Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
“Why will you not let him speak of her?”
Rowan’s head lifted from the papers spread across his desk, though Emmeline knew at once that he had not been reading them.
She had gone to her room after dinner. She had tried to sit beside the fire, had tried to unpin her hair, had even opened a book and stared at the same line until the words blurred into nonsense.
But Aaron’s face would not leave her. His lowered eyes.
His trembling fork. The way his little voice had broken.
And beneath that, worse because she wished it were not there, was Rowan.
Rowan, watching her across the table. Rowan, refusing to speak. Rowan, making silence feel like a command.
So she had risen, wrapped her evening robe around herself, and gone to find him.
He had not been in his chamber. Somehow, that had hurt more than it should have.
She had found him at last in the study, standing behind his desk with ledgers spread before him and a glass of brandy untouched near his hand.
His coat was gone, his dark waistcoat fitted close over his broad chest, and his shirtsleeves were rolled back to his forearms, exposing strength that looked too alive in the firelight.
He stared at her for one suspended moment, and in that moment something unguarded crossed his face. His gaze moved over her evening wrapper, the loose braid resting over one shoulder, the exposed line of her throat, and the place where his mouth had been.
Emmeline felt the look as surely as touch.
Then his expression hardened. “Duchess.”
“Your Grace.”
His mouth tightened. “If you have come regarding household matters, Mrs. Vale can assist you in the morning.”
“I have not come regarding household matters.”
His gaze sharpened. “Then you should choose your first question with greater care.”
“I chose it precisely.”
The study door was still open behind her.
That seemed careless of him. Or perhaps arrogant, as if he had not considered that anyone in the house might dare interrupt him once the hour had grown late and the fires had begun to sink.
The corridors outside had been nearly silent when she came down, the lamps dim, the air colder than it had been during dinner.
She stepped inside and closed the door.
“I want to know why you are so insistent that Aaron must never speak of his mother.”
His face hardened, gray eyes darkening. “We have discussed this.”
“No. You have forbidden it. That is not the same thing.”
He exhaled through his nose, impatience restrained by a thread. “It is late.”
“It is always late when you don’t want to answer. Just like last night.”
His jaw shifted. “This is not about last night.”
“It is all about last night,” she said, her voice quieter now, which made the words sharper. “And dinner. And the way Aaron’s face changes whenever he fears he has displeased you. And the way this house treats grief as though it were a stain that must be scrubbed before guests arrive.”
Rowan came around the desk, leaving the barrier of polished wood behind.
His sleeves were rolled back, exposing the heavy strength of his forearms and the dark hair along his skin. Firelight caught the corded tendons in his hands, the same hands that had branded her waist just last night.
The closer he came, the harder it became to remember why she had meant to remain calm. He could likely hear the frantic beat of her heart against her ribs.
“You speak as though grief is harmless,” he said.
“Silence is not healing. That is what I mean to say.”
He stopped a few feet away. “You do not know what you are reopening.”
“Then tell me.”
“No.”
“There it is again.”
His eyes darkened. “You are determined to quarrel.”
“I am determined to understand the boy I am expected to help raise.”
“You are expected to be kind to him, not dig through matters that are none of your concern.”
The words hit so sharply that for a moment they almost drove the breath from her.
Aaron’s shy smile rose before her. His small bow.
His quiet confession in the library that fear was loud.
The way he had leaned against her in the carriage as if her shoulder were the first soft place he had found in too long.
The way his stammer worsened beneath his father’s cold correction until the words could no longer leave him.
Emmeline stepped closer. “He is my concern.”
Rowan’s gaze dropped briefly to her mouth, then snapped back to her eyes. “You have decided that quickly.”
“Children do not require years to become worthy of care.”
His expression tightened. “You think me cruel.”
“I think you are frightened.”
The silence went sharp.
Rowan’s eyes flashed. “Careful.”
“Of what? Your temper? Your pride? Your habit of leaving rooms when feeling threatens to enter them?”
He stepped closer, and the heat of him reached her before his shadow did. “You have grown very fond of accusing me of cowardice.”
“I did not use the word.”
“You meant it.”
“Perhaps I did.”
“And did you come here to fight me, Duchess?” he asked, his voice dropping. “Or to tempt me?”
Emmeline stilled.
For one wild second, everything else vanished.
Aaron's grief, anger, all of it drowned beneath the sudden, hot memory of Rowan’s mouth devouring hers.
He was so close now that she could see the faint shadow of beard along his jaw, the pulse at his throat, the restraint tightening his body the longer she remained near him.
