Chapter 6
Chapter Six
“Do try not to look so delighted by your own scheme,” Frederick said as he drew his horse alongside Rowan’s in Hyde Park. “It will make me jealous.”
Rowan kept his eyes fixed between his horse’s ears. The morning was clear and blindingly bright, possessing that polished, irritating London sheen where every carriage wheel seemed to spark, and every passerby looked curated for a portrait.
Half the scandal sheets in London had spent the last two days wringing every drop they could from Juliet’s disappearance, though now, thanks to a substantial amount of money passed into the proper hands, many of them had abruptly decided that Lady Juliet Huntley’s wedding had merely been postponed due to a sudden illness.
“I haven’t schemed,” he said.
“No. You’ve merely brooded on horseback and bribed the press successfully.” Frederick gave a soft laugh. “Quite quick of you, I must say. I had not realized you kept such intimate relations with the nation’s worst liars.”
“I keep intimate relations with no one.”
“That, my dear Rowan, is precisely your problem.”
Rowan turned his head then, slow enough that Frederick lifted a hand in surrender, though the grin remained.
For a few moments, they rode in silence, hooves striking softly over the path, the trees throwing shifting strips of shadow across their coats.
Rowan’s mind had been split for days now. He spent his hours sorting the wreckage of the press, yet his mind kept snagging on a single, jagged fact: Emmeline was to become his.
“Any word from Juliet?” Frederick asked at last, his tone losing some of its mockery.
“No.”
“Nothing at all?”
Rowan shook his head once. “Nothing. But she will write again.”
Frederick studied him. “You sound certain.”
“I know my sister.”
The words left him easily enough, but even as he said them, a colder thought moved beneath them.
Did he?
He had believed he knew Juliet well enough to arrange her future. Yet she had fled, had bartered her own wedding dress for another woman’s clothes and vanished into the countryside. It was not the act itself that troubled him most. It was the fact that he had never imagined she was capable of it.
Frederick exhaled. “Let us hope she writes soon, then. Else all this very expensive illness may begin to look suspiciously healthy.”
Rowan ignored that and kept riding. Frederick was quiet only for a heartbeat.
“And your fiancée?” he asked.
Rowan’s hands tightened slightly on the reins before he forced them to ease again. “What of her?”
Frederick made a soft sound, one of those infuriating, knowing sounds that never improved a morning. “Have I irritated you already? We have only just begun.”
“I am marrying her because I offered to repair the damage done to her.”
“Yes,” Frederick said. “Out of duty. I know. You have said so often enough that I half expect duty to climb onto your horse behind you and ask to share your saddle.”
Rowan shot him a look.
Frederick only laughed. “Come now. Even a dutiful man may appreciate that Lady Emmeline is not difficult to look at.”
The image hit him like a physical blow—honey-brown eyes defiant behind a veil, the pulse thrumming in the hollow of her throat, and the stubborn, beautiful curve of her mouth when she surrendered to the inevitable. He hated how instinctively his blood heated at the thought.
“That is not the point,” he said.
“Mm.”
“Do not test me.”
“I have no need,” Frederick replied blandly. “Your temper appears admirably tested already. Though I must say, inviting her to dinner before the engagement is publicly announced was a bold move. Will you tease your fiancée beneath the table, or wait until the soup is cleared?”
Rowan turned so sharply in the saddle that Frederick laughed aloud. “You are a cad.”
“I was under the impression you used to find that admirable.”
“A long time ago.”
“Yes, and now you are a duke with a tragic expression and a seven-year-old son, which I admit has diminished your charm somewhat, though not fatally.”
Rowan should have answered, but his mind had gone where it had no business going again—to the memory of Emmeline in the carriage, looking up at him with that dangerous mix of intelligence and softness, speaking of love as though she had made a grave of it in her own chest and still felt it stirring there.
Frederick’s voice cut back in. “There. That face. You are thinking of her now.”
Rowan kept his gaze ahead. “Mind your own affairs.”
“Gladly,” Frederick said. “Mine are generally more entertaining.”
“Lady Emmeline.”
Rowan stepped forward the moment she entered Ironford House with her father, and bowed with all the formality the occasion required.
“Your Grace,” she replied, curtsying properly, though there was the faintest edge in her voice.
The instant his eyes landed on her, he felt that same unwelcome awareness move through him again. She was wearing a pale blue gown that only intensified the effect she had on him, her honey-brown eyes meeting his with perfect composure even as tension moved between them at once.
