Chapter 3
“Are you truly going to prune the roses yourself, Your Grace?” Lydia asked.
Diana did not look up from the hedge she had been viciously attacking for the past quarter hour.
“If I do not,” she replied evenly, snapping another stem with more force than necessary, “I may be tempted to do something far more destructive.”
Lydia, her maid, stood a cautious distance away, hands folded primly over her apron. She had served Diana long enough to recognize the particular stillness that meant her mistress was anything but calm.
“It has been only twelve hours,” Lydia ventured carefully.
Diana’s shears paused mid-air. “I am aware of the passage of time.”
“You have not once set foot in the east wing,” Lydia continued. “Nor have you rung for His Grace.”
Diana resumed trimming the hedge with precise, punishing cuts. “His Grace appears to possess two functioning legs. I assume he is capable of movement, if he wishes to see me.”
Lydia cleared her throat delicately. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but then closed it again, her warm eyes fixed on Diana’s face.
Diana straightened slowly, brushing a stray curl from her temple. The morning air was crisp and fragrant with damp soil. The garden had always been her refuge, with its orderly beds, its predictable growth. Those were things that responded to attention.
Unlike husbands.
“I have resented him for a year,” she said at last, her voice low but steady. “Resented his arrogance. His indifference.”
Lydia’s expression softened. “Have your feelings changed now?”
Diana’s fingers tightened around the shears. Now… Well, only some hours ago, he kissed her as though he had been starved. Now, he looked at her as though he had just discovered her. Now he had forgotten leaving.
“I do not know what I feel,” she admitted.
“He is not the same man,” Lydia said gently.
“No,” Diana replied. “He is worse.”
“Worse, Your Grace?”
“He looks at me,” Diana said, her voice dropping almost unconsciously. “As though he intends to truly be my husband.”
Lydia blinked.
Diana turned back toward the roses before her maid could see the flush rising along her neck. She had spent a year convincing herself she was unwanted, and now her body felt hunted. It was frustrating. Exciting. Intolerable.
“I will not be toyed with,” she muttered, more to herself than to Lydia.
“So, you are avoiding him,” Lydia said softly.
Diana stiffened. “I am not.”
“You breakfasted at dawn instead of your usual time. Tea in the orangery. You retired early last night.”
Diana lifted her chin. “I have duties. Of course, I am not hiding from my own husband.”
From his mouth. From his hands. From the way her pulse reacted when she heard his voice.
Before Lydia could reply, another maid came hurrying across the gravel path, skirts gathered in both hands.
“Your Grace!” she gasped. “We cannot locate His Grace.”
Diana froze. “What do you mean you cannot locate him?”
“He was in the library earlier, Your Grace. Then the dining room. And now… no one has seen him.”
Her stomach dropped unpleasantly. He had memory loss.
If he wandered beyond the house, he would not know the streets.
He would not recognize the people who approached him, nor the places he might turn to for help.
He might not even remember their names, which would pose endless complications.
The Duke of Rosewood could step into London like a stranger and have no idea how to find his way back.
Worse still, if anyone realized something was amiss…
The ton will descend like vultures.
And if the wrong person discovered that the Duke could not remember his own life, the scandal alone would be catastrophic.
“Search the lower halls,” she ordered at once. “I shall check the conservatory.”
She moved before she could reconsider the urgency in her step.
Why do I care?
Because if he wandered into scandal, the ton would devour them both. Because he was still her husband, and it was her duty. Because something inside her tightened painfully at the thought of him lost again.
She ignored that last one, her focus narrowing until the house around her became a blur of mahogany and silk.
She searched the drawing rooms, the library, but found nothing but hollow silence. Then, a memory flickered: the heavy, humid scent of the glasshouse at the eastern edge of the garden. It was the only place no one would think to check.
She threw open the glass-paneled door.
The heat hit her like a physical weight, thick and damp. Sunlight poured through the curved panes overhead, turning the interior into a cathedral of gold and green. In the center of the structure, the small, tiled pool shimmered, its surface broken by a sudden, heavy splash.
Diana stepped forward, her boots clicking sharply against the damp tiles. Then, she stopped.
The Duke rose from the water in one fluid motion.
And he was entirely naked.
Diana’s lungs seized. All she could see was the water cascading in rivulets down the bronzed, hard planes of his chest, catching in the deep grooves of his muscles before tracing an agonizingly slow path over his abdomen.
Every ridge of his torso was defined with the precision of a sculptor’s chisel, tightening as he drew a slow breath. Droplets clung to the dark, wet hair at his sternum, shimmering like diamonds before sliding lower, disappearing beneath the rippling surface.
A violent, humiliating heat flared through her, starting deep in her abdomen and rushing upward until her skin felt as scorched as the air in the room. She turned sharply, her back to him, her vision blurring as she stared determinedly at a row of jagged-edged palms.
“Wha—What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice a ragged edge of itself, trembling with a mix of fury and a desire so sharp it felt like a jagged wound.
“I was swimming.” His voice was infuriatingly calm, a smooth contrast to the frantic pounding of her heart.
“You cannot simply—”
“Cannot what?”
She heard the heavy, rhythmic shift of water behind her. The wet slap of bare feet against the damp stone tiles. The sound was far too close. He was coming toward her.
“You are a Duke,” she snapped, her eyes fixed on a cluster of ferns until the green fronds blurred. “You cannot parade about unclothed in a greenhouse like a reckless schoolboy.”
“I am in my own house,” he replied evenly. The air between them was thick, heavy with the scent of damp earth and the clean, stinging aroma of the pool. “And you have seen me before.”
She swallowed, her throat feeling as though it were lined with sand.
“You are my wife,” he added quietly, his voice a low vibration she felt in her very marrow. “Are you truly scandalized by the sight of your husband?”
Her pulse betrayed her, thundering against her collarbone. “I am scandalized by your lack of discretion.”
“If you are so outraged,” he murmured, his voice dropping an octave, “why have you not left?”
Her spine stiffened, her muscles aching with the effort to remain upright. “Because I was searching for you.”
“Because you couldn’t stay away?” he asked softly.
“For your safety,” she lied, the words brittle.
He stepped closer. She could feel the dampness of his skin dangerously near the exposed nape of her neck. The proximity was a physical assault.
“If you wish to see more,” he continued, his tone slow, teasing the edge of her restraint, “you need only turn around.”
Her throat tightened until she could barely breathe. “I have no such wish.”
“Then why is your breathing so uneven, Diana?”
Her breath caught, proving his point. Shame flared in her chest—the hot, stinging shame of a woman who prided herself on being a creature of ice and logic, only to find herself melting at a whisper.
“You presume too much,” she muttered.
“I presume nothing,” he replied. “I observe. I see the way your shoulders tense. I see the flush on your neck.”
His fingers hovered near her waist, but the heat of them penetrated her silk bodice, making her entire body react as though he had gripped her bare skin.
“Perhaps,” he said softly, “you are curious. Perhaps you wish to know whether I remember the shape of you.”
The words hit like a physical strike. Fury and a desperate, starving curiosity flared within her.
“You are shameless,” she hissed. She stepped forward sharply, her heels clicking against the tile. “This is inappropriate. I suggest you dress yourself and come back to the house so you don’t catch your death.”
Then she walked toward the door, every muscle was screaming. As she stepped out into the cooler air of the garden, the humiliation hit her in a wave.
Because despite everything—despite the year of silence and the insult—she still wanted him.
“I do not see how the food should take offense if I choose the wrong fork.” Alexander’s voice was calm as he spoke, but the faint tightening in his jaw betrayed irritation as he set down the utensil and reached, at Diana’s pointed glance, for the outer one instead.
The dining room glowed with steady candlelight. Silver reflected flame in disciplined symmetry. The servants moved with near-silent precision along the walls. Everything about the room suggested order, tradition, habit.
And he felt none of it.
“The food is not your concern. The people eating at your table, however, will take notice,” Diana replied evenly, lowering her eyes from her plate.
She sat at her accustomed place, shoulders drawn back with the composed dignity of a woman determined not to yield an inch.
The pale silk of her gown caught the candlelight each time she shifted, skimming over the soft, generous curves of her figure without ostentation.
Her coffee-brown hair had been arranged with careful elegance, though a few loose strands had escaped to brush the slender line of her neck.
When she lifted her gaze, her hazel eyes met his with heated defiance.
He liked it.
“I find it excessive,” he said, leaning back slightly. “Three forks for one meal, four glasses for one thirst. We are alone.”