Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
“A-are we n-nearly there yet?” The small voice cut through the stagnant air of the carriage.
Emmeline turned to it almost gratefully. Aaron’s shoulders were slumped, his eyes shadowed with a heavy, hollow fatigue that made her heart ache.
The Duke sat rigid, his gloved hands flat against his knees. He did not look at them. His jaw clenched, a sharp pulse ticking beneath his beard as he watched the countryside blur past.
“No,” he said.
Aaron’s shoulders sank. “Oh.”
Emmeline looked at the boy’s lowered face, and the answer felt harsher than the single word should have allowed.
He had sat stiffly for as long as any child might reasonably be expected to endure, his new coat buttoned to his throat, wooden horse clutched in one hand. His boots were swinging just above the carriage floor in a rhythm that betrayed every ounce of restless energy trapped inside him.
She had only been Duchess of Ironford for a matter of hours, yet the title already seemed to weigh differently when she looked at him. Now, she was responsible for the child’s lowered eyes and the tremor in his little voice.
Aaron shifted again, the heel of his boot knocking softly against the panel.
The Duke’s eyes snapped to him. “Stop that.”
The boy went still at once.
“He is only bored,” she said, and though she meant to sound mild, the words came out with more edge than she intended.
The Duke’s head turned slowly. “He is perfectly capable of stillness.”
“He is seven,” she snapped.
“I am quite aware of my son’s age.”
“Then perhaps you might adjust your expectations accordingly.”
Aaron’s eyes went wide, his gaze darting quickly between the two of them.
Emmeline felt a pang of guilt at the boy’s flinch, but she didn’t pull back. His knuckles were white around that wooden horse, his mouth was pressed into a thin, bloodless line.
Rowan leaned back, but the movement only seemed to expand him. In the amber glow of the carriage lamps, he was a silhouette far too large for the narrow seat. His coat pulled across the breadth of his chest and the hard muscle in his arms. Her skin prickled at the sight.
Emmeline hated that her body betrayed her, hated that being near him was like standing too close to a furnace.
“My expectations,” he said, his voice dropping into a low, vibrating register, “are far from severe.”
“No?” she challenged, her voice a soft rasp.
His eyes narrowed, the gray of them hardening. “You have an objection.”
“I think children are not soldiers, Your Grace.”
His expression hardened. “And I think indulgence does them little service.”
The title sat strangely between them now. Your Grace. She had used it before because he was a duke, because he had been a stranger and propriety had given her nowhere else to stand. But now he was her husband.
The thought moved through her with such force that her breath thinned. She felt the ring on her finger, and the plain truth of it seemed to pulse against her skin for the first time.
Aaron’s boot twitched once more, but he stopped himself this time, his whole body stiffening with the effort of remaining still.
Emmeline looked at him and softened her voice. “Would you like a story?”
The boy’s eyes lifted to hers, cautious at first, then brightening despite himself. “A s-story?”
“Yes. If His Grace does not consider storytelling a dangerous form of indulgence.”
Across from her, the Duke’s stare turned heavy.
Aaron’s mouth twitched. “What kind of story?”
Emmeline glanced out the window, where the fields rolled beneath a pale sky. “A proper traveling story, I think. One with a lost prince, a very clever fox, and a castle that could only be found by someone brave enough to get mud on his boots.”
Aaron sat up, a small spark of defiance lighting his eyes. “I would get mud on my boots.”
“I suspected as much.”
“I have before,” he added, his voice gaining a sliver of ground.
Emmeline leaned in, her voice a conspiratorial hum. “Then you are already better prepared than most princes.”
His smile finally broke through. The tension in his small frame melted, revealing the sweet-natured boy buried under expectations. He tilted toward her, the wooden horse forgotten in his lap, his shoulder brushing hers.
Emmeline kept her focus entirely on the boy.
“There once was a prince,” she began, her voice lowering as though she were sharing a secret.
“He lived in a palace made of cold, white marble where the floors were so polished you could see your own worried face in them. Everyone there spoke in whispers. They spent their days saying, ‘Don’t touch that,’ and ‘Don’t walk there,’ and ‘Mind your sleeves, Your Highness.’”
Aaron’s eyes widened, his own hands loosening their white-knuckled grip on his toy.
“So,” Emmeline continued, her eyes dancing, “one Tuesday, the prince decided he’d had quite enough.
He stuffed a crust of bread into his pocket, crept past the sleeping guards in the kitchen, and bolted for the Great Wood.
” She used her hands to mimic the trees closing in, her fingers branching out in the dim light of the carriage.
“And there, sitting on a mossy stump, he found a fox with one torn ear and a very loud opinion on everything.”
She pulled her face into a scowl of mock-arrogance, her voice turning raspier and sharper. “‘Princes,’ the fox barked, ‘are generally useless creatures. Unless, of course, they are properly trained in the art of getting muddy.’”
Aaron let out a sudden, startled giggle. He was leaning so far forward now he was almost off the seat.
“The fox led him deep into the shadows.” Emmeline’s voice became a low, melodic ghost of a sound. She widened her eyes, glancing toward the corners of the carriage as if the Great Wood was inside the carriage. “The branches reached out like long, spindly fingers, whispering the prince’s name.”
Aaron giggled, then slapped one hand over his mouth as if laughter itself might be improper. Emmeline’s chest ached again.
Across from them, the Duke had gone very still. She felt his attention on her skin. It was quieter now, sharper in a different way. When she dared to glance at him, his eyes were on her.
There was no warmth in his face exactly, but something had shifted in the set of his mouth and the slight easing of the hard line between his brows.
Her pulse quickened.
She looked away quickly and continued the tale, though now every word seemed to pass through the awareness of his gaze before reaching Aaron’s ears.
By the time Emmeline described the feast laid out in the great hall, with sugared plums and pies and a cake so high the fox had to climb a ladder to inspect it, the boy’s head dipped against her arm.
She kept her voice low after that, weaving the end softly, one hand hovering awkwardly for a moment before she allowed herself to settle it lightly around his shoulders.
Aaron sank against her. The trust of it made her eyes burn. The carriage had grown quiet except for the steady roll of wheels and the faint creak of leather. Aaron slept with his cheek pressed to her sleeve, his lashes dark against his pale skin, his hand still curled around the wooden horse.
Emmeline did not move, afraid she would wake him.
The Duke was watching Aaron now.
His expression had altered in some small, devastating way. The hard line of his mouth remained, but his eyes had gone fixed and bleak. He looked at his sleeping son as though the boy were something precious and breakable that he did not trust himself to hold.
The sight unsettled her more than his anger had.
Because anger she could answer. Harshness she could challenge. But this quiet, trapped pain in him was harder to resist, because it simply stood there and made her feel it.
“He is not difficult,” she said softly.
The Duke’s gaze rose to hers. “I did not say he was.”
“No,” she replied. “But you brace yourself as though he is.”
His jaw flexed. For a moment she thought he would rebuke her. Instead, he looked back at Aaron, his voice lowering to a whisper.
“He was not always so fearful.”
The admission was so unexpected that Emmeline’s breath caught. She waited, afraid that if she pushed too quickly, he would close again.
The Duke’s eyes remained on his son. “He used to run everywhere. Into rooms. Down stairs. Across lawns. He never entered a place quietly.”
Emmeline looked down at the sleeping child tucked against her side. It was difficult to imagine him noisy and unguarded. The thought made her ache.
“What changed?” she asked.
The Duke’s face closed immediately. “Life.”
The statement was a door shut in her face. A sudden, sharp ache blossomed behind Emmeline’s ribs. He had opened the wound just enough for her to see it, then closed it again before she could understand its shape.
“Children do not become so afraid without reason.” Her voice sharpened before she could soften it.
His eyes returned to hers, cool now. “You have known him for a handful of hours.”
“And in those hours, I have seen him shrink from your displeasure more than once.”
A shadow flickered across the Duke’s face. His eyes narrowed, the silver in them turning to flint.
“You speak boldly for a bride on her wedding day,” he murmured.
Blood rushed to Emmeline’s cheeks. “Perhaps brides grow bolder when they realize silence will be expected of them.”
His gaze dropped, briefly, to her mouth.
It was nothing. It was a glance. A moment. But her body reacted as though he had touched her, a startling warmth slipping low in her belly. She became painfully aware of the sleeping child between them, of the distance, of the wedding gown she wore like a ghost against her skin.
“You have not been silent once since I met you,” the Duke said.
“Then you must consider yourself fortunate to have such a consistent wife.”
For a heartbeat, his mouth almost moved. Some faint dark amusement touched his eyes before he looked away, and Emmeline hated the small, foolish leap of pleasure it caused in her chest.