Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
“Now,” Imogen said, tapping the chalk against the coast of Italy, “The Roman Senate was not merely a place for making laws. It was a place of immense oratory. Men had to use their voices and their logic to sway the course of an entire empire.”
The following Thursday, the schoolroom was filled with the scent of old parchment and the sound of the scratching of Philip’s quill.
Imogen stood by the large chalkboard, her sleeves rolled up just an inch to avoid the dust as she sketched a map of the Mediterranean.
Arthur looked up, his chin resting in his palms. “Did they have to wear those itchy white sheets while they talked?”
“Togas, Lord Arthur. And yes, it was the dress of a citizen,” she replied with a smile.
“It required a great deal of discipline to wear them properly while debating, as you can imagine! I am sure your uncle could tell you more about how the modern House of Lords shares many of the same traditions of debate and—”
She stopped, but it was too late. The mention of Ambrose acted like a spark to dry kindling, flying off her tongue before she knew it.
“Uncle Ambrose knows about the Romans?” Philip asked, his eyes widened. “He does have all those statues in the hall!”
“He probably was a Roman,” Arthur shouted, already jumping up from his chair. “He’s grumpy enough to be a centurion! Come on, Brother! Let’s go ask him!”
“Arthur! Philip! No! He is working!” Imogen cried, dropping her chalk.
But the twins were already a blur of velvet and enthusiasm. They bolted through the schoolroom door, their boots thundering down the corridor.
Imogen gathered her skirts and gave chase, her heart leaping into her throat at the thought of seeing the Duke.
She knew he had been sequestered in his study all morning with the door firmly shut. She had taken it as his universal sign for do not disturb.
She reached the ground floor just as the heavy oak doors to the study swung open. She skidded to a halt in the doorway, breathless and flushed, her hair beginning to escape its pins. Despite her earlier protestations, she was desperate to see his golden-brown hair and sharp blue eyes.
Imogen crossed the threshold, and a small gasp escaped her pursed lips as her hands flew to her cheeks.
The scene was one of chaos.
Arthur was hanging off the arm of the Duke’s leather chair, while Philip was pointing excitedly at a bust of Hadrian on the mantel.
Ambrose sat behind his desk, a quill frozen in his large hand, looking like a man who had just been ambushed by a small, but very loud army. He looked up, and his gaze collided with Imogen’s.
The air in the room instantly thickened.
Her chest grew heavy, and her breath tight.
It was the first time they had been in the same room for more than a fleeting second since sharing a kiss.
They had done excellent work avoiding each other.
Until now. Imogen felt the familiar, magnetic pull of his presence, a sensation that made her skin hum and her hair stand on end, somehow in the most alluring way.
“Your Grace,” she finally said with a small curtsy before clutching the doorframe for support. “I am so incredibly sorry! They moved like lightning. I told them you were busy. We did not mean to disturb you. Right, My Lords?”
Ambrose didn’t look annoyed as his eyes continued to search hers. If anything, he looked relieved for the distraction, though his expression remained carefully guarded. He stood up slowly, his tall frame dominating the space as it took everything Imogen had not to charge him at once.
“It is quite all right, Miss Lewis. It seems I am being recruited for a lecture on the Republic.”
“She said that you are like a Senator or something!” Arthur chimed in. “Just like the heroes of Ancient Rome!”
Ambrose’s lips quirked into the ghost of a smile, but his eyes stayed on Imogen. “Is that what you told them?”
“Oh no, Your Grace! I only… I mentioned the House of Lords,” she managed, her voice still breathy from sprinting across the townhouse. She felt a stray lock of hair tickle her cheek. She tucked it back with a trembling hand.
“A fair comparison,” Ambrose said. He looked at the boys, then back at her. “What exactly were you covering in your lessons today, Miss Lewis?”
I like the way my name sounds on his tongue.
“The transition from the Republic to the Empire,” she replied as she brought her thoughts back to the present moment, regaining some of her professional composure. “The importance of civic duty versus personal ambition. The power of words.”
Ambrose studied her for a long moment, the intensity of his stare making her pulse thrum in her ears more than her jaunt.
He reached out, his hand hovering over a shelf of leather-bound volumes.
He pulled down two thick books, one on Roman law and another filled with detailed sketches of the Forum.
He laid them out on his desk as the boys ran over to look at the pages.
