Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
“Is it Alistair’s child? Is that why you are keeping it a secret?”
Emily gasped.
The sound left her before she could stop it, a small and sharp sound. She turned to find Theodore standing closer than she had realized, his eyes on her face with an attention that was direct and unguarded and entirely without his usual performance behind it.
For a moment, she wanted to be offended.
The words arranged themselves in her mouth, the particular kind of words she kept specifically for Theodore Merrick and his complete inability to mind his own affairs.
She and Alistair had courted. They had been friends.
That was all they had ever been and all they had ever wanted to be, and the idea that she would have. .. that they would have...
But then she looked at his eyes.
He was not being cruel. Strangely, she could see it. He was not prodding, not this time. He was simply looking at her, his gaze moving between her eyes, back and forth, searching, the way a person looks when they genuinely want to understand something and do not know how else to find it.
He just wanted to know.
She opened her mouth.
“No,” he said before she could speak. “No, forget I said that.” He took a short breath and looked away briefly, his hand moving to the back of his neck.
The gesture made him look like he was thinking, like something was working in his mind faster than he could organize it.
“That is not possible. I know Alistair. I have known him for a long time, and there is simply no way he would —” He shook his head.
“No. Not Alistair. Alistair would never.”
Emily said nothing.
“So it is not Alistair.” He turned back to her, his brow furrowed slightly, thinking now, visibly thinking, and she watched it happen with a detached curiosity, observing him with no intention of interrupting.
“Then who?” It was not quite a question.
More the beginning of a calculation. “A woman like you does not simply...” He stopped.
Started again. “I mean to say, you are the most correct person I have ever met in my life. The most proper. You have never done a single thing that was not precisely what the occasion required. You look at me like I am a cautionary tale whenever I so much as —” He gestured vaguely at himself.
“So a woman like you would never—” Another stop.
A slight narrowing of the eyes. “Although...”
Emily raised her eyebrows.
“Although,” he repeated, more slowly this time.
“I do not actually know you very well, do I?” He said it half to himself.
“Every time we are in the same room, we end up arguing about something, and I have never once in all that time thought to ask...” He paused.
“I mean, I know what I think of you. I know what I see when I look at you. But I cannot claim to know what happens when I am not looking.” He tilted his head. “Can I?”
She said nothing.
“So perhaps,” he continued. “I cannot speak for you. I cannot say with any certainty what you would or would not.” He pressed his lips together.
“The father. What happened to the father? Did he reject the child? Is that why you need a husband so urgently, because the father is not...” He stopped again.
Looked at her. “Did he pass away? Is that what you are not telling me? Was there someone before all of this, before the Season, before any of it, and something happened, and now you are without any options?”
He looked at her for a moment. She looked back at him.
“What are you not telling me?”
His voice had dropped. The thinking-out-loud quality had left it entirely, and what replaced it was a tone that was quieter and more direct. Like he had arrived at the edge of something and needed to know what was on the other side.
He took a step forward.
Just one. Slow and deliberate, closing the distance between them in a way that the room had not previously contained, and then he was there, close enough that she had to tilt her chin slightly to hold his gaze, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, close enough that when he exhaled, she was aware of it.
His eyes searched hers.
She could feel her own heartbeat, and it was entirely inconvenient.
The candlelight moved between them, and the room was very quiet. All she could dwell on was the fact that Theodore was looking at her with an expression she had never seen on him before, open and intent and stripped of every clever thing he usually kept between himself and the world.
She thought, distantly and unhelpfully, that he had extraordinarily beautiful eyes.
Then, somewhere behind her, a violin reached the end of a phrase, and the sound of it pulled her back like a hand on her shoulder.
The ball. She was at a ball. Julia's ball, with its hundred candles and its carefully chosen guests, her parents somewhere in that very room, Theodore's friends not more than twenty feet away.
One of them could turn around at any moment, see exactly how close she and Theodore were standing, exactly what his face was doing, and exactly what hers was probably doing in return.
She took a small step back. Gathered herself. It took a moment longer than she would have liked.
“Are you quite done, Your Grace?” she said.
Theodore took a step back and inhaled sharply.
The movement was sudden, a physical breaking of the spell that had held them both.
He cleared his throat, the sharp, intent heat in his eyes retreating behind his usual mask of lazy indifference.
He straightened his waistcoat, his fingers lingering for a second too long on the silk before he dropped his hand.
“Very well,” he said, his voice regaining its smooth, untroubled cadence. “If you will not speak, then we shall play along. For now.”
Emily watched him, her own breath finally leveling out, though the warmth of his proximity still clung to her skin like a fever. She didn't trust the ease of his tone. There was always a price with Theodore Merrick, and he didn't give his silence away for nothing.
“For now?” she repeated, her voice sounding steadier than she felt.
“For now,” he confirmed, a small, knowing smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“If anyone asks... your father, my mother, the local gossips...we are courting. I shall be the devoted suitor, and you shall be the lady who finally tamed the untouchable Duke. It is a narrative the Ton will swallow whole.”
Emily felt a flicker of suspicion. She could see the wheels turning behind his gaze.
He must have his own reasons for wanting this, a private game he was playing with Julia or perhaps with his own reputation.
He was using her just as much as she was using him.
There had to be a reason he was agreeing so quickly.
But she didn't push further. She couldn't afford to.
This was exactly what she needed. Even if he eventually grew bored, even if he changed his mind and decided that a marriage of convenience was too high a price for her secrets, the mere association was a shield.
To be courted by a Duke who had spent Seasons avoiding every trap in London would elevate her standing beyond anything her father could threaten.
It would bring her even more suitors. It would buy Frederick a future.
“I agree,” she said. “We are courting.”
Theodore bowed, a shallow, mocking gesture that didn't quite hide the predatory gleam in his eyes.
“Excellent. I shall send flowers tomorrow.
Something loud and expensive, so the neighbors don't have to strain their necks to see them arrive. Try to look a little more pleased about it, Emily,” he remarked, his gaze lingering on her mouth.
“A woman in love usually doesn't look like she's facing a firing squad.”
“I am pleased,” she answered with a forced smile. “It is what I wanted.”
Theodore opened his mouth to reply when Emily’s parents approached them. Emily went rigid. She felt tense all of a sudden, but before she could stammer out an introduction, Theodore shifted.
“Lord and Lady Pierce,” Theodore said. The brightest smile she had ever seen appeared on his face.
He didn't wait for them to reach him; he moved toward them, closing the distance with a grace that made her father’s stiff stride look clumsy by comparison.
“I must apologize for monopolizing your daughter. I found myself unable to let the music end our conversation. Lady Emily has a way of making the rest of the room feel quite... redundant.”
Emily watched, breathless, as Theodore took her mother’s hand. He didn’t just bow... he lingered. He offered the kind of lingering, deferential attention that made her mother’s cheeks flush a sudden, bright pink.
“Your Grace,” her mother fluttered, her hand resting in his as if it had found a permanent home. “We are... we are honored. We did not realize you and Emily were on such familiar terms.”
Emily watched her mother with a mounting sense of vertigo.
The sight was surreal. This was the same woman who had spent the better part of last week dissecting Theodore’s scandals, labeling him a “social blight” and a warning to any girl with a scrap of reputation left to lose.
Her mother’s disdain for the Duke was a matter of record; she had called him a rake who would sooner burn a house down than heat it.
Yet, the moral objections had evaporated the moment his fingers touched hers.
It was a dizzying transformation, a reminder that in their world, a high enough title could forgive almost any sin.
“The fault is entirely mine, My Lady,” Theodore said, casting a quick, conspiratorial glance back at Emily.
It was a look of such feigned devotion that it made Emily’s skin prickle.
“I am afraid I have been rather persistent. Your daughter is not easily swayed by rank alone, a quality I find as rare as it is exhausting.”