, here in the dark where no one can hear you, your part in what happened to Julia.”
The name landed like a dropped glass, shattering the polished veneer Felix had spent years perfecting. His composure held, but only just. He didn’t look at her; he could not. Instead, he looked past her at the cold, unlit hearth, his jaw tightening until the muscle ticked.
“What happened to Julia,” he said, his voice flat and devoid of its usual silk, “was not my doing.”
Rose’s face froze. “You are lying to yourself. You seduced her, then let her rot when it was inconvenient. Because you never came for her, Your Grace. Not once.”
He reached into a drawer and withdrew a small glass bottle, pouring two fingers of brandy. He offered her a glass, but she refused it with a look of contempt.
He took a sip, then set the glass down with care. “I did not seduce Julia. Nor did I dismiss her. She left of her own accord, and by the time I found her again, it was already too late.”
Rose’s fingers flexed against the edge of the desk. “I’ve seen the letters. She was desperate. She wrote to you.”
Felix almost laughed, but it came out as a sigh. “She did not write to me, Rose. She wrote to my father.”
This, at last, seemed to shake her. Her voice was a whisper. “You expect me to believe that?”
He did not answer. Instead, he turned to the highboy behind the desk and spun the lock on the second drawer—his father’s cipher, one Felix had memorized at age twelve. He drew out two papers: one, a heavy slip with a crest at the top, the other a letter on cheap, ink-blotted paper.
He pushed both across the desk.
“Read them,” he said.
She stared at the documents, then at him, suspicion painted in every muscle. At last, she snatched up the first. Her eyes tracked the top line.
It was a death certificate for the duke’s father. Rose read the date, then the signature of the attending physician.
She looked up, confused. “Why am I reading this?”
Felix slid the second sheet toward her. “Read the letter.”
She hesitated, then unfolded it. She did not read aloud, but Felix knew it by heart.
Your Grace,
I beg forgiveness for writing, but I am alone, and I am ill, and I have nowhere else to turn.
I do not ask for your name, but only for your help, as you once promised me, before it was all taken back.
The next line, Felix knew, was stained by what looked like water damage, but he guessed it was tears.
She is so little, and I am so afraid. If you can spare anything for her, I will never trouble you again. Please, Your Grace, do not cast us out.
He watched as the blood drained from Rose’s face.
“It is Julia’s hand,” she whispered.
He nodded. “The date. The address.”
She scanned the line at the bottom. The date was three weeks before the old duke’s death.
She looked up, stricken. “This cannot be.”
“I did not know about her, or the child, until after his affairs were settled.” Felix kept his voice level, though he felt the effort in his bones.
“That letter was never answered. My father kept it, like he kept all his secrets. By the time I found it, Julia was dead and the baby already in the hands of the nuns.”
Rose stared at the paper, her hands trembling. “You let me believe it was you. I thought—”
He cut her off, gentle but unyielding. “I barely knew you, Rose. Barely knew what kind of woman you are. But… the way you care for Lizzie… I cannot doubt your character anymore.”
A sound escaped her then. A gasp, or a sob, he wasn’t sure. “You let me hate you for it.”
Felix smiled, faint and humorless. “I have experienced disdain before. Though not to this level, admittedly.”
She pressed her hand to her mouth, fighting to regain composure. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you would not have believed it,” he said simply. “Because it wouldn’t have changed what happened to Julia, or to Lizzie. Because my father is dead, and there is no justice in damning him twice.”
She read the letter again, then folded it with reverence. “I am sorry,” she said, so softly he almost missed it.
Felix stood, closing the distance between them.
For once, he did not know what to do with his hands. He let them rest at his sides, but his voice was softer than she had ever heard it.
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
She looked up, her eyes shining brightly, openly, like a permission into her very soul. “Yes, I do. I thought I knew everything about you, and I saw only what I wanted to see.”
So did I, he meant to say, but decided against it.