“Perhaps a visual aid would assist,” he said. He stepped around the desk, his presence on the other side somehow closing the distance between them. “Shall we?”
“Oh, yes! These are magnificent, Uncle Ambrose,” Arthur said as he grabbed one of the tomes, then handed the other to Philip.
“Can we look at them together?” Philip asked with a small smile, as Imogen watched Ambrose’s facade crack, and a real smile crossed his full lips.
“Lead the way, boys.”
The walk back to the schoolroom felt impossibly long as Imogen tried to remain even-keeled. She walked slightly ahead with the boys, acutely aware of the heavy, rhythmic tread of Ambrose’s boots behind her as she almost involuntarily swayed her hips.
I cannot help the way my body reacts to this man, she cursed to herself.
The afternoon sun slanted through the tall windows of the schoolroom as dust motes danced in the chalky air. Ambrose began to pace, his boots striking the floorboards with the rhythmic, heavy cadence of a general’s march.
“You must understand, boys,” he began. “The history books do not portray the true nature of it all. They speak of annexation and expansion as if Rome were merely a gardener tending a plot of land. It was bloody, and gruesome, and muddy—”
“We love mud!” The boys called in unison as they looked at their uncle with wide eyes.
He turned at the corner of the room as he went on, his shadow stretching long and jagged across the leather spines of the encyclopedia sets along the walls.
“Oh, and the legions. They were a machine of bone and iron. They didn’t just conquer,” he rasped, his cerulean eyes flashing with an intensity that made the air in the room feel thin.
“They consumed. They took the language, the gods, and the very gold from the teeth of the fallen. By the time Caesar turned his eyes back toward Rome, he wasn’t just a general.
He was a man who had tasted the blood of half of Europe and found himself still hungry. ”
“Wow,” the boys said, again in unison.
Imogen watched him, her own breath hitching.
She had expected a dry recitation of dates and treaties, but Ambrose spoke with such passion as if he had stood in the mud of Gaul himself.
He crossed the room in three long strides and opened a heavy, leather-bound atlas from the shelf, thudding it down onto the mahogany table.
“Look here,” he commanded, though the edge in his voice was more invitation than order.
Imogen moved closer to the Duke as the boys hovered over the tome from the other side of the table. The heat radiating between the two was palpable, a physical weight that pulled at her as she found herself inching as close as she dared.
Focus, Imogen! She told herself as she leaned over the table, her eyes landing on the map.
It was a complex web of crimson ink, faded vellum, and Latin annotations that looked like ancient scars. It was beautiful, reminding her of a happier time with her own father when he had shown her something similar.
“He stood here,” Ambrose whispered, leaning down so his shoulder was inches from hers, snapping Imogen back to the moment. “On the banks of a stream so insignificant the maps barely gave it a name.”
“The Rubicon,” Imogen whispered.
“Clever woman,” Ambrose whispered back, so low it only touched her ears.
“The point of no return.”
“Yes, Miss Lewis.”
She reached out, her fingernail tracing the narrow, blue squiggle that marked the boundary between a province and a revolution.
As her finger found the mark, the slight shift in her stance caused her bare forearm to brush against the heavy, dark wool of his sleeve.
The contact jolted through her marrow, a sudden, violent spark that made the oxygen vanish from her lungs in one fell swoop. She didn’t pull away.
She could not.
Beside her, Ambrose’s hand, which had been resting flat against the mahogany, spasmed. His knuckles went white, his fingers digging into the wood as if he were trying to anchor himself against a physical blow or a sudden, dizzying height. Luckily, the boys were too focused on the pages to notice.
Imogen felt Ambrose hold his breath. In the periphery of her vision, she saw the heavy vein in his neck pulsing, thick and rapid. He was trapped in that narrow, dangerous territory between the map and the heat they dared not give in to.
“Did he know? I wonder.” Imogen asked, her voice trembling as she looked up at him. “Did he know he was destroying the Republic for a selfish whim?”
She found Ambrose already looking at her.
He wasn’t looking at the map, and she knew he wasn’t thinking of Rome.
He was watching her lips move. His expression was stripped bare of its iron-clad reserve.
For a single, fleeting second, he looked soft, unguarded.
He was almost a man who was starving and had just found a feast he wasn’t allowed to touch.
He feels it too.