Her breath caught before she could stop it.
His gaze lowered to her mouth, and when he spoke again, his voice was rough enough to scrape over her skin. “You should not look at me like that if you intend only to lecture.”
“I am not looking at you in any particular way.”
His hand lifted, not touching her, only hovering near the end of her braid where it lay over her shoulder.
The almost-touch was worse than contact.
Her whole body leaned toward it without permission, and she hated that he could make her feel exposed without laying a finger on her.
Her skin had begun to burn beneath the wrapper.
The fire was not nearly close enough to explain it.
“You came to my room last night,” he said softly.
Her throat tightened. “And you sent me away.”
“I have thought about that kiss all day,” he said.
The blunt confession made heat flare through her face, her chest, lower. “Yes. You did.”
His fingers brushed the loose end of her braid then, barely, the faintest contact, and her breath broke.
For a moment, she could not speak. The room seemed to narrow around them, firelight and shadows and the hard, impossible man before her.
“Then why?” she whispered.
Something hardened in his face at once, and she knew she had asked more than one question.
Why kiss me? Why stop? Why avoid me? Why hurt me? Why fear what you want?
His hand fell away. “Because wanting a thing does not make it wise to take it.”
The ache returned, swift and deep.
“And there it is,” she said, stepping back before her body could betray her further. “Another door closed.”
His eyes followed the movement. “Emmeline.”
“No.” She gathered what composure she had left and forced herself back to the reason she had come, because if she remained in the heat of that confession, she would forget every hurt she had carried into the room. “We are not speaking of last night.”
“We were.”
“We are speaking of Aaron.”
Rowan’s jaw clenched. “Aaron needs stability. He has endured enough.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice breaking despite her effort to keep it steady. “And you are making him endure it alone.”
Rowan’s entire frame locked, his breath hitching in a way that made the air in the room feel brittle. For a heartbeat, his eyes went wide and so dark it made her own chest ache. He looked like a man who had been hit with a physical weight, his shoulders sagging by a fraction.
Then it vanished.
“The past stays where it belongs,” he said. “Behind us.”
“Nothing stays behind us simply because we refuse to turn around.”
“My son will not be helped by dwelling on what he lost.”
“He is already dwelling on it. He simply does it without you. That is the trouble with this house, is it not? Enough grief. Enough questions. Enough wanting. Enough feeling. How many things must be buried before Ironford is quiet enough for you?”
His hand rose, fingers hovering so close to her cheek she could feel the heat radiating from his skin.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She should have retreated.
She should have turned her back on the silver fire in his eyes and the magnetic pull of his presence.
Instead, she stood her ground, her blood turning hot and heavy, hating him for the power he held and hating herself for how easily she gave it to him.
Then his knuckles brushed her skin.
The contact was light, almost a ghost of a touch, but it undid her more than the violence of his kiss had. It was a glimpse of the man beneath the armor, the man who could be gentle.
Rowan’s thumb traced her cheekbone. His breath hitched, the sound rough and uneven in the heavy silence.
“Do not,” she whispered. She didn’t know if she was begging him to stop or begging him never to pull away.
“Do not what?” his voice was a low, gravelly vibration that she felt through her whole body.
“No!” She wrenched herself away from his touch, the loss of his heat making the room feel like a tomb. “You send me away, you avoid me for an entire day, you crush your son’s spirit at dinner, and then you reach for me in the dark as if you have earned the right to touch me?”
Rowan’s face hardened, the marble mask slamming back into place with a finality that made her vision blur with rage.
“I have no right to tenderness,” he said, and all the life went out of his voice. “You are correct. Good night, Duchess.”
The dismissal was the final cord snapping. Emmeline didn’t curtsy. She didn’t offer a polite word. She turned on her heel and bolted from the room, the silk of her wrapper hissing against the floor.
The corridors of Ironford were a blur of shadows and judging portraits. Her breath came in short, jagged gasps that burned her throat. She burst into her bedroom and slammed the door, the sound echoing through the hollow silence of the house.
She leaned back against the wood, her palms flat against the cold grain, her heart trying to kick its way out of her chest. Her skin was on fire where he had touched her.
Her thoughts tangled around his name, his scent, and the humiliating truth that she still wanted him, even when he used his own self-loathing like a blade.
She looked at her bed—wide, cold, and empty—and pressed her shaking hands to her flaming cheeks.
She was the Duchess of Ironford, mistress of every room in this house, and yet she had never felt more shut out of her own life.