Chapter 14 #2
“He never spoke of it again, except once, when he threatened my stepfather into silence over the whole affair. It cost him—his father never forgave the interference. But Felix would not see me ruined.” Sophia smiled, not unkindly.
“He’s done this sort of thing more than once, you know. For women who needed help.”
“I never would have—” Rose stuttered.
Sophia covered her hand, warm and solid. “He hides it. He hates to be thought of as a hero, or even as kind. But he is. I am pleased beyond words that he found a woman worthy of the real Felix Greycliff.”
Rose felt tears threaten, sharp and unwelcome. “Thank you for telling me.”
“It’s nothing.” Sophia’s eyes sparkled. “I imagine you know him better than anyone, now. Just remember that what you see is not always what you get in this world. Especially with men.”
Felix and Mr. March reappeared, the men’s voices bright with the laughter of mutual secrets. Sophia released Rose’s hand, turned to greet her husband, and in a blink, the story was folded back into the fabric of the evening, nothing more than a footnote.
But Rose felt it burning inside her.
On the ride home, she was quiet, replaying every word. Felix noticed, as he always did, but said nothing.
Not until the house loomed up and the carriage rattled over the old stones did he speak.
“You looked troubled, Rose. Was Sophia decent?”
“She was lovely,” Rose said, not able to meet his eyes. “She told me you rescued her, years ago.”
Felix’s face shuttered. “That was a long time ago.”
“I never knew,” she pressed, gentle but insistent. “You never mentioned it.”
“There are some things worth forgetting.”
She thought about all the things she had misjudged, all the times she had looked at him and seen only the surface.
She reached for his hand, squeezing it once.
He looked at her, startled, as if she were the last person in the world he expected to be kind.
For the first time since their wedding, Rose wondered if she could actually learn to love him.
But she did not say it out loud.
The carriage rolled on, the city a blur of lamps and mystery, and Rose realized she was not afraid of the darkness anymore.
She was afraid of what waited in the light.
The moonlight slanted through the tall windows of the entry hall as they returned from the Rutledge House ball, its pale glow pooling across polished floorboards.
Rose lingered by the coat stand, her gloved hands busy unfastening the clasp of her cloak, yet her eyes never met his.
Felix stood a few paces away, shoulders squared beneath his tailcoat, as if braced against some unseen burden.
Between them hung a hush denser than any library, unspoken words heavier than their evening finery.
She shrugged out of her cloak and draped it over a peg, then crossed the room in tentative steps, never too close, never too far.
In the dim light, the silk of her dress sparkled like distant stars. He watched her silently with his fingers curled at his side. All that passed between them was Rose’s steady gaze and Felix’s reluctant silence.
Their footsteps echoed when they moved, as if the house itself strained to hear what they would say. Rose paused at the threshold of the drawing room; her profile framed by the doorway. She flexed one gloved fingertip, then let her hand fall.
Felix shifted, the soft rustle of his coat the only answer. She wondered if he felt the same tug of unease, an urging that this standoff could not hold forever.
At last, she took a slow breath and stepped over the threshold, stopping just inside the room. He hovered near the window, where the city lights trembled beneath a scattering of stars.
She smiled—small, tremulous, but real.
He crossed the floor in two strides and offered her his hand. At the touch of his glove against hers, the tension in the room shivered and released, and the unspoken truce between them finally broke.
Rose did not move. She waited because she had learned that with Felix, silence was the only thing that ever-produced truth.
“You are not what I expected,” he said at last. “Any of it. The convent. The baby. I… need you, Rose. Desperately.”
The words hung in the room. Rose felt their weight settle over her like a shawl.
“I need you, too,” she said carefully. “I simply won’t let it undo me.”
Felix looked at her for a long moment. The fire snapped in the grate, and somewhere in the house a door closed. “That,” he said softly. “Is exactly what I mean.”
The warmth of the room pressed in, the scent of old books mingling with the faint spice of his cologne, and it emboldened her.
“Then tell me, Felix,” she said, her voice steady despite the flutter in her chest. “Precisely why you cannot give me what I’m asking for.”
He looked away, his jaw tightening as if her question was a hook snagging at something raw inside him.
“Love… is a luxury for those who can afford it,” he replied, his tone edged with deflection, but she saw the way his fingers curled into fists at his sides.
He took a step back, as though distance could shield him from her persistence.
Now, she would not allow him a retreat. Rose closed the gap, her hand brushing his arm with a gentleness that demanded he stay.
“You’re more than what you think you are,” she insisted. “You’re a good man, Felix. I’ve seen it in the way you care, even when you pretend not to.”
The fire crackled louder in the silence that followed, and he began to speak, his voice low and frayed.
“My father… he was a storm that wrecked everything in his path. Affairs that shattered my mother, turning her into a ghost of the woman she once was. She’d weep in the dead of night, whispering about betrayal and broken vows, and I’d lie awake, hearing it all. ”
Rose listened as he continued.
“He called it passion, but it was poison—destroying her spirit, our home, until there was nothing left but ashes. I swore I’d never let myself be that weak, that foolish.”