“Lord Weston,” Rowan said, turning to greet the older man with the same measured courtesy, though even as he did, his attention kept dragging back toward Emmeline.
“Your Grace,” Lord Weston replied.
“This way.”
As they moved deeper into the house, Rowan’s world narrowed to the woman at his side. He felt the phantom vibration of her skirts against the air, the steady, rhythmic click of her heels, and the scent of roses that drifted from her skin—a soft, hypnotic intrusion into his sterile hallways.
“Your home is very fine,” Lord Weston offered after a moment, as though the quiet had grown too heavy to leave untouched.
“It serves its purpose,” Rowan said, and heard, rather than saw, the faint shift of Emmeline beside him, as if she had almost reacted to that.
Rowan saw Emmeline’s gaze lower briefly, and he had the distinct impression that purpose had not been the word she would have chosen for a London house large enough to make Weston Hall look intimate.
The door opened again before the silence could deepen.
Aaron stood there beside Miss Harrow, his governess, a wooden horse clutched in one hand. He had been prepared for the occasion with care, his dark hair brushed neatly, though none of that altered the uncertainty in his face as he looked into the room and found strangers in it.
Rowan straightened instinctively.
“Aaron,” he said. “Come here.”
The boy hesitated, his eyes moving first to Rowan, then to Emmeline, then to Lord Weston, then back again. Rowan felt, with familiar frustration, that small pinch in his chest that always came when the child looked almost scared.
“It is all right,” he said, more evenly. “This is Lady Emmeline Greene and Lord Weston.”
Aaron stepped forward at last, slowly, his small fingers tightening around the wooden horse. He stopped a little closer to Emmeline than to Rowan, which Rowan noticed and resented for reasons he refused to examine.
Emmeline sank into a graceful crouch, shedding her composure to meet the boy eye-to-eye. It was a movement so fluid and unforced that it made Rowan’s breath catch.
“That is a very fine horse,” she said. “Does he have a name?”
Aaron’s lips parted. “H-he… h-he is called C-Comet.”
She listened patiently. Rowan noticed that at once. She simply waited, looking at the toy with gentle interest rather than strained encouragement.
“Comet,” she repeated. “Then he must be very fast.”
A small change came over the boy’s face, not quite a smile yet, but something near it. “He is.”
“And does he behave?”
Aaron considered this very seriously. “N-not always.”
That won a warm smile from her then, and something low and immediate moved in Rowan’s body at the sight of it. The room seemed altered by it. A woman who could bring that kind of gentleness into a space without effort would draw everything toward her eventually.
They moved into the dining room, where silver gleamed under steady candlelight, and the staff moved with the silent precision Rowan demanded.
Lord Weston filled the silence. He spoke of the weather, the London roads, and the spiraling costs of tenant cottages.
Rowan gave the expected nods. Emmeline answered with practiced grace, but Rowan barely heard her.
His attention was fixed on the way she occupied his space—the curve of her wrist as she set down a fork, and the quiet, constant way she checked on Aaron.
By the fish course, the boy began to fray. Aaron shifted, nudging his silver and lifting the wooden horse from the seat beside him.
Emmeline spoke before Rowan could intervene.
“Does Comet always attend dinner?” she asked. Her voice was soft, cutting through Lord Weston’s talk of masonry.
Aaron looked at her, then at the horse. “N-not usually.”
“Then tonight must be a very important evening.”
He nodded solemnly.
“And what else does Comet do, besides behave badly and attend important dinners?”
Aaron’s face brightened a little. “He g-goes in r-races.”
“Ah.” Emmeline leaned a fraction closer. “Then I suppose he must win them all.”
“H-he wins m-most,” Aaron said, and this time his stammer eased just enough to make Rowan notice. “B-but s-sometimes he f-falls into snow.”
Emmeline smiled. “A horse after my own heart. I once fell into a duck pond trying to rescue a ribbon.”
Lord Weston laughed at once. “You were six, and your mother said you were more furious for having lost the ribbon than for being wet.”
At the mention of her mother, a shadow flickered across Emmeline’s features—a brief, bruising look of longing that she quickly masked with a smile. Rowan watched as Aaron leaned in.
“Your m-mama is g-gone too?” the boy asked.
The table went still.
Emmeline looked at him with a gentleness Rowan had never seen from her before. “Yes.”
“Do you m-miss her?”
“Yes,” she said again, quieter. “Very much.”
Aaron stared at his plate for a moment. “I miss mine too, b-but my A-Aunt J-Juliet used t-to make me feel b-better. D-do you have a n-nice aunt like that?”