Chapter 6 #2
Rowan’s spine locked.
“No,” he said, too quickly.
Aaron looked up.
Such talk is not appropriate at the table, Rowan wanted to say.
Instead, what came out was, “That is enough.”
The words landed hard enough that even Lord Weston shifted.
Aaron’s face changed at once. “B-but Aunt J-Juliet l-let me t-talk about M-Mama.”
“Your aunt is not here.”
The boy swallowed. “Then maybe L-Lady Emmeline can. B-because y-you won’t!”
Rowan went rigid, his spine snapping against the mahogany chair. Beside him, Emmeline shifted, her weight leaning toward the boy, her hand hovering just off the linen.
Rowan’s pulse hammered against his collar. He saw the way Aaron’s eyes began to gloss, the way the heavy silver and candlelight suddenly felt like the walls of a tomb.
“The past stays where it belongs,” he said, each word clipped. “We concern ourselves with the future.”
Aaron’s mouth trembled with frustration. “That’s what y-you always s-say!”
“Lower your voice.”
“I wasn’t—I d-didn’t—”
The stammer seized him then, sudden and vicious, tangling what little remained of his composure. His face reddened. He pushed his chair back too fast, Comet clattering onto the tablecloth, and before anyone could stop him, he was out of the room.
The silence afterward was brutal.
Emmeline had gone half out of her chair. Rowan had risen fully before he could think, his pulse hard, his own irritation already souring into regret.
“I apologize,” he said, forcing the words toward civility. “Aaron has struggled since my sister’s disappearance. Beyond that, he is a good boy.”
Lord Weston recovered first. “I understand.”
Emmeline did not sit back immediately. “Are you not going after him?”
Rowan froze, his wine glass suspended in mid-air. The muscles in his forearm corded, straining against his coat sleeve. Her question was a knife between his ribs, expertly finding the gap in his armor and twisting.
He stared at her, his thoughts snagging.
She is asking me to abandon my own table.
In my own house. The sheer, quiet audacity of it made the air in his lungs feel too thick.
He looked at her honey-brown eyes and found no apology there—only a sharp, expectant clarity that made his sense of duty feel suddenly, bafflingly small.
“He needs a moment to regain his calm,” Rowan said. “And I cannot leave my guests.”
She sat slowly, but not with surrender. “If he hears a few kind words from his father, he may regain it more quickly.”
Rowan looked at her.
“He is not a child in a nursery tantrum,” she continued, and though her voice remained low, there was force in it now. “He is grieving.”
“Mourning is one thing,” Rowan said carefully, each word selected before it left him. “Defiance is another.”
Her eyes sharpened. “He is seven.”
“And if he learns that grief excuses every outburst, he will grow into a man who governs neither his temper nor himself.”
“Or,” Emmeline countered, her knuckles white as she gripped her silk skirts, “if you meet every cry for help with a fist of iron, eventually, he will stop reaching for you entirely.”
What?
Rowan held her gaze. Lord Weston cleared his throat softly, the sound strained with the effort of pretending not to hear a quarrel form at his future son-in-law’s table.
“You presume much,” Rowan said.
“Perhaps,” Emmeline replied. “But not, I think, wrongly.”
For one long second, the room seemed to draw in around them, all candlelight and silver and restrained breath.
Rowan was abruptly, unwillingly aware of how alive she looked when she argued—her eyes brighter, her mouth firmer, the soft gentleness he had seen with Aaron now sharpened into something that met him head-on.
The attraction that moved through him at such moments was so ill-timed it felt almost insulting.
“Well,” Lord Weston said suddenly, his voice a little too bright as he reached for his wineglass, “I noticed on the way here that the roads into London are in a dreadful state. Quite dreadful. I have often thought Parliament might do better to concern itself with the condition of the highways rather than quarrel endlessly over matters no ordinary man can understand.”
Emmeline’s gaze flickered, the sharpness in it wavering as she looked toward her father.
“Papa,” she said softly.
“No, truly,” Lord Weston continued, clearly determined to ease the tension before it worsened. “There is a stretch near Hammersmith that is practically a trench. One wonders how any carriage arrives in town with all four wheels still attached.”
Rowan leaned back by a fraction, understanding the intervention for what it was.
He saw the moment Emmeline heard it too, saw the faint tightening of her mouth, the reluctant lowering of her lashes as she gathered her composure around herself again.
“Yes,” she said after a brief pause, her voice quieter now. “The roads were rather poor.”
Lord Weston exhaled as though he had been spared execution. “Precisely. Poor. Most poor.”
Rowan said nothing, but his gaze remained on Emmeline a moment longer.
She looked away first.
Dinner resumed, if such a strained continuation could be called resuming at all.
Aaron did not return.
A servant slipped in midway through the next course and bent to Rowan’s ear. “He is in the schoolroom, Your Grace. Miss Harrow is with him now.”
Rowan felt something release in his chest even as shame followed it. He gave a short nod and dismissed the man.
When the meal ended at last, Lord Weston thanked him with earnest courtesy, the kind that grows only from genuine dependence and discomfort. Emmeline rose beside her father, graceful as ever, though any softness she had shown Aaron was absent from the look she gave Rowan now.
“Thank you for the evening, Your Grace,” she said.
It was polite. It was also cool enough to let him know precisely what she thought of how it had gone.
“We shall announce the engagement at the next suitable event,” Rowan said. “I will bring you a ring then.”
She inclined her head. “Very good.”
Lord Weston was already turning toward the door when Emmeline paused and looked back once more.
“Please give Aaron my regards.”
There was no accusation in it, only honesty. That made it worse.
Rowan bowed. “I shall.”
Then she was gone.