He reached for the letter, but as his fingers closed around the parchment, they brushed against hers.
The jolt was electric, a sharp, sudden spark that seemed to travel straight up his arm and settle deep in his chest. For a man who prided himself on his self-control, the physical reaction was galling.
He didn’t pull away; instead, his thumb lingered for a fraction of a second too long against the back of her hand.
Her skin was soft, deceptively delicate, yet the heat of it felt like a brand through his glove.
He found himself looking at the pale curve of her knuckles, mesmerized by the way her pulse jumped beneath the surface.
It was a small, frantic beat, a mirror to the sudden, heavy thrumming in his own veins.
In that brief contact, the air in the study seemed to thicken, heavy with everything they hadn’t said and the dark, inevitable pull he had been trying to ignore since the altar.
Rose drew her hand back, the movement quick and startled, as if she too had felt the current.
“I’ll keep this secret,” she said, her voice steadier now, though a telltale flush had crept up her neck. “I promise.”
Felix cleared his throat, forcing his hand to drop to his side and his mind back to the cold safety of logic. He clutched the letter, the paper crinkling under the renewed pressure of his grip.
“Good.” He nodded. “It would ruin Lizzie before she has even begun to live.”
They stood there in silence, surrounded by the hushed presence of old books and dust motes dancing in the shafts of late afternoon light. Felix became acutely aware of the space between them; they were far from touching but connected nonetheless by something fragile and new.
The distant sound of laughter from the ballroom filtered through, reminding them both of obligations waiting beyond this moment of unexpected truce.
She shook her head. “We must return soon,” she said and stopped herself, her hand at her mouth, as if there was something else she wanted to say but could not find the words.
“Yes,” he replied. He moved closer, just a half-step, into the cloud of her subtle perfume. “What is it?”
She swallowed; the delicate movement visible along the column of her throat. “I want to trust you. I do. But every woman in that room is waiting for me to fail.”
Felix felt his jaw tighten as understanding dawned and his protective instincts surged unexpectedly.
“Let them wait,” he said, meaning every word. “You are the duchess, now. They will bend to you, eventually.”
Rose laughed, a bitter sound that didn’t suit her. “You make it sound easy.”
“It is not easy,” he replied, thinking of his own battles in society, the whispers that had followed him since boyhood. “But it is possible.”
She looked at him. For the first time since their hasty wedding, he glimpsed something like hope in her face.
“Fine,” she said, lifting her chin slightly. “But if you ever make me look a fool again, I will not forgive it.”
He smiled then, a real smile that felt strange on his face. “Duly noted.”
A knock came at the door, precise as a military volley.
“Your Graces,” the butler called through the wood. “The wedding toasts will commence in five minutes.”
She straightened her shoulders in a gesture he was beginning to recognize as Rose preparing for battle.
“Promise to dance with me at least once,” she demanded.
The request surprised him and sent a thrill of pleasure straight through his chest.
Felix inclined his torso in a deep bow before he offered his arm with a steady, expectant stillness. “I would be honored.”
He opened the door, letting her go first. The corridor was empty save for the butler, who melted away at their approach.
They walked together, not arm in arm, but close enough that their shadows blurred on the wall.
At the threshold to the ballroom, Felix paused. “One more thing, Rose. I will never let you down. Not if I can help it.”
She looked up at him, her expression shifting into a mask of calm, resolute dignity. “Then simply hold your ground, Felix. We have a reputation to build, and I expect you to be every bit as formidable as your title.”
He grinned, and for once it reached all the way to his eyes. “That much, I can deliver.”
When he finally offered her his arm, she took it, her fingers light but definite against his sleeve. Felix felt the warmth of her hand through the layers of fabric, and a certainty settled within him that he hadn’t expected to find.
Together, they walked into the ballroom, toward the light and the noise and the watching eyes.
For the first time since this arrangement began, Felix found himself thinking not of what might go wrong, but of what might, against all odds, go right.