Chapter 11 #2
Aaron slept between them. The countryside passed in muted shades of green and gold.
And Emmeline sat with the weight of the Duke’s eyes finding hers again and again, and the warmth of the child against her side.
Ironford Hall appeared after several more hours of road and silence.
The house was broad and imposing in gray stone, with tall windows catching the last amber wash of afternoon light. It was old and stern, a house built to withstand everything. Her stomach dropped as the carriage slowed.
Aaron stirred beside her, blinking sleepily. “Are we home?”
The word struck her strangely.
The Duke’s gaze flicked to Emmeline before he answered his son. “Yes.”
The carriage stopped before the entrance, and at once the world outside seemed to arrange itself around the duke’s arrival.
Footmen stepped forward. The doors opened. A line of servants waited with polished discipline upon the steps, the housekeeper at their head, her gray gown immaculate, her expression respectful and unreadable.
The Duke descended first, then turned back. His hand lifted toward Emmeline.
She looked at it for a moment too long.
It was only assistance from a carriage. Nothing more. A husband helping his wife alight before his household. Yet the sight of his hand waiting for hers made her heart skip a beat, and her palms grew warm inside her gloves.
She placed her hand in his.
His fingers closed around hers, firm and hot even through the fabric, and the strength of him moved through her like a shock. She stepped down, too aware of his closeness. He did not release her immediately, and his gray eyes were fixed on her face, and she could not look away.
The housekeeper curtsied. “Welcome to Ironford Hall, Your Grace.”
Emmeline’s breath lodged somewhere beneath her ribs. She had been Lady Emmeline that morning. A daughter. A friend. A bride walking toward necessity. Now strangers bowed to her, and an entire house waited for her command.
“Thank you,” she said, pleased that her voice emerged steady. “I hope I shall not cause too much disorder.”
The housekeeper’s stern face softened by the smallest degree. “We shall be honored by any disorder Your Grace chooses to bring.”
Aaron looked up at Emmeline as if this answer pleased him greatly, and the small smile on his face warmed her enough to help her cross the threshold.
Inside, Ironford Hall smelled faintly of beeswax, old wood, and stone.
The entrance hall was vast, with a sweeping staircase and portraits lining the walls, generations of the Duke’s ancestors staring down with the same severe dignity he carried in his bones.
Emmeline felt their painted eyes pass judgment on her sandy hair, her freckles, her uncertain heart.
She lifted her chin.
“You are tired,” Rowan said, not unkindly.
“I am newly married, newly titled, newly arrived, and being silently condemned by at least six dead dukes,” she replied. “Tired seems insufficient.”
Aaron giggled.
The duke glanced upward at the portraits, then back to her. “They condemned everyone.”
“Comforting.”
It did something foolish and warm and terribly inconvenient to her.
The housekeeper appeared in the archway, her shadow stretching long and thin across the polished floorboards. “Dinner is served, Your Graces.”
They moved in a stiff procession to a dining room built for fifty, where the silence filled the vast, hollow gaps between the mahogany walls. The table stretched far beyond the three of them, a long, gleaming expanse of white linen that made their little party seem even lonelier.
They sat down. Silver clinked rhythmically against china—a sharp, lonely sound that punctuated the stillness. Footmen drifted behind them like ghosts, their movements synchronized and soundless, pouring wine that glowed blood-red in the low flicker of the candlelight.
Emmeline focused on the centerpiece, a spray of pale, waxen lilies.
“The roast is excellent,” she said, because the silence had begun to feel like another guest at the table.
“My cook is efficient,” the Duke replied flatly, not looking at his plate.
Aaron sat between them, his chair pulled closer to Emmeline’s than to his father’s. His small head nodded toward his plate, his eyelids fluttering with the weight of the day.
He perked up just long enough to lean toward her, his voice a dry whisper. “The prince… will he see the dragon tree?”
“Tomorrow,” Emmeline promised and reached out, her fingers grazing his sleeve, a soft tether in the gloom.
The Duke’s gaze remained fixed on her, his eyes dark and unreadable over the rim of his crystal glass. He drank slowly, the muscle in his jaw working in a slow, rhythmic pulse. Every time her fork scraped the porcelain, the sound seemed to climb the walls and echo off the high, vaulted ceiling.
The heavy oak door creaked on its hinges.
Miss Harrow stepped into the circle of light, her black skirts rustling like dry leaves. “It is time for bed, Lord Aaron.”
Aaron’s shoulders slumped, the brief spark in his eyes vanishing. His small hand tightened around his silver spoon as he looked at the half-eaten sweets on his plate. “M-must I?”
The Duke opened his mouth, no doubt to say something efficient.
Emmeline spoke first. “You must, or tomorrow you shall be too weary for me to tell you about the dragon tree.”
Aaron hesitated. “You p-p-promise t-to tell me?”
“I promise.”
He looked almost shy with pleasure. “Then I shall s-sleep.”
The governess led him away, but before he left, Aaron paused near Emmeline’s chair. For a moment, he seemed uncertain what to do. Then he bowed. It was a small, solemn, imperfect bow that made her heart squeeze.
“Good night, Duchess.”
Emotion rose so quickly that she had to smile to contain it. “Good night, Aaron.”
When the door closed behind him, the room became too quiet.
Emmeline turned back to the table and found Rowan watching her with an unreadable expression.
“You are good with him,” he said.
The praise made her eyes sting. “He makes it easy.”
“No,” Rowan replied, voice low. “He does not.”
The honesty of that struck something deep in her.
For a moment, there was no argument between them. Only the candlelight and the strange intimacy of being left alone with the man she had married, a man who could cut with silence and unsettle with a single look.
Then the Duke set down his glass.
“Your belongings have been taken upstairs,” he said. “The duchess’s chambers have been prepared for you.”
Emmeline’s hands went still in her lap. The words moved through her with a slow, spreading heat that began in her chest and descended lower.
She knew enough of great houses to understand what he meant. A duchess’s room often adjoined the duke’s. Sometimes separated by a sitting room. Sometimes by only a door.
She had to set her glass down before her hand betrayed her. “I see.”
The Duke studied her. “Do you?”
She looked up sharply, and the question changed in the air between them. It sounded like a challenge.
Her pulse began to beat too hard beneath her skin.
She thought of the wedding vows. Of the way he had looked at her in the carriage when Aaron slept against her side. Of every silent thing that had passed between them and had nowhere proper to go.
The idea of a wedding night should not have startled her. She had known what marriage meant and had prepared herself once for Foxdale with a kind of numb duty.
But this was different. The Duke was not an abstract obligation. He was real, close, and far too difficult to ignore.
“I understand the placement of rooms, Your Grace,” she said, forcing steadiness into her voice.
His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth again, and this time he did not look away quickly enough. Emmeline felt it like a touch.
“Good,” he said.
But nothing about his voice sounded simple.
The candle between them flickered, and in that brief trembling light, Emmeline understood with sudden, breathless certainty that the night ahead was not going to be quiet at all.