His gaze met hers again, vulnerable now, and in that moment, the air between them thickened with fresh understanding.
Rose watched the flicker of the firelight dance in the dark hollows of his eyes. He looked, for the first time, like a man who had been holding his breath for twenty years.
“You should—” Rose started, her own pulse fluttering in her throat. She stepped into his space, her silk skirts whispering against his boots. “You should let yourself be foolish, Felix. Just once. The world won’t end if you stop being a fortress.”
She reached out, her fingers trembling as she traced the sharp, rigid line of his jaw. He didn’t pull away. Instead, he leaned into her palm, his eyes closing as if her touch were the only thing keeping him grounded.
“Rose,” he warned, his voice a low, frayed rasp. “Don’t be kind to me. I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Then don’t do anything,” she whispered.
He opened his eyes, and the sheer intensity of his gaze made her breath hitch. He caught her wrist, his grip firm but not crushing, his thumb finding the frantic beat of her pulse.
“If I start,” he murmured, his face inches from hers, “I won’t know how to stop. Is that what you want, Duchess? A man who finally stops caring about the rules?”
“I think,” she said, her heart hammering against her ribs, “that I’m tired of the rules.”
His hand tangled into the hair at the nape of her neck, not to hurt, but to anchor her. He leaned down, his nose grazing hers, his voice dropping to a velvet shadow of a sound.
“You don’t want the rules, Rose? Fine.” He pressed his body into hers, ensuring she felt every hard, demanding inch of him. “From this moment on, the only thing you have to obey is me. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she breathed, the word escaping her not as a reply, but as a soft, broken moan of surrender.
The sound seemed to snap the last of his restraint. Felix let out a guttural growl and closed the distance, his mouth crashing onto hers with a starving, desperate heat.
Then, Felix’s hands found her shoulders to deepen the kiss, pulling her closer until she was pressed against him, feeling the hard planes of his body through the layers of fabric.
Her pulse raced as his mouth opened, his tongue delving in a way that made her knees weaken. She gasped when he broke away, his eyes dark with desire, and guided her back toward the settee. His hands deftly loosened the neckline of her dress.
The cool air kissed her skin as he exposed her. His lips trailed down her neck to the swell of her breasts, teasing her sensitive skin. Her whole body lit up with sensations both strange and completely welcome.
Rose could feel the innermost parts of her thighs trembling as he trailed tiny bite marks beneath the line of her dress. It was a place no one would see, wholly their own. She pushed at his shoulders, gripped at his hair, but nothing stopped the unmooring curl of desire in her stomach.
“Felix,” she breathed, pleading for more.
He responded with a heated grin before sinking lower.
His hands parted her thighs with reverent care, casting up the skirt of her dress until it splayed around her hips.
His breath was warm against her core, and when his mouth found her there, his tongue circling her with deliberate strokes, a wave of pleasure crashed over her.
She tangled her fingers in his hair, nearly ripping it from the root. The sensation built, his lips sucking gently as his fingers teased her entrance.
The room faded away, leaving only the raw, unabated sensation.
“That’s a beautiful sound. Give me more of that,” Felix groaned into her and slid a finger inside her, curling it just right to stroke a sensitive, perfect spot deep within.
Waves of heat radiated from her core. Her breaths came in sharp, ragged bursts.
Rose could only whisper his name like a prayer as the tension coiled tighter. Felix’s movements grew more insistent.
Suddenly, the ecstasy hit a peak, and Rose cried out. Her body convulsed in release, pleasure crashing over her in relentless pulses that left her trembling. Her inner walls clenched around Felix.
He eased her through it, his touch tender now, kissing her thighs with reverence before pulling back to meet her gaze. His own face was flushed.
Felix’s fingers entwined with hers.
“Come,” he whispered, the single word carrying more vulnerability than any of his earlier confessions.
He led her through the darkened corridor, past the room that had been designated as hers since their marriage began.
He opened the door to his bedchamber, and Rose hesitated at the threshold, not from fear but from the strangeness of crossing this final boundary between them.
Felix’s eyes questioned, giving her one last chance to retreat.
Instead, she stepped forward.
His bedchamber smelled of him—sandalwood and leather-bound books.
Rose sat on the edge of the bed, watching as Felix removed his waistcoat and loosened his cravat.
She began to undress, her shyness abandoning her in the heat of her desire.
There was something profoundly moving about these simple domestic acts, more revealing than their passionate encounter had been.
This was Felix, unguarded. He wasn’t the duke, nor the protector of wronged women. He was just a man.
When he sat down beside her on the bed, Rose felt the last of her resistance dissolve. His arm curved around her waist, drawing her against the solid warmth of his chest. She could hear his heartbeat, steady and strong.
“Sleep,” he murmured against her hair, his voice rough with exhaustion, and she was almost disappointed that he didn’t want more.
Rose closed her eyes, letting the rhythm of his breathing lull her toward dreams. The question that had haunted her earlier returned, softer now.
Can I love this man?
Could she believe in this complex, contradictory person who held her as if she might vanish with the dawn?
As sleep claimed her, Rose realized with distant surprise that perhaps she